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About the Book
"Inside Out" by Larry Crabb is a Christian book that delves into the importance of understanding and addressing the deep internal issues that affect our relationships and overall well-being. Crabb emphasizes the need for inner transformation and spiritual growth as key components to living a fulfilling and authentic life. He offers practical advice and biblical insights on how to navigate through our emotional struggles and develop healthier connections with others.
David Livingstone
"[I am] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
With four theatrical words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"—words journalist Henry Morton Stanley rehearsed in advance—David Livingstone became immortal. Stanley stayed with Livingstone for five months and then went off to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone. Livingstone, in the meantime, got lost again—in a swamp literally up to his neck. Within a year and a half, he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer.
Berlin Congress spurs African independent churches
The whole civilized world wept. They gave him a 21-gun salute and a hero's funeral among the saints in Westminster Abbey. "Brought by faithful hands over land and sea," his tombstone reads, "David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade." He was Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one.
Highway man
At age 25, after a childhood spent working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill, followed by learning in class and on his own, Livingstone was captivated by an appeal for medical missionaries to China. As he trained, however, the door to China was slammed shut by the Opium War. Within six months, he met Robert Moffat, a veteran missionary of southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station, glowing in the morning sun with "the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had been before."
For ten years, Livingstone tried to be a conventional missionary in southern Africa. He opened a string of stations in "the regions beyond," where he settled down to station life, teaching school and superintending the garden. After four years of bachelor life, he married his "boss's" daughter, Mary Moffat.
From the beginning, Livingstone showed signs of restlessness. After his only convert decided to return to polygamy, Livingstone felt more called than ever to explore. During his first term in South Africa, Livingstone made some of the most prodigious—and most dangerous—explorations of the nineteenth century. His object was to open a "Missionary Road"—"God's Highway," he also called it—1,500 miles north into the interior to bring "Christianity and civilization" to unreached peoples.
Explorer for Christ
On these early journeys, Livingstone's interpersonal quirks were already apparent. He had the singular inability to get along with other Westerners. He fought with missionaries, fellow explorers, assistants, and (later) his brother Charles. He held grudges for years. He had the temperament of a book-reading loner, emotionally inarticulate except when he exploded with Scottish rage. He held little patience for the attitudes of missionaries with "miserably contracted minds" who had absorbed "the colonial mentality" regarding the natives. When Livingstone spoke out against racial intolerance, white Afrikaners tried to drive him out, burning his station and stealing his animals.
He also had problems with the London Missionary Society, who felt that his explorations were distracting him from his missionary work. Throughout his life, however, Livingstone always thought of himself as primarily a missionary, "not a dumpy sort of person with a Bible under his arms, [but someone] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
Though alienated from the whites, the natives loved his common touch, his rough paternalism, and his curiosity. They also thought he might protect them or supply them with guns. More than most Europeans, Livingstone talked to them with respect, Scottish laird to African chief. Some explorers took as many as 150 porters when they traveled; Livingstone traveled with 30 or fewer.
On an epic, three-year trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean (reputedly the first by a European) Livingstone was introduced to the 1,700-mile-long Zambezi. The river was also home to Victoria Falls, Livingstone's most awe-inspiring discovery. The scene was "so lovely," he later wrote, that it "must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."
Despite its beauty, the Zambezi was a river of human misery. It linked the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the main suppliers of slaves for Brazil, who in turn sold to Cuba and the United States. Though Livingstone was partially driven by a desire to create a British colony, his primary ambition was to expose the slave trade and cut it off at the source. The strongest weapon in this task, he believed, was Christian commercial civilization. He hoped to replace the "inefficient" slave economy with a capitalist economy: buying and selling goods instead of people.
The ill-fated Zambezi expedition
After a brief heroic return to England, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to navigate 1,000 miles up the Zambezi in a brass-and-mahogany steamboat to establish a mission near Victoria Falls. The boat was state-of-the-art technology but proved too frail for the expedition. It leaked horribly after repeatedly running aground on sandbars.
Livingstone pushed his men beyond human endurance. When they reached a 30-foot waterfall, he waved his hand, as if to wish it away, and said, "That's not supposed to be there." His wife, who had just given birth to her sixth child, died in 1862 beside the river, only one of several lives claimed on the voyage. Two years later, the British government, which had no interest in "forcing steamers up cataracts," recalled Livingstone and his mission party.
A year later, he was on his way back to Africa again, this time leading an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and wealthy friends. "I would not consent to go simply as a geographer," he emphasized, but as biographer Tim Jeal wrote, "It would be hard to judge whether the search for the Nile's source or his desire to expose the slave trade was his dominant motive." The source of the Nile was the great geographical puzzle of the day. But more important to Livingstone was the possibility of proving that the Bible was true by tracing the African roots of Judaism and Christianity.
For two years he simply disappeared, without a letter or scrap of information. He reported later that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen, but he was able to read the Bible straight through four times. Livingstone's disappearance fascinated the public as much as Amelia Earhart's a few generations later.
When American journalist Henry Stanley found Livingstone, the news exploded in England and America. Papers carried special editions devoted to the famous meeting. In August 1872, in precarious health, Livingstone shook Stanley's hand and set out on his final journey.
When Livingstone had arrived in Africa in 1841, it was as exotic as outer space, called the "Dark Continent" and the "White Man's Graveyard." although the Portuguese, Dutch, and English were pushing into the interior, African maps had blank unexplored areas—no roads, no countries, no landmarks. Livingstone helped redraw the maps, exploring what are now a dozen countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Angola, and the Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). And he made the West aware of the continuing evil of African slavery, which led to its being eventually outlawed.
Kindness in a World Gone Mad
I was waiting in line with my sons for a roller coaster when the T-shirt caught my eye: Kindness is free — so sprinkle that stuff everywhere . I’m sympathetic to the message at one level. To many, the world feels meaner in recent years, and perhaps especially so since the last election cycle, COVID-19, and civil unrest. Yes, genuine human kindness, in the most basic of senses, has often been sorely lacking. More kindness would indeed be nice, and perhaps shine in new ways in times when we’re coming to expect meanness and outrage everywhere. But as admirable as the instincts behind the message are, the initial claim is badly mistaken. No, real kindness — the kind we really long for and need — is not free. And perhaps it would help us all to come to terms with that up front. Real kindness is costly. This Harsh World Deep down, we know that we live in a mean world — too mean to keep the meanness constantly at the forefront of our minds. Yet at times — more frequent for some than others — the meanness, the evil afoot in this world, accosts us. Even as bright as some days appear, there is a “present darkness” ( Ephesians 6:12 ), still under the sway of “the god of this world” ( 2 Corinthians 4:4 ). Pretender though he is, and numbered his days, his “domain of darkness” ( Colossians 1:13 ) is real, and “the power of darkness” ( Luke 22:53 ) treacherous. And not only has the world out there  gone mad, but far too often the sway of the world, and the indwelling sin in us all, brings that meanness in here , into the people who profess to be Christ’s. Tragically, the very people who are to make Jesus known by their love for each other ( John 13:35 ) can be harsh, quarrelsome, impatient, shrill, nasty. It’s only human to respond in kind. But Christ requires of his church what is more than human: respond in kindness . Virtue in a Vacuum? In part, internal conflict in the Ephesian church prompted Paul’s second letter to Timothy. At the letter’s heart, the aging apostle gives his protégé this arresting charge: The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone , able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. ( 2 Timothy 2:24–26 ) Christians have long celebrated kindness as one of the heavenly virtues . Yet we live in a day that often makes very little of kindness. We assume it’s free. We celebrate “random acts of kindness.” We think of kindness without context . Of course, in our mean world, it is pleasant to be surprised by a stranger’s kindness, free and random as it may seem. Sure, sprinkle that stuff everywhere. But the Christian vision of kindness is far deeper, more significant, and contextualized. “Kindness is not random or free, but a costly, counter-intuitive response to meanness, rather than responding in kind.” Christian kindness is no common courtesy or virtue in a vacuum, but a surprising response to mistreatment and hurt. It is not random or free, but a costly, counterintuitive response to meanness, to outrage, rather than responding in kind. As Don Carson comments on 1 Corinthians 13:4 , “Love is kind — not merely patient or long-suffering in the face of injury, but quick to pay back with kindness what it received in hurt” ( Showing the Spirit , 79). Companions of Kindness One way to see that Christian kindness is not random is to observe the kind of company it keeps, especially in the letters of Paul — who would be “the apostle of kindness,” if there were one. No one sprinkles costly kindness like Paul. Among other graces, kindness often appears hand in hand with patience and compassion. Patience appears side by side with kindness, and in the same order, in 2 Corinthians 6:6  and Galatians 5:22 : “patience, kindness.” So also, Paul presses them together in Romans 2:4 , in speaking of divine patience and kindness: “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” So too, as we’ve seen, Christian pastors — “the Lord’s servant” in the midst of conflict — “must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, . . . patiently enduring evil” ( 2 Timothy 2:24 ). Kind to everyone  — isn’t that surprising? The opponents here are false teachers. They must not be coddled or encouraged. Rather, they must be exposed and corrected — and yet that is no license to treat them harshly or with meanness. Opponents can be patiently endured and gently corrected. In fact, it would not be kind  to a false teacher, or the church, to let him continue in error. Exposing his error and gently correcting him is kindness. As for compassion, Ephesians 4:32  memorably explains the command to “be kind to one another” with the word “tenderhearted” (or “compassionate,” Greek eusplanchnos ). Kindness is an expression of a tender, compassionate heart. Colossians 3:12  puts all three together, with humility and meekness: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Kindness, we might say, is a kind of secondary virtue. Compassion and patience, in various ways, make kindness possible. A compassionate heart leads to kindness, and external actions that give expression to that kindness. So also, patience makes internal kindness and its external acts possible. Patience gives emotional and practical space for kindness to ripen and move outward in physical acts. True kindness and its expressions (which are not random or free) complete and extend its companion virtues. The fruit of kindness needs the roots of patience and compassion, and they need kindness. Costly Kind Our young kids are still honest enough with themselves, and us, to admit to how costly kindness can be. When a sibling is mean, or someone on the playground, their natural response (and ours) is not to be kind, but to respond in kind. Which is why we consider kindness a Christian virtue  — which doesn’t just happen spontaneously without practice and the enabling of the Holy Spirit. Kindness, Paul says, is the produce of the Spirit ( Galatians 5:22–23 ; 2 Corinthians 6:6 ), not of the natural human heart. Real kindness requires intervention from the outside, both from God’s Spirit and also his divine Son stepping into our mean world, showing us a different way, and doing it, climactically, to our eternal salvation and joy. As my wife and I have learned  in almost fifteen years of marriage, kindness toward each other begins with God’s kindness toward us in Christ. Only then can we really find the resources to overcome evil with good, triumph over annoyance with patience, and rise above meanness with kindness. In other words, the heart of how we become kinder — not with free, random, imitation kindness, but with thick, genuine, Christian kindness — is knowing and enjoying the kindness of God toward us, and doing so specifically by feeding on, and taking our cues from, the very words of God. Behold His Kindness Our world, in its rebellion and cosmic treason, is no meaner than in its meanness to God himself — God who is holy and just. And yet what shocking kindness he displays, even toward the unbelieving. Our heavenly Father “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” ( Luke 6:35 ). Even those who live the hardest, meanest of lives are surrounded by rays of God’s common kindness , as we might call it: beautiful days, human minds and bodies and words, friends and family, food and shelter, the everyday divine kindnesses we take for granted until they’re gone. “Even those who live the hardest, meanest of lives are surrounded by rays of God’s common kindness.” As Paul preached at Lystra, even “in past generations,” before Christ, when God “allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways,” he showed the unbelieving his common kindness, and “did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” ( Acts 14:16–17 ). Such kindness even in our day, gratuitous as it may seem to us, is not wasted. It is not random but has purpose: “meant to lead you to repentance” ( Romans 2:4 ). Yet in the fullness of time, “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared” ( Titus 3:4 ), bringing salvation — God’s special kindness  — through faith in Christ. Such divine kindness not only brought eternal rescue for God’s long-chosen people, but it engrafts even strangers into God’s ancient tree of blessing through faith ( Romans 11:22 ). Jesus is Kindness incarnate, whose yoke is not severe, but (literally) kind  ( Matthew 11:30 ). He is the Lord whom we, with new Spirit-given palates, taste as kind  ( 1 Peter 2:3 ). Kindness Coming As Christ, by his Spirit, shows kindness to us, in his word and in our lives, he also forms us into instruments of his kindness to others. “God in Christ forgave you,” Paul says in Ephesians 4:32 . Therefore, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” Ultimately, it is the kindness of God that melts an unforgiving spirit, softens a hard heart, and transforms unkind actions. In Christ, we become the kind of people who see others , and have compassion  for them, and exercise patience  toward them, and show kindness  to them, knowing not only that we ourselves have been shown kindness but that “in the coming ages [God himself will] show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” ( Ephesians 2:7 ). We have only begun to taste the kindness of our God.
