The Disruptive Power of Kindness

The Allender Center Podcast

The Allender Center

Psychology, Religion & Spirituality, Mental Health, Christianity, Trauma, Health & Fitness, Theology

4.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Valentine’s Day is often wrapped in commercialized romance, but what if love is more than sentimentality? In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen explore an aspect of love that we all need—kindness. But not the shallow, conflict-avoidant “niceness” we often mistake for kindness. Instead, they dive into the disruptive, provocative nature of true kindness—kindness that challenges, disrupts old patterns, and calls us into deeper growth.

Kindness asks us to receive care and, sometimes, even risk disconnection for the sake of deeper intimacy. Together, Dan and Rachael unpack how true kindness is an act of restoration. They discuss the surprising, ennobling nature of kindness and how it reflects the heart of God—a love that offers goodness even when we least deserve it.

So, as we navigate a day often filled with roses and greeting cards, let’s consider the kind of love that truly transforms—the kind that sees, knows, and calls us toward who we long to become.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the Allender Center podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Dr. Dan Allender.
0:08.7	And I'm Rachel Clinton-Centen.
0:10.5	We're fiercely committed to providing hope and healing to a fragmented world.
0:14.7	And restoration for the heart.
0:17.2	Thank you for joining us.
0:18.5	Let's get this conversation started.
0:30.9	Thank you for joining us. Let's get this conversation started. Valentine's Day, does it draw for you, Rachel, wonderful memories?
0:42.6	No. You know, some, like I feel like when I was younger and you got to make valentines for your classmates and maybe like the person who had a crush on
0:48.0	would give you a valentine even though they were giving like everyone else to valentine, it would
0:52.0	mean something or like I do have some fun memories from
0:55.7	like grade school and making Valentine cards for all my classmates and coming home with all.
1:01.2	Because I'm, you know, at the end of I'm a lover. I love Stevie Wonder song. I just called to say I love
1:07.6	you, you know, which is a whole song of basically like, it's not about any of these 32 million holidays. I'm just calling to say I love you, you know, which is a whole song of basically like, it's not about
1:10.9	any of these 32 million holidays. I'm just calling to say I love you. So the thought of like,
1:17.1	I love you, you know, it really warms my heart. But no, Valentine's Day for many seasons was a day
1:23.8	that I felt, you know, maybe some envy, maybe some mockery, also some intrigue of how a day on St.
1:33.8	You know, like dedicated to St. Valentine, who ultimately was martyed, became like a cheesy commercial holiday.
1:42.1	Well, I, that's what I, I link, I link martyrdom to Valentine's Day.
1:49.3	So for me, it's fourth grade, Miss Worth.
1:52.5	This is the teacher who reminded me of the wicked witch of the West, who with her wizened finger pointed at me and said,
2:03.2	You're a mountain nothing.
	...

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