Nice is a funny word.
When you apply nice to objects it usually means something of great, or at least moderately great, quality. For example you'd say "that is a pretty nice car" or "wow that's a nice watch" etc. But when you apply it to a person... the weight of the word drops down a few notches. Instead of being great or pretty good, instead a person simply becomes a little better than average. When you are considered "nice" it really doesn't say much; it pretty much means that you are slightly more kind than most people.
I would really hate to only be nice.
When you're "nice" you become slightly above mediocre. That's it. No one (or at least, no one that I have seen, read or heard) uses nice to mean anything more than that. It has become one of the defaults when you are describing a person that you probably don't know that well to someone else. Being nice doesn't even really say much about a person except that they're not a dick (at least not that you know of anyway).
I think a a problem in the church is that too many people are simply just nice to one another. They are slightly kinder to them than the average person and they think that everything is now hunky dory.
It's not.
We are called to be loving and kind to one another which means we go beyond being polite and a little helpful to each other. Being nice to one another is ultimately meaningless because it is devoid of everything except an occasional brief interaction with one another. Being nice doesn't require us to be invested in each other at all; instead, it allows us to feel like we're a part of their lives without actually doing so. Being nice is just a cop out that shirks off any real responsibility.
Why would you ever want to be just nice?
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