This is NOT an issue for child discipline. This is Kindness for others in general. Please don't take this post where it isn't intended to go.

The duel role of kindness and confrontation need not be confusing. If you are a mother, surely you are tenderhearted toward your child. Your disposition as a mother is tenderness, but sometimes your child will not respond favorably to tender guidance. On those occasions, you may find that you must activate profit through pain. Thus, a few firm words or a brisk swat on the behind may be in order. What keeps the normal mother from “abusing” her unruly child? Her disposition of tenderness toward that child; a tender heart of love. The disposition of kindness safeguards the dispensing of goodness.

In this concept we see a major reason why God only entrusts the fruit of the Spirit to those filled with the Spirit. You must be yielded to God to be a proper vessel of confrontational goodness. Self cannot be involved; therefore, goodness is never a personal issue, nor a personal platform, nor for personal gain. It is never the means by which we take up for ourselves or pamper our opinions. Remember, good works are always appointed, never assumed. Let’s pray that we have all learned that agathosune, or zeal for the good, is a trust. And we cannot be trusted to do good works until the Word of God does its good work in us. If we cannot accept the teaching, rebuking, correcting and training of God’s Word in our own lives, then we cannot be vessels of teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in other lives. God help us to know the difference.