In the New Year, the Equalities Committee of the Scottish Parliament will be looking at the concept of “Community Cohesion” and how we can build more robust, fair and kind communities in modern-day Scotland.
In September, the Scottish Government announced a Ministerial Taskforce on Community Cohesion and increased the Community Cohesion Fund from £300,000 to £500,000 for 2026–27. The Fund is designed to tackle isolation, division and exclusion and concentrate on building communities that care for each other.
All of this harks back to the idea that was prevalent in the early 2000s of “act local and think global”, a concept that called for people to volunteer in their own communities to make the world a better place. This call is echoed in Gordon Brown’s new book, The Future Starts with Us, which I recently reviewed for Seen and Unseen, and you can read here.
All of these are laudable aims. Who wouldn’t want a Scotland that is more community-based, more cohesive and, yes, more kind?
But can governments legislate for kindness? Can policy make us be “nicer” to one another, and is “nicer” actually the goal that we should be striving for?
The levers that are available for the Government to pull focus on service delivery – health, education, taxation, public policy and social care. They can look at tackling things like loneliness and isolation by supporting initiatives such as youth clubs and social clubs, but these all require people to volunteer to be part of them and individuals to be willing to attend them. It’s the old adage that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Or even the idea that “If we build it, they will come”. It is a policy that puts a certain dependence on people being willing to take part. And that requires more than a change of behaviour; it requires a change of heart, which I would argue is probably outside the scope of Government.
The Government has had many policy initiatives designed to change behaviour, with an implication that beliefs should also change, including the Hate Crime Bill and buffer zones around abortion clinics. These, plus others, were passed in order to legislate for certain behaviours but were tied to legislating for what people believe as well.
We can prohibit discrimination, punish violence and create opportunities for social cohesion, but we cannot compel generosity, compassion or make someone care about a neighbour whom they would rather ignore or actively dislike.
Which brings me back to my question about the difference between “being nice to others” and “being kind to others”.
For me, one is quite passive and one is active. You can be nice to someone without being generous, compassionate or understanding. Being kind requires an action, a demonstration (however quiet or unobtrusive) of that sentiment. Being nice can mean avoiding difficult conversations, keeping quiet when something is wrong or telling people what they want to hear. But being kind often requires courage to speak up, to demonstrate support when others abandon. In parenting, being kind often means saying no and setting boundaries rather than giving a child everything that they want and desire, which might be the ‘nice’ thing to do.
Kindness is not the absence of difficult truths; it is the manner and motivation with which we communicate them.
Of course, Jesus’s instruction to love our neighbours, and even our enemies, is far more demanding than simply being pleasant to people we like. Christian kindness is not conditional on shared beliefs, political agreement or reciprocation. It is grounded in recognising the God-given dignity of every human being. And crucially, this challenges Christians too. We are not always particularly good at demonstrating the kindness we preach.
So, back to the Scottish Government and the legislation that is being considered by our Parliament. There are several bills coming up over the next couple of years that are seeking to legislate for the way that we think and act towards each other: the Human Rights Bill, the Misogyny Bill and a likely Conversion Practices Bill. As mentioned previously, the Equalities Committee is researching and reporting on Community Cohesion in Scotland today, and the Scottish Government is investing in building kindness in our communities.
At Logos Scotland, we welcome this focus on kindness, community cohesion and tackling discrimination. But we should be asking a more fundamental question. Are we trying to build a society in which people genuinely care for one another, or simply one in which they are required to behave as though they do?
There is a world of difference between the two. A cohesive society is not one in which everyone thinks alike, agrees on every issue or is afraid to express an unpopular opinion. It is one in which we can disagree profoundly and still recognise the dignity of the person standing opposite us. Where we can challenge without condemning, speak the truth without cruelty and show kindness without demanding agreement in return.
Government has an important role to play in creating the conditions in which such a society can flourish. But the real work happens in our homes, churches, workplaces, schools and communities. It requires something legislation cannot command: a willingness to put the needs of others before our own.
We can legislate against cruelty. We can punish hatred. We can prohibit discrimination. But we cannot pass an Act of Parliament that makes us love our neighbour.
And perhaps that is the real challenge facing Scotland. Not how we make people behave more kindly, but how we become the sort of people who choose to be kind, even when nobody is making us.