Has being ‘nice’ trumped being Christlike?

It may not be one of Jordan Peterson’s ‘12 Rules for Life’, but I would suggest that it is fast becoming one of the unwritten rules for Christian commentators – ‘Be nice’.

Or, expressed in its negative form, ‘That’s not nice’. ‘If you can’t say something nice, say nothing’. Sometimes other words are used which express the same idea – ‘winsome’ or ‘gracious’. The latter certainly has a Biblical precedent, but I wonder if it should be confused with ‘niceness’?

There is a strong case for being nice – not least because its opposite is perceived as nasty.