Past Tense - Tumblr Posts
Oh would you look at that
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Past Tense, Pt. 1"
40 Detik belajar mengucapkan -ed. Happy learning 40 detik saja!
HAPPY BELL RIOTING!!
btw where were y’all when the clock hit midnight?
Isaiah 53: Why God’s Suffering Servant is Not Israel
By Author Eli Kittim
——-
The Bible sometimes uses metaphorical language that often involves multiple layers of meaning. Here’s a case in point. Isaiah 49.3 does mention the suffering servant as “Israel.” But four verses later the servant begins to take on unique individual qualities and characteristics that decidedly distinguish him from the earlier collective qualities of the nation of Israel. In fact, he is later contrasted with the nations, described with a masculine pronoun as an individual person who is “deeply despised” and rejected. Isa. 49.7 reads as follows:
Thus says the Lord, the
Redeemer of Israel and
his Holy One, to one
deeply despised,
abhorred by the nations,
the slave of rulers, ‘Kings
shall see and stand up,
princes, and they shall
prostrate themselves,
because of the Lord, who
is faithful, the Holy One
of Israel, who has chosen
you.’ [1]
This rejection is given more full treatment in chapter 53. So, the question arises: How can he be both a human being and the nation of *Israel* at the same time? Answer: He cannot!
In other words, as these chapters begin to unfold, the image of the *suffering servant* evolves considerably, so much so that he’s later described with a masculine personal pronoun and depicted as an individual *man,* indeed a male: “He” (Hb. הוּא hu, which is the equivalent of the Greek αὐτὸς).[2] Therefore, it behooves us to read the Isaian passage (53.3-8) in its entirety:
He was despised and rejected by others; a
man of suffering and acquainted with
infirmity; and as one from whom others hide
their faces he was despised, and we held
him of no account. Surely he has borne our
infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we
accounted him stricken, struck down by
God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for
our transgressions, crushed for our
iniquities; upon him was the punishment
that made us whole, and by his bruises we
are healed. All we like sheep have gone
astray; we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of
us all. He was oppressed, and he was
afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like
a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like
a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so
he did not open his mouth. By a perversion
of justice he was taken away. Who could
have imagined his future? For he was cut
off from the land of the living, stricken for
the transgression of my people.
Does this sound like a characterization of a nation, let alone that of Israel? On the contrary, the suffering servant is described in the third-person singular with the masculine personal pronoun “he,” in the sense that it is he who “is led to the slaughter” (Isa. 53.7), not the nation of Israel! He is also described as “a man.” The third-person masculine pronoun “he” is then reiterated in v. 8 in order to establish not only the male identity of the suffering servant but also his personal demise:
For he was cut off from the land of the living
[slain], stricken for the transgression of my
people.
In this particular context, it cannot be a nation that is “cut off from the land of the living . . . for the transgression of” the people. That would strain the contextual meaning to give it a rather absurd interpretation. This is Atonement language regarding a specific man who is slain, and who dies as a sin offering! Isaiah 53.5 adds that his punishment “made us whole,” and “by his bruises we are healed”:
He was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the
punishment that made us whole, and by his
bruises we are healed.
We would normally expect to find this type of language——describing an explicit sacrifice as an atonement for sin——in the New Testament, not in the Hebrew Bible. For the aforementioned reasons, this passage does not square well with the so-called “nation of Israel” philological exegesis. This Hebraic insistence on the nation of Israel is therefore utterly disingenuous and dishonest!
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Past Tenses Do Not Imply Past Actions
——-
Insofar as the New Testament is concerned, verbal aspect theory, which is at the cutting edge of Hellenistic Greek linguistics, demonstrates that tense-forms do not have any temporal implications. According to Stanley E Porter, a leading authority on New Testament linguistics, past tenses are not necessarily references to past history:
Temporal values (past, present, future) are
not established in Greek by use of the
verbal aspects (or tense-forms) alone. This
may come as a surprise to those who, like
most students of Greek, were taught at an
elementary level that certain tense-forms
automatically refer to certain times when an
action occurs. [3]
In other words, past tenses do not necessarily imply past history! Similarly, Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have tenses. It’s an “aspectual” language. This means that the same form of a verb can be translated as either past, present, or future! In fact, prophecies are sometimes written in the past tense. Bottom line, one cannot use the past-tense argument to demonstrate that the authorial intent precludes prophetic material.
Conclusion
Isaiah is seemingly writing about prophecy, and the suffering servant is clearly not the nation of Israel but rather a male individual (cf. Rev. 12.5) whose sin offering (Isa. 53.6) is described as a sacrifice for the sins of the people (cf. Rom. 3.23-25; Heb. 9.26b)! He is also described as “a lamb that is led to the slaughter,” reminiscent of the “lamb without . . . blemish” (1 Pet. 1.19; cf. Lev. 4.32), the so-called sin offering sacrifice according to the Mosaic Law! Upon further scrutiny, Isaiah 49 ff. and, especially, Isaiah 53 are explicit references that are more in line with New Testament Soteriology than with the Judaic interpretation of the nation of Israel!
In fact, according to “The Dying Messiah Redux” article, by atheist historian Richard Carrier, the notion of a dying messiah predates Christianity and can also be found in the Talmud: “b.Sanhedrin 98b explicitly says the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is the messiah.” What is more, “b.Sanhedrin 93b says the messiah will endure great suffering . . . and b.Sukkah 52a-b likewise has a dying-and-rising ‘Christ son of Joseph’ ideology in it . . . even saying (quoting Zechariah 12:10) that this messiah will be ‘pierced’ to death.” Carrier concludes:
there is no plausible way later Jews would
invent interpretations of their scripture that
supported and vindicated Christians. They
would not invent a Messiah with a father
named Joseph who dies and is resurrected.
They would not proclaim Isaiah 53 to be
about the messiah and admit that Isaiah
there predicted the messiah would die and
be resurrected. That was the very chapter
Christians were using to prove their case
(and which scholars like Bart Ehrman keep
insisting only Christians saw as messianic).
So we have evidence here of a Jewish belief
that predates Christian evangelizing, even if
the evidence survives only in later sources.
——-
Notes
1 All Scripture quotes are from Michael D. Coogan (ed.), “The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha”: New Revised Standard Version (4th rev. edn; New York: Oxford U., 2010).
2 The Hebrew text is from Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph (eds.), “Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia” (4th rev. edn; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967-77).
3 Stanley E. Porter, “Idioms of the Greek New Testament” (2nd edn; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), p. 25.
——-
In the Bible, Do Past Tenses Imply Past History?
By Author Eli Kittim 📚
——-
The Past Tense Versus the Conditional Tense
If we are to see things as they really are, not as we would wish them to be, we must free ourselves from ingrained religious systems of indoctrination, which always end up in some kind of a *confirmation bias* (i.e. the inclination to interpret new evidence as verification of one's preexisting presuppositions or beliefs). That’s why this way of reading and interpreting scripture is not called “exegesis” (i.e. drawing out the meaning according to the authorial intent), but rather “eisegesis” (i.e. reading into the text). One such Biblical preconception is that past tenses *always* refer to past actions that occurred in history.
Any Bible *interpretation* of past tenses that lays primary emphasis on a historical orientation is partly due to a confusion of terms and context. Insofar as the New Testament (NT) is concerned, verbal aspect theory, which is at the cutting edge of Hellenistic Greek linguistics, demonstrates that *tense-forms* do not have any temporal implications. According to Stanley E. Porter, “Idioms of the Greek New Testament” (2nd edn; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), p. 25:
Temporal values (past, present, future) are
not established in Greek by use of the
verbal aspects (or tense-forms) alone. This
may come as a surprise to those who, like
most students of Greek, were taught at an
elementary level that certain tense-forms
automatically refer to certain times when an
action occurs.
In other words, we should never interpret Biblical tense-forms as if they’re corresponding ipso facto to past, present, or future events (i.e. past tense doesn’t equal (=) past action; present tense doesn’t equal (=) present action; future tense doesn’t equal (=) future action). To further complicate matters, there’s another tense in grammar called the "historical present,” which employs verb phrases in the present tense to refer to events that occurred in the past. In narrative accounts, the historical present is often used to evoke a dramatic effect of immediacy. It’s variously called the "historic present, the narrative present, or the dramatic present.” And there are also past tenses that refer to future events. For example, Revelation 7:4 uses the perfect-tense “those who were sealed” to refer to an event that has not happened yet. Bottom line, tenses serve a literary function and should not be confused with the time when an action takes place. Koine Greek, especially, relates aspect rather than time!
Many of the Bible’s tenses suggest various events taking place without specifying the precise timing of their occurrence. Some of these verses are in the “conditional mood.” The conditional mood is used in grammar to convey a statement or assertion whose validity is dependent on some specific condition, possibly a counterfactual one (e.g. what if?). The conditional mood may refer to a particular verb form that expresses a hypothetical state of affairs or an uncertain event that is contingent upon the independent clause. It is sometimes referred to as the "conditional tense.” The following examples will show you that the Biblical statements are conditional or contingent on the happening of an event. In other words, if Christ truly died (condition), then the TIMEFRAME (result) would be mentioned in the Biblical verses. But since the TIMING is not given, in these particular examples, the premise remains conditional upon the happening of this event.
Proper exegesis does not ask us to fall back on personal opinions, private interpretations, presuppositions, or conjectures when we encounter biblical difficulties, but that we pay close attention to the EXACT words of a verse, always asking ourselves WHEN did this happen. Does this or that particular verse tell us? For example, 1 Peter 3.18 (NRSV) is in the conditional mood. It says:
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all,
the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to
bring you to God. He was put to death in the
flesh, but made alive in the spirit.
But Does 1 Peter 3.18 tell you precisely **WHEN** Christ died? No! All of the past tenses are still in the conditional mood. The timing is still hypothetical. In other words, it’s as if the text were saying:
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all,
[at some point in history], the righteous for
the unrighteous, in order to bring you to
God. He was put to death in the flesh, but
made alive in the spirit [at some point in
human history].
That’s why it is conditional. It doesn’t specify when or at what point in time this took place. And 1 Pet. 3.18 employs the exact same word that is used in Hebrews 9.26b, namely, “once for all” (hapax). But Heb. 9.26b **DOES** tell you PRECISELY when he dies: “in the end of the world” (KJV). A concordance study of the phrase ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων (“the end of the age”; Dan. 12.4 LXX; Mt. 13.39-40, 49; 24.3; 28.20; Heb. 9.26b) demonstrates that this particular time period, indicated by the aforesaid phrase, could not have possibly occurred 2,000 years ago. And 1 Peter 1.20 (NJB) confirms that Christ “was revealed [initially] at the final point of time”!
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Proof that Passages Set in the Past Tense Can Actually Refer to Future Prophecies
Notice that we are not speculating, here. We are using the analogy of scripture, allowing the Bible to define and interpret itself. This hermeneutical method will not be questioned by any credible expositor who has a competent knowledge of exegesis!
The notion that past tenses are not necessarily referring to the past can be proven. It can be demonstrated. The undermentioned passage from Deutero-Isaiah dates from the 6th century bce (500’s). That’s about 500 years BEFORE the purported coming of Christ. But a perfunctory reading of the Book of Isaiah would suggest that Christ ALREADY DIED in the 6th century bce. Notice that Isaiah 53.3-5 (NRSV) is saturated with *past tenses*:
He was despised and rejected by others; a
man of suffering and acquainted with
infirmity; and as one from whom others hide
their faces he was despised, and we held
him of no account. Surely he has borne our
infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we
accounted him stricken, struck down by
God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for
our transgressions, crushed for our
iniquities; upon him was the punishment
that made us whole, and by his bruises we
are healed.
Judging from the PAST TENSES that are used, it appears as if Christ already died in the 6th century bce, prior to Isaiah’s written account. That’s certainly what the past tenses imply.
What do you think? Did it happen? No! Of course not! Isaiah is not writing about a past event. He’s writing about a PROPHECY. But he sets the entire prophecy in the past tense as if it already happened. That’s EXACTLY what the NT is doing. It’s writing about a prophecy, but setting it in the past tense as if it already happened. The author of Isaiah 53 composed this work 500+ years PRIOR to Paul and the NT writings. A cursory reading of Isa. 53 would suggest that Christ died in the 6th century *before Christ* (BC). We tend to read the NT in like manner. Isaiah’s text therefore *proves* that prophecy can be set in the past tense!
Similarly, 1 Peter 2.22-24 (a NT passage) seems to be modeled on Isaiah 53, and is therefore very telling in that regard:
‘He [Christ] committed no sin, and no deceit
was found in his mouth.’ When he was
abused, he did not return abuse; when he
suffered, he did not threaten; but he
entrusted himself to the one who judges
justly. He himself bore our sins in his body
on the cross, so that, free from sins, we
might live for righteousness; by his wounds
you have been healed.
It is the same with Hebrews 1.3. It sounds as if this event already occurred. But, on closer inspection, notice that the text doesn’t explicitly say that this event took place in history. It just tells you that it took place at some unspecified time period. Therefore, it would not be incorrect to read it as follows:
When he had made purification for sins, [at
some point in human history] he sat down
at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The text just gives you the outcome. It doesn’t tell you when this event actually took place. But there are certain passages that DO tell you when. And if you run a concordance study, you’ll realize that they refer to the end of the world. I’m referring to verses like Hebrews 9.26b, 1 Peter 1.20, and all the passages that refer to the REVELATION of Jesus. Remember, if Jesus has already been manifested, he cannot be revealed again. Apokalupsis (revelation) refers to a first time disclosure. I have written extensively about these topics. They should be clear by now!
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The Phrase “Christ Died for Our Sins” is Almost Always Misinterpreted as Referring to a Past Event
Let’s explore another popular verse, namely, 1 Cor. 15.3, which people love to quote as proof “that Christ died for our sins”:
Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν
ἡμῶν κατὰ τὰς γραφάς.
All it’s saying is “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15.3 NIV). Notice, this verse is not certifying that Christ in fact died in antiquity. Rather, it’s saying that Christ died for our sins (at some unspecified time in human history, the timeframe of which is unknown and not given) according to the prophetic scriptures, or just as the Old Testament (OT) scriptures had predicted. In fact, it doesn’t say that Christ died according to the historical accounts, but rather according to the prophetic writings (γραφάς). In short, Christ died to fulfill the scriptures. But the TIMING of this event is not specified.
Let’s look at another passage that is often taken to mean that “Christ died for the ungodly” (NRSV) 2,000 years ago. Observe what the verse says, but also what it doesn’t say. Romans 5.6 suggests that Christ “died” (ἀπέθανεν) at some unspecified time of human history by using the phrase κατὰ καιρόν, which means “at the right time” (cf. 1 Tim. 2.6), or at “the proper time,” and does not necessarily warrant a reference to history:
Ἔτι γὰρ ⸃ Χριστὸς ὄντων ἡμῶν ἀσθενῶν ἔτι
κατὰ καιρὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν ἀπέθανεν.
So, although scripture once more reiterates that “Christ died for the ungodly”——and even though this is often uncritically assumed to refer to a past event that supposedly happened in antiquity——the text is NOT saying that this event already happened (cf. Rom. 5.8; 14.9; 1 Thess. 5.9-10). The problem is not with the text. The problem is with our *interpretation* of the text.
Similarly, in 2 Pet. 1.16–21, the eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ transfiguration in vv. 16-18 is not historical but rather a vision of the future. That’s why verse 19 concludes: “So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed.” The same goes for the apocalyptic passage in 1 Pet. 1.10-11 (see my article “First Peter 1.10-11 Suggests An Eschatological Soteriology”: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/184378109027/by-author-eli-kittim-concerning-this-salvation).
Therefore, the church’s dogma that Jesus died in Antiquity appears to be a proof-text fallacy that is out of touch with the *teaching* of the epistles. Case in point, there are numerous passages in the epistles that place the timeline of Jesus’ life (i.e., his birth, death, and resurrection) in *eschatological* categories (e.g., 2 Thess. 2.1-3; Heb. 1.1-2; 9.26b; 1 Pet. 1.10-11, 20; Rev. 12.5; 19.10d). For example, 1 Cor. 15.22 puts Christ’s resurrection within an eschatological timetable.
——-
Conclusion
If the canonical context demands that we coalesce the different Biblical texts as if we’re reading a single Book, then the overall “prophetic” message of Revelation must certainly play a significant exegetical role. Accordingly, the Book of Revelation places not only the timeline (12.5) but also the testimony to Jesus (19.10d) in “prophetic” categories.
The *apocalyptic theology* of the NT epistles is multiply attested in the OT canon, which confirms the earthy, *end-time Messiah* of the epistolary literature (cf. Job 19.25; Isa. 2.19; Dan. 12.1-2; Zeph. 1.7-9, 15-18; Zech. 12.9-10)!
A revelation by default means “a first-time” occurrence. In other words, it’s an event that is happening for the very first time. By definition, a “revelation” is never disclosed twice. If we examine the NT verses, which mention the future revelation of Christ, we will find that they are not referring to a second coming, a coming back, or a return, as is commonly thought, but rather to an initial appearance (see e.g. 1 Cor. 1.7; 16.22; 1 Thess. 2.19; 4.15; 2 Thess. 1.10; 2.1; Heb. 10.37; Jas. 5.7; 1 Pet. 1.7; 2 Pet. 1.16; 3.4; 1 Jn 2.28; Rev. 2.16; 22.20). See my article “Why does the New Testament Refer to Christ’s Future Coming as a ‘Revelation’?”: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/187927555567/why-does-the-new-testament-refer-to-christs
Due to time constraints, it is beyond the scope of this paper to illustrate either the “unhistorical” nature of the gospel genre or the scant external evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Suffice it to say that the gospels appear to be written beforehand (or before the fact) through a kind of foreknowledge or prognósis (προγνώσει; cf. Acts 2.22—23; 10.40—41; Rom. 1.2). They are conveyed from a theological angle by way of a *proleptic narrative,* a means of *biographizing the eschaton* as if presently accomplished. For further details, see my article, “8 Theses or Disputations on Modern Christianity’s View of the Bible”: https://eli-kittim.tumblr.com/post/638877875512262656/8-theses-or-disputations-on-modern-christianitys
All in all, this paper has demonstrated that Biblical past tenses do not necessarily imply past history. In fact, it can be shown from various passages (e.g. Isaiah 53.3-5) that prophecies can also be set in the past tense!
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Guys…are we cooked??😭
Did they really predict this 30 years ago???
Nights Without You
Lil trigger warning for:
mentioned suicide ideation
wincest
beta'd by me
Even when Dean was with Lisa, a woman he tried to tell himself was the love of his life, he always thought of his Sammy.
Nights where he'd drown in whisky thinking of his baby brother. His baby brother who's dead, his baby brother who's always been there for him, his baby brother who he vowed to protect. He's dead, and every time he'd remember, he'd feel a wave of grief crash over him as if it were the first night all over again.
He tried to tell himself there was no point in living in the past, tried to live in the present with his step son and "wife", but he'd always be thrown into the memories of his Sammy whenever he'd see something he knew he'd like.
He couldn't even look at the impala without nearly breaking down some nights. He knew, somewhere in that car, he'd carved his initials next alongside his brother's. He thought, during that year of Sam being gone, that that was the most he'd ever cried in his entire life.
Sure, there were times Sammy were gone, but now he's gone. Dead. He was sure he'd never see him again. He'd remember, and he'd drink himself half to death to forget.
On more than one occasion, Dean had contemplated killing himself. It wasn't a new thought, but the overwhelming urge to actually go threw with it, grab the gun from his bedside table and paint his brains on the wall behind him, was.
That entire year went by like molasses, and every month, every week, every day, he was surprised he made it through them alive. The day he'd seen his brother, he thought he was hallucinating him again.
He'd never felt relief as strong as he did that day, when he embraced his brother once he'd proved he wasn't a demon. To feel his skin, to smell his scent, to feel him. If Heaven were real, he was sure that was it.
Writing Tips Pt. 10 - Tense
I wasn't aware until this past year that sometimes people confuse point of view and tense when writing stories. I ran across a fanfiction where the author mentioned experimenting in "second-person POV" for the first time...and proceeded to write an entire story that was third-person present tense. Someone brought it up in the comments, and it turns out that the author was under the impression that what we know as present tense was "second-person POV."
So that has inspired this post and the next (which will be about POV).
There are three main tenses you can use when writing, each with subcategories. I'll cover the main tenses in this post, for simplicity's sake, but I won't go into detail about the subcategories. There are plenty of articles that explain those finer distinctions in greater detail than I can manage here.
The three main tenses you can use are past, present, and future.
Past tense is arguably the most common tense you will find in published fiction. While everything in the story is told as though it has already happened, most if not all readers are so used to this tense that they will still feel a sense of immediacy when reading a story written in past tense.
John ran to the door and yanked it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm raged overhead as he pulled her inside to warm up, even as she protested that she was fine. That didn't matter. Only her safety mattered.
Subcategories will be based off of more specific structure of the tense, such as "had gone" or "would go" or "would have gone," but they can come across as more clunky and stilted, even flat and passive, compared to simple past tense.
Present tense is less common, but still accepted as a valid tense for published fiction. This tense has the added benefit of built-in immediacy for the reader, since the story is happening in what amounts to "real time." The events of the story haven't already happened, they're currently happening.
John runs to the door and yanks it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm rages overhead as he pulls her inside to warm up, even as she protests that she's fine. That doesn't matter. Only her safety matters.
I find this one a bit more difficult to write consistently and well, but I've read plenty of stories that put it to good use. This is also the tense that most book blurbs (the summary on the back cover or inside dust jacket of a published book) are written in. This has similar subcategories as past tense.
Future tense is rarely used in fiction, as it is extremely difficult to do well. More power to you if you want to give it a try, but be aware that most editors will probably ask you to change it if it's not handled well at all. This tense gives a sense of events that have yet to happen, which is part of the reason it is rarely used.
John will run to the door and yank it open to reveal his sister, bedraggled but alive, soaked and shivering on his front step. The storm will rage overhead as he pulls her inside to warm up, even as she will protest that she's fine. That won't matter. Only her safety will matter.
One of the only stories I've heard of that did this well (read by my husband, not myself, so I only got this second-hand) was a story telling the main character what he was destined to do, because that's what he'd done on every previous time loop, and ended with encouraging the main character to go and live their own life instead of the one their previous iterations had lived. It was also phrased as dialogue from the narrator to said main character to help facilitate the tense. The only other instances I can think of off the top of my head that work in future tense are children's books. ("Jeremy will turn five tomorrow. Everyone will be at his party. Jeremy will have a good birthday.")
My recommendation is to avoid writing your story in future tense unless you feel it's absolutely necessary to capture the essence of what your story is about.
Regardless of which tense you choose, though, make sure to be consistent. Don't switch tense mid-story, and especially not mid-section. The sudden shift from one tense to another can be very jarring to a reader, and that's something we as writers don't want. If you're combining sections you've previously written (especially as short fiction exercises and "drabbles"), make sure to double-check the tense of each section you add to the story to make sure they match. I've seen stories that took segments previously written separately and combined them together, but some segments were written in present tense while others were in past tense, and the author failed to edit for consistency, leaving very disruptive tense-changes intact.
There are, of course, some instances where tense changes can work to your benefit. An out-of-body experience or dream sequence, for instance, may be done in present tense even though the rest of the story is in past tense. If you switch POV to a character who experiences time differently, you could also justify a tense change.
The short of it, though, is this: choose one tense for your story and be consistent about it.
Anyone else find it weird how dead people's traits are described with a 'was'?
Let's say that I know a person (Not to say that I never knew any people), and they die. In life, they are very kind. Now, they WERE very kind. This never really made sense to me. It's not like they're not kind anymore, right? 'Was' very kind feels like they lost their kindness, when really they can't lose it, because they're dead.