Just after listing gentleness among the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-26), Paul says that if someone is caught sinning, brothers and sisters living by the Spirit are to restore them gently (Galatians 6:1). This sort of statement is precisely the kind of New Testament verse that many people are prone to severely misunderstand, whether in ignoring the scope of what is actually said, misidentifying what does and does not logically follow from the articulated concepts, or never realizing the true relationship of this verse to a multitude of others. Paul is not teaching an unrelenting kind of peaceful interaction with other people, nor is he saying that gentleness must be the default for the treatment of all people. What he says is that we are to restore those who have, avoidably as always, slipped into sin gently.
However, to restore something is to put it back in its prior state. The same would by necessity be true of a person. A person who has been lost in philosophical delusion (which is the case for all non-rationalists whether or not Christianity is true, so as always, this issue is far larger than Christianity and morality) for their entire life cannot be restored. Any holistic turn of theirs towards logic, truth, and righteousness would in an ultimate sense be for the first time. The typical person one is likely to meet by chance is always more likely to be someone who cannot be restored because they were never truly in the right to begin with--because shedding or avoiding philosophical ignorance and assumptions and moral errors takes effort at first and because truth is more abstract than the menial things of everyday life, it is always more likely that a given stranger has never put in enough or any effort to have reached this point previously.
In a literal sense, Galatians 6:1 cannot be about an obligation to such people. It is not just that the verse is directed to brothers and sisters (aka, genuine Christians; see John 14:15 with Matthew 5:17-19 and 7:15-23), as the beginning of the verse makes clear; this alone has nothing to do with the scope of an obligation as the Bible presents it. It is that someone who was not already a rational and righteous person cannot be restored to a right relationship with the truth, for they never had one to begin with. Even by Biblical standards, in accordance with the logical fact that mercy cannot simply be "deserved" and that a repentant person is not the same as their former self, forgiveness and certain forms of mercy are only to be bestowed upon those who ask (Luke 17:3-4), even by God [1] (for instance, Ephesians 4:32).
How stupid and ironic it is that many of the same people who would think that the laws revealed to Israel are really just for Israel, when if they are righteous, they are obligatory for all people (and the Bible insists on this: Deuteronomy 4:5-8, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, Hebrews 2:2, and many more), while also thinking that utterly supererogatory or conditional obligations mentioned in the New Testament (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32) are what are really for all people! Mere kindness and gentleness are absolutely not universal obligations on the Biblical worldview. It is also never kindness for kindness's sake or gentleness for gentleness's sake that is prescribed. For instance, even though Paul writes that Christians should restore each other gently in Galatians 6:1, in other cases, not even eating with someone who professes Christianity and engages in certain sins is absolutely valid (1 Corinthians 5:1-13).
Gently restoring someone is only possible when done for a very particular kind of person, someone who was rational and righteous at one point or still largely is despite a stumble, and this is even then only to be the default when someone has not committed something like the capital sin intolerance is obligatory for according to 1 Corinthians 5 (see Leviticus 20:11). There is no sin, not on actual Christian philosophy, in treating the morally apathetic or the grand sinners with a lack of gentleness, as long as one does not mistreat them in the process (such as by degrading them [Deuteronomy 25:3] or slandering them [Exodus 20:16, Leviticus 19:11]), which is not the same as being verbally and relationally harsh. Remember, restoration to living out the truth is only logically possible when someone has already fallen from a position where they were living out the truth. Neither Yahweh's central moral revelation of Mosaic Law nor the elaborations of Jesus and Paul entails that the kindness of gentleness is always mandatory or that it is the primary priority either way.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
[1]. For one of the posts where I address this more directly, see here:
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