Tough minded and tender hearts - wisdom from MLK

from Martin Luther King’s ‘A Tough mind and a tender heart’

Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. So he said to them, “Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” And he gave them a formula for action, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’ It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having, simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but this is what Jesus expects. We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Let us consider, first, the need for a tough mind, characterized by incisive thinking, realistic appraisal and decisive judgment. The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He (she) has a strong, austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of humanity’s greatest needs? Rarely do we find people who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

This prevalent soft-mindedness is found in man’s unbelievable gullibility…Few people realize that even our authentic channels of information - the press, the platform and in many instances, the pulpit - do not give us objective and unbiased truth. Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and discern the true from the false, the fact from the fiction. Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices and false facts. One of the great needs of humanity is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda.
Soft-minded individuals are prone to embrace all sorts of superstitions...which range from fear of Friday the 13th to fear of a black cat crossing one’s path. Such fears leave the soft mind haggard by day and haunted by night.

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea. An elderly segregationist in the South is reported to have said, “I have come to see now that desegregation is inevitable. But I pray God that it will not take place until after I die.” The soft-minded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

Soft-mindedness often invades religion. This is why religion has sometimes rejected new truth with a dogmatic passion. Through edicts and bulls, inquisitions and excommunications, the church has attempted to prorogue truth and place an impenetrable stone wall in the path of the truth-seeker. Reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corrupt faculty. Soft-minded persons have revised the Beatitudes to read, “Blessed are the pure in ignorance; for they shall see God.”

This has also led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between soft-minded religionists and tough-minded scientists, but not between science and religion…
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religions deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.

We do not have to go far to detect the dangers of soft-mindedness. Dictators, capitalizing on soft-mindedness, have led men to acts of barbarity and terror that are unthinkable in civilized society. Adolf Hitler realized that soft-mindedness was so prevalent among his followers that he said, “I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” In Mein Kampf  he asserted: “By means of shrewd lies, unremittedly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven…The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.”
There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft-mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded people purchases its own spiritual death on an instalment plan.

But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart. Tough-mindedness without tenderness of heart is cold and detached, leaving one’s life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of summer. What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?

The hard-hearted person never truly loves. He engages in a crass utilitarianism which values other people mainly according to their usefulness to him. He never experiences the beauty of friendship, because he is too cold to feel affection for another and is too self-centred to share another’s joy and sorrow. He is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of humanity.
The hard-hearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion. He is unmoved by the pains and afflictions of his brothers. He passes unfortunate men every day, but he never really sees them. He gives dollars to a worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit.
The hard-hearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life, he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life.

Jesus frequently illustrated the characteristics of the hard-hearted. The rich fool was condemned, not because he was not tough-minded, but because he was not tender-hearted. Life for him was a mirror in which he only saw himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves. The rich man in Luke 16 went to hell, not because he was wealthy but because he was not tender-hearted enough to see Lazarus and because he made no attempt to bridge the gulf between himself and his brother.
Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpent like qualities devoid of dove-like qualities is to be passionless, mean and selfish. To have dove-like without serpent-like qualities is to be sentimental, anemic and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses…

I would not conclude without applying the meaning of the text to the greatness of God. The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both tough-minded and tenderhearted. He has qualities of austerity and of gentleness. The Bible, always clear in attributing both attributes to God, expresses his tough-mindedness in his justice and wrath and his tender-heartedness in his love and grace. God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace. On the one hand, God is a God of justice who punished Israel for her wayward deeds, and on the other hand, he is a forgiving father whose heart is filled with unutterable joy when the prodigal returned home.

I am thankful we worship a God who is both tough-minded and tender-hearted. If God were only tough-minded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off heaven contemplating all. He would be Aristotle’s ‘unmoved mover,' self-knowing but not other-loving. But if God were only tender-hearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made.
God is neither hard-hearted nor soft-minded. He is tough-minded enough to transcend the world; he is tender-hearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality.

At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When the slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know there is a God of power who can cut them down like grass and leave them withering like the green herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man. 
But there are also times when we need to know that God possesses love and mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of homesickness, we need to know there is Someone who loves us, cares for us, understands us and will give us another chance. When days grow dark and nights grow dreary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice which will lead us through life’s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfilment.