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Vigils Reading
April 1
A TOUGH MIND
AND A TENDER HEART
From a sermon by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.3
◊◊◊
Toughmindedness without tenderheartedness 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 toughmindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless
depths of hardheartedness?
The hardhearted 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-centered to share another’s joy and sorrow. He
is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of
humanity. The hardhearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion… He
passes unfortunate men every day, but never really sees them. He gives dollars to a
worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit…
Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent
and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike
qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike qualities without
serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine
strongly marked antitheses…
The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both toughminded and
tenderhearted. He has qualities both of austerity and of gentleness. The Bible,
always clear in stressing both attributes of God, expresses his toughmindedness in
his justice and wrath and his tenderheartedness 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 was filled with unutterable joy when the prodigal
returned home.
I am thankful that we worship a God who is both toughminded and
tenderhearted… At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When
slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know that there is a
God of power who can cut them down like the 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 is 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 that 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 fulfillment.
3 Martin Luther King Jr. Strength to Love. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. 5-9.7