Tough mind, tender heart
“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)
These are not the most comforting words of Jesus, yet I have returned to them often over the years and offered them to those confounded by injustice, hate, aggression. Play it smart. But don’t hurt anyone. Let love rule. It is easier preached than practiced.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. strived to do both. In his sermon, “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” King acknowledges, “It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having the characteristics of the serpent and the dove simultaneously; but this is what Jesus expects.” He continues, “We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove. In other words, Jesus is saying that individual life at its best requires the possession of a tough mind and a tender heart.”
King warns us of the ways we are susceptible to “soft” mindedness, observing that “Very few people realize that even our authentic channels of information: the press, the platform and the pulpit, in many instances, do not give us objective and unbiased truth.” We are subjected to propaganda and faulty rhetoric, the sort that deepens fundamentalism, racism, nationalism and all other “isms” which champion the desires of the privileged over the needs of the oppressed. It is the tough mind that counters falsehood and fearmongering with critical analysis and wise discernment.
I like to think that I have a tough mind; I live so often in my head. Yet my mind is a messy place — often overburdened and overstimulated. Could King have imagined the barrage of information and misinformation served to us now morning, noon and night? Do I have the mental capacity and the time available to develop a well-informed opinion on anything, let alone take a stand? Who is trustworthy? Where are my own blind spots? Everything urgently needs my attention. Some strike at the heels of the oppressors, only to get crushed. I don’t like biting the antagonists; sometimes it’s a trap. Instead I watch dog videos as an escape. My mind is not going soft, I argue against my guilt, it’s just sedated.
Yet we are humans who have not yet fully realized our God nature.
King cautions against maintaining a tough mind at the expense of our tender hearts, lamenting that a hard-hearted person “is too cold to have affection for another and too self-centered to have joy in another’s joy and sorrow in another’s sorrow.” Examining my own emotional state and holding emotional space for others, I would suggest that many hearts that seem hardened are actually just numbed. They seek a respite from the pain they experience when witnessing or contemplating others’ pain. Such a phenomenon is often referred to by the misnomer “compassion fatigue” and is more accurately described as “empathic distress.” Unalleviated, it can result in helplessness, hopelessness and eventual withdrawal from those who need our care. The dove is caught between claws or in a net; motionless, paralyzed.
What is the way forward for this entangled and unlikely couple, the serpent and the dove? The tender compassion of our God, revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus, who with the eyes of a dove, showed that he was moved with pity for the hungry crowds. Jesus, the tender hearted, could have handed over his own meager provisions, leaving himself, his disciples and the majority of those gathered with worsening hunger pains. Together they could perhaps have perished. Instead, deftly as a serpent, Jesus magnified the tenderheartedness of a child’s offering, and the multitudes were fed, perhaps through an awakening of their own hearts, of their own generosity, of their new found sense of connection to an emerging community of believers. (John 6:1-14)
Yes, Jesus embodies God’s nature, which King describes as a “creative synthesis of love and justice,” illuminating a path to freedom that is “tough minded enough to resist evil” and “tender hearted enough to resist it with love and nonviolence.” Yet we are humans who have not yet fully realized our God nature. We struggle to envision the integration of our serpent and dove selves. For now let us imagine them as companions, working in unison for the good of the whole, and ask those who have led the way to intercede for us.
Sun of Justice, form us in your compassion
In the name of Love.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., pray that we remain of tough mind and tender heart
Until all are free.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angela Paviglianiti practices social work in Chicago where she also completed seminary; however, she has not yet mastered divinity. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, you can find her at The Fireplace Community, and on other days, you can usually find something she forgot there.
