{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-book-page-js","path":"/king-strength-to-love/0/","result":{"data":{"mdx":{"id":"c9bc4026-583c-5a19-aa84-d17838138dd8","body":"var _excluded = [\"components\"];\n\nfunction _extends() { _extends = Object.assign || function (target) { for (var i = 1; i < arguments.length; i++) { var source = arguments[i]; for (var key in source) { if (Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(source, key)) { target[key] = source[key]; } } } return target; }; return _extends.apply(this, arguments); }\n\nfunction _objectWithoutProperties(source, excluded) { if (source == null) return {}; var target = _objectWithoutPropertiesLoose(source, excluded); var key, i; if (Object.getOwnPropertySymbols) { var sourceSymbolKeys = Object.getOwnPropertySymbols(source); for (i = 0; i < sourceSymbolKeys.length; i++) { key = sourceSymbolKeys[i]; if (excluded.indexOf(key) >= 0) continue; if (!Object.prototype.propertyIsEnumerable.call(source, key)) continue; target[key] = source[key]; } } return target; }\n\nfunction _objectWithoutPropertiesLoose(source, excluded) { if (source == null) return {}; var target = {}; var sourceKeys = Object.keys(source); var key, i; for (i = 0; i < sourceKeys.length; i++) { key = sourceKeys[i]; if (excluded.indexOf(key) >= 0) continue; target[key] = source[key]; } return target; }\n\n/* @jsxRuntime classic */\n\n/* @jsx mdx */\nvar _frontmatter = {\n  \"author\": \"Martin Luther King, Jr.\",\n  \"bookTitle\": \"Strength To Love (sermons)\",\n  \"isBook\": false,\n  \"numSections\": 15,\n  \"tags\": [\"a\"],\n  \"templateKey\": \"book-page\",\n  \"title\": \"A Tough Mind And a Tender Heart\"\n};\nvar layoutProps = {\n  _frontmatter: _frontmatter\n};\nvar MDXLayout = \"wrapper\";\nreturn function MDXContent(_ref) {\n  var components = _ref.components,\n      props = _objectWithoutProperties(_ref, _excluded);\n\n  return mdx(MDXLayout, _extends({}, layoutProps, props, {\n    components: components,\n    mdxType: \"MDXLayout\"\n  }), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 0,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, mdx(\"i\", null, \"Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.\")), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 1,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"MATTHEW 10:16\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 2,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, mdx(\"span\", {\n    className: \"dropcaps2line\"\n  }, \"A\"), \" French philosopher said, \\u201CNo man is strong unless he bears within his character antitheses strongly marked.\\u201D The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 3,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that 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 that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. So he said to them, \\u201CBehold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.\\u201D And he gave them a formula for action, \\u201CBe ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.\\u201D 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 4,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, mdx(\"b\", null, \"I\")), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 5,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"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 has a strong, austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 6,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of man\\u2019s greatest needs? Rarely do we find men 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 7,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"This prevalent tendency toward softmindedness is found in man\\u2019s unbelievable gullibility. Take our attitude toward advertisements. We are so easily led to purchase a product because a television or radio advertisement pronounces it better than any other. Advertisers have long since learned that most people are softminded, and they capitalize on this susceptibility with skillful and effective slogans.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 8,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"This undue gullibility is also seen in the tendency of many readers to accept the printed word of the press as final truth. Few people realize that even our authentic channels of information\\u2014the press, the platform, and in many instances the pulpit\\u2014do not give us objective and unbiased truth. Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and to 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 mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 9,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"Softminded individuals are prone to embrace all kinds of superstitions. Their minds are constantly invaded by irrational fears, which range from fear of Friday the thirteenth to fear of a black cat crossing one\\u2019s path. As the elevator made its upward climb in one of the large hotels of New York City, I noticed for the first time that there was no thirteenth floor\\u2014floor fourteen followed floor twelve. On inquiring from the elevator operator the reason for this omission, he said, \\u201CThis practice is followed by most large hotels because of the fear of numerous people to stay on a thirteenth floor.\\u201D Then he added, \\u201CThe real foolishness of the fear is to be found in the fact that the fourteenth floor is actually the thirteenth.\\u201D Such fears leave the soft mind haggard by day and haunted by night.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 10,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"The softminded 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, \\u201CI have come to see now that desegregation is inevitable. But I pray God that it will not take place until after I die.\\u201D The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 11,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"Softmindedness 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. The historical-philological criticism of the Bible is considered by the softminded as blasphemous, and reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corrupt faculty. Softminded persons have revised the Beatitudes to read, \\u201CBlessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.\\u201D\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 12,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"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 softminded religionists and tough-minded scientists, but not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods are dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 13,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"We do not need to look far to detect the dangers of softmindedness. Dictators, capitalizing on softmindedness, have led men to acts of barbarity and terror that are unthinkable in civilized society. Adolf Hitler realized that softmindedness was so prevalent among his followers that he said, \\u201CI use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.\\u201D In \", mdx(\"i\", null, \"Mein Kampf\"), \" he asserted:\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 14,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell\\u2014and hell, heaven . . . The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 15,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"Softmindedness is one of the basic causes of race prejudice. The toughminded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions; in short, he postjudges. The tenderminded person reaches a conclusion before he has examined the first fact; in short, he prejudges and is prejudiced. Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings. There are those who are sufficiently softminded to believe in the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of the Negro race in spite of the toughminded research of anthropologists who reveal the falsity of such a notion. There are softminded persons who argue that racial segregation should be perpetuated because Negroes lag behind in academic, health, and moral standards. They are not toughminded enough to realize that lagging standards are the result of segregation and discrimination. They do not recognize that it is rationally unsound and sociologically untenable to use the tragic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation. Too many politicians in the South recognize this disease of softmindedness which engulfs their constituency. With insidious zeal, they make inflammatory statements and disseminate distortions and half-truths which arouse abnormal fears and morbid antipathies within the minds of uneducated and underprivileged whites, leaving them so confused that they are led to acts of meanness and violence which no normal person commits.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 16,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"There is little hope for us until we become toughminded 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 softmindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 17,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, mdx(\"b\", null, \"II\")), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 18,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart. Toughmindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving one\\u2019s 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?\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 19,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"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\\u2019s joy and sorrow. He is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of humanity.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 20,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"The hardhearted 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 21,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"The hardhearted 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 22,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"Jesus frequently illustrated the characteristics of the hardhearted. The rich fool was condemned, not because he was not toughminded, but rather because he was not tenderhearted. Life for him was a mirror in which he saw only himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves. Dives went to hell, not because he was wealthy, but because he was not tenderhearted enough to see Lazarus and because he made no attempt to bridge the gulf between himself and his brother.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 23,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"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 without serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 24,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"We as Negroes must bring together toughmindedness and tenderheartedness if we are to move creatively toward the goal of freedom and justice. Softminded individuals among us feel that the only way to deal with oppression is by adjusting to it. They acquiesce and resign themselves to segregation. They prefer to remain oppressed. When Moses led the children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land, he discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They would rather bear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee to others that they know not of. They prefer the \\u201Cfleshpots of Egypt\\u201D to the ordeals of emancipation. But this is not the way out. Softminded acquiescence is cowardly. My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or elsewhere if we are willing to trade the future of our children for our personal safety and comfort. Moreover, we must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 25,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"And there are hardhearted and bitter individuals among us who would combat the opponent with physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos. A Voice, echoing through the corridors of time, says to every intemperate Peter, \\u201CPut up thy sword.\\u201D History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow Christ\\u2019s command.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 26,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, mdx(\"b\", null, \"III\")), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 27,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"A third way is open to our quest for freedom, namely, nonviolent resistance, that combines toughmindedness and tenderheartedness and avoids the complacency and do-nothingness of the softminded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted. My belief is that this method must guide our action in the present crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 28,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"I would not conclude without applying the meaning of the text to the nature of God. 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 29,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"I am thankful that we worship a God who is both tough-minded and tenderhearted. If God were only toughminded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off heaven \\u201Ccontemplating all,\\u201D as Tennyson puts it in \\u201CThe Palace of Art.\\u201D He would be Aristotle\\u2019s \\u201Cunmoved mover,\\u201D self-knowing, but not other-loving. But if God were only tenderhearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made. He would be like H. G. Wells\\u2019s lovable God in \", mdx(\"i\", null, \"God, the Invisible King,\"), \" who is strongly desirous of making a good world, but finds himself helpless before the surging powers of evil. God is neither hardhearted nor softminded. He is tough-minded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted 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.\"), mdx(ContentRef, {\n    id: 30,\n    mdxType: \"ContentRef\"\n  }, \"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 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 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\\u2019s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.\"));\n}\n;\nMDXContent.isMDXComponent = true;","fields":{"slug":"/king-strength-to-love/0/"},"frontmatter":{"isBook":false,"title":"A Tough Mind And a Tender Heart","bookTitle":"Strength To Love (sermons)","numSections":15,"tags":["a"],"author":"Martin Luther King, Jr."}}},"pageContext":{"id":"c9bc4026-583c-5a19-aa84-d17838138dd8"}},"staticQueryHashes":["4080856488"]}