Theology

Martin Luther King, Jr: “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart”

The following is an excerpt from the conclusion to MLK’s 1959 sermon, “A Tough Mind and […]

CJ Green / 1.16.17

The following is an excerpt from the conclusion to MLK’s 1959 sermon, “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart.”

I am thankful that we worship a God who is both tough minded and tenderhearted. If God were only tough minded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off Heaven “contemplating all,” as Tennyson puts it in “The Palace of Art.” He would be Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” 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. Well’s loveable God in 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 soft minded. 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.

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 Greek 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 that will lead us through life’s dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.

COMMENTS

4 responses to “Martin Luther King, Jr: “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart””

Jason Thompson says:

01/16/2017 at 11:35 pm

Thanks for posting this, CJ! Man, I love King! Such a misunderstood man. Misunderstood by his contemporaries: eventually rejected by LBJ, mistrusted by the younger leadership (SNCC), monitored by the FBI, etc… Even today, MLK’s image is overly sanitized and his legacy misrepresented. He’s presented as “that Black civil rights leader”, but people forget or maybe don’t realize, he was a highly controversial figure in his day. His vision extended far beyond Civil Rights and had a global perspective in view. He opposed the War in Vietnam on moral grounds and eventually died identifying himself with and fighting for the economic rights of the poor. His application of Non Violence to the social movement with which we most commonly associate him represented one of the best Grace-in-practice examples in the 20th century (on a public platform). Non Violent Direct Action showed the application of grace to both the oppressed and the oppressor. A flawed man to be sure, but nonetheless a man used by God to greatly impact his generation. I love Oliver Stone’s quote in light of the fact that the studios refused to endorse his script for an MLK biopic (starring Jamie Foxx) that cast King in a light more akin to a ‘theo of the cross’ as opposed to ‘glory’, Stone stated, “Martin, I grieve for you. You are still a great inspiration for your fellow Americans—but, thank God, not a saint.”

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- Julie says:
  
  01/17/2021 at 10:38 pm
  
  Thank you for this extra MLK tribute ! Happy MLK Day
  
  Reply
Darren Keane Storm says:

01/17/2017 at 9:40 am

His faith in God inspires. It seems that today it is impossible to find any public person who believes in God as wholeheartedly as he did.

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