tenderness

• evidence that man is indwelt by God

26:11.5The mor­tal crea­ture must find God. The Cre­ator Son never stops un­til he finds man—the low­est will crea­ture. Be­yond doubt, the Cre­ator Sons and their mor­tal chil­dren are prepar­ing for some fu­ture and un­known uni­verse ser­vice. Both tra­verse the gamut of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse and so are ed­u­cated and trained for their eter­nal mis­sion. Through­out the uni­verses there is oc­cur­ring this unique blend­ing of the hu­man and the di­vine, the com­min­gling of crea­ture and Cre­ator. Un­think­ing mor­tals have re­ferred to the man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vine mercy and ten­der­ness, es­pe­cially to­wards the weak and in be­half of the needy, as in­dica­tive of an an­thro­po­mor­phic God. What a mis­take! Rather should such man­i­fes­ta­tions of mercy and for­bear­ance by hu­man be­ings be taken as ev­i­dence that mor­tal man is in­dwelt by the spirit of the liv­ing God; that the crea­ture is, af­ter all, di­vin­ity mo­ti­vated.

• great error to teach boys it is unmanly to show

140:5.161. “Happy are they who mourn, for they shall be com­forted.” So-called com­mon sense or the best of logic would never sug­gest that hap­pi­ness could be de­rived from mourn­ing. But Je­sus did not re­fer to out­ward or os­ten­ta­tious mourn­ing. He al­luded to an emo­tional at­ti­tude of ten­der­heart­ed­ness. It is a great er­ror to teach boys and young men that it is un­manly to show ten­der­ness or oth­er­wise to give ev­i­dence of emo­tional feel­ing or phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. Sym­pa­thy is a wor­thy at­tri­bute of the male as well as the fe­male. It is not nec­es­sary to be cal­loused in or­der to be manly. This is the wrong way to cre­ate coura­geous men. The world’s great men have not been afraid to mourn. Moses, the mourner, was a greater man than ei­ther Sam­son or Go­liath. Moses was a su­perb leader, but he was also a man of meek­ness. Be­ing sen­si­tive and re­spon­sive to hu­man need cre­ates gen­uine and last­ing hap­pi­ness, while such kindly at­ti­tudes safe­guard the soul from the de­struc­tive in­flu­ences of anger, hate, and sus­pi­cion.

• indiscriminate kindness causes many social evils

140:8.13He made it clear that in­dis­crim­i­nate kind­ness may be blamed for many so­cial evils. The fol­low­ing day Je­sus def­i­nitely in­structed Ju­das that no apos­tolic funds were to be given out as alms ex­cept upon his re­quest or upon the joint pe­ti­tion of two of the apos­tles. In all these mat­ters it was the prac­tice of Je­sus al­ways to say, “Be as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.” It seemed to be his pur­pose in all so­cial sit­u­a­tions to teach pa­tience, tol­er­ance, and for­give­ness.

• mature human looks upon all others with

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.