Thoughts on the "Faith and the Cry for Justice"

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I'm going to post a few excerpts from this book over several days. I hope people will chime in and share their thoughts. At the end of the posts I'll reveal who wrote these passages. If you know who wrote the following please refrain from sharing in your posts. I want to do an experiment and see if it makes a difference to not know WHO said these things before you think about the comments. I hope you are challenged, encouraged, and wrestle with these passages like I have. Maybe together we can come with action steps to take these thoughts out of our minds to our hands.

Excerpt:

--"A French philosopher said, 'No man is strong unless he bears within his character antitheses strongly marked.' 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 idealisti. 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 it an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

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, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in midst of wolves." And then he gave them a formula for action:  "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

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."--

The verse "Be ye therefore wise as a serpents, and harmless as doves." (Mt. 10:16) has been one that has challenged me for a long time.

HOW do I do this?

How can we learn from Jesus' example of having: a tough mind and a tender heart, rather than a soft mind and a hard heart.

I'm sincerely interested in knowing what others think of this.