Intestinal Fortitude
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32 NASB
Tender-hearted– It’s hard to be tender-hearted. It might not seem that way with the ones we love, but the truth is that we often love the parts of those people that we find lovable. The rest we’re not so sure about. So we just don’t talk about those things that make tender-heartedness difficult. We hide what hurts. But when we do, what really needs tender-heartedness never gets a chance to be loved or to come to the light.
When Paul exhorts his readers to be ĕusplagchnŏs (tenderhearted), he uses a Greek term that is quite palpable. His word is the combination of “good” and “intestines.” It’s a description of the gut. Of course, idiomatically it means compassionate or sympathetic, at least that’s the pacified version. Behind these acceptable words is a stronger idea. Tender-hearted is having a peaceful intestinal reaction. It’s making your insides pleasant. No knots, no ache, no intestinal discomfort. No little twitches that something deep inside isn’t quite right. No rush for the antacid cure for “fellowship.”
We all know when this isn’t the case. We all know what’s it’s like to maintain that nice outward façade while our stomachs are turning over because we know we’re pretending and we know that this person in front of us is really someone we have to tolerate rather than love. We all know this feeling. Tender-hearted means something precisely the opposite. It means we aren’t pretending. We aren’t manufacturing a pleasant countenance. We aren’t faking it. Tender-hearted means we really do care, and we care because we really know who we are engaging.
This, of course, is the hard part because to know is to intimately connect; to know the best and the worst, the good and the bad, and still love this person in front of us—even if this person is the one in the mirror. Oh, yes, we need tender-heartedness toward ourselves too because it is very, very difficult to love someone else if we can’t be compassionate with ourselves. Buechner makes the point:
“If you manage to put behind you the painful things that happened to you as if they never really happened or didn’t really matter all that much when they did, then the deepest and most human things you have in you to become are not apt to happen either.”[1]
In other words, tender-heartedness probably only really exists in an atmosphere of vulnerability. That’s why it’s so difficult, not just because it’s hard for others to be vulnerable with us but because it is so frightening for us to be vulnerable to others, even ourselves. You thought you were compassionate, but now you get to ask yourself, “Do I love the one I know is still struggling, still hurting, still falling?” “Do I love me?”
Topical Index: ĕusplagchnŏs, tender-hearted, vulnerable, Ephesians 4:32
[1]Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons(HarperOne, 2006), p. 212.
The opposite of tender-heartedness is hard-heartedness; being incapable of being moved to pity, unfeeling. If to be hardhearted toward another is sin, then to be hardhearted towards oneself could be seen as blasphemous. Likewise, if to be tender-hearted toward another is love, then to be tender-hearted towards oneself should be seen as sacred.
Sadly, in the worldview I created out of childhood abuse, neglect and trauma there was little room for love and no room for the sacred. I am having to create my ‘self’ ‘ex nihilo’ and my words (are my) matter. Perhaps that is why I post here so often and why I will miss this forum so much. Thanks Skip for the 8 years of freedom to re-create myself here on your dime. You may not (yet) see a change, but I do… and YHWH does too.
Michael, you have no way to understand what a beautiful person you are: the very things you beat yourself up for: your ugly past; your failures and fragility, too: all these resonate with all of us but, how would you know? They are WHY you are beautiful to the equally broken folks around you. Come on in: the water’s fine!
Thank you so much for deciding to be an administrator on Gayle’s MeWe site instead of disappearing. Your bellyaches (and belly-baring, too) make it SO much easier for the rest of us to burp (and laugh intestinally, too)! My microbiome is already enjoying the day because you are in it! Thank you for making it just a little easier to digest my own brokenness.
I missed the info on the MeWe site. Could you forward it?
Thanks.
It’s included in a recent TW. And Gayle is the one who started it (see her comment under 30 day window)
What you perceive as ashes are beauty in God’s economy. He is the Creator and reCreator… our transforming sacredness loosened in our hopeless cry. Shalom Shalom. FJ
In the list of some 4000+ official “phobias” recognized as diagnoseable by modern medicine, “fear of man” ranks up at the top. “Fear of death” actually ranks below the fear of public speaking, in fact: people say they would rather die than speak in front of an audience. What human do we fear most? Self. I think this is what makes self the premier god of the modern world. We seek safety from what we are afraid of: that is the paradox of humans made in the image of their Creator. We serve whatever we believe has the power to either hurt OR to keep us safe. Humanism is where we look to ourselves to provide our own needs, but when we do that, we end up afraid of ourselves too.
I believe the two Great Commands are not just prescriptive: they are also descriptive. Whatever we look to for safety (provision) is what we also worship (fear): that is our god. How that god treats (loves) us is how we are going to treat (interact) with ourselves; and how we interact with ourselves is how we are going to react to others. That’s great when we are looking to God to keep us safe and provide, but it gets pretty awful when we look elsewhere – including ourselves – for safety and sustenance. Self is a poor substitute for our Creator, but the modern world trains us all in the ways of believing it is up to us to establish truth (what we believe); and up to ourselves to act on what we believe (own motivation) and also up to ourselves to ‘pay’ for when we mess up, too.
What does all this add up to? Folks who are hard on themselves! We drive ourselves with whips (negative motivations) and punish ourselves when we fail with even more painful negatives. Why? Because we made up (fell for) the beliefs about self as our source and so have to live with the fallout. Those around us have to live with it, too, whether they like it or not. Who likes to be around someone who is being hard on themselves (because they are having to depend upon themselves)? Nobody! Why? Because they know they are going to be next! (And they are!) Just when are we going to start catching ourselves doing this stuff?
We hurt ourselves in the name of trying to keep ourselves safe, and then we hurt those around us who hurt when we hurt. We hate who we hurt, too, and we fear those we hate because we were made to want to love them and want them to love us back, too. When we fail (because we subscribed to the wrong source) we hide in our shame. The god of self uses that shame to beat us up with (shame is a poor excuse for proper motivation to love ‘better’ next time) and, voila! Rinse and repeat on the gerbil wheel. If you find yourself reincarnating your failed behaviors instead of learning from your experience, you may be stuck in the wrong religion: you might want to check the god in your box again.
There is just one belief system about just one God Who can move our stuck record needle out of the scratches of life. Only when our needle has been moved by means of the forgiveness God gifts us with are we able to truly harmonize with others. In this imperfect world, everybody needs to be forgiven before they need anything else: we all need to be let off the hook by God, self as well as those around us. Safety first. In a fallen world, only forgiveness can make us safe around God, self or others again. Forgiveness is what thaws the heart as well as makes it safe to love again. Self can never forgive if it has not experienced forgiveness first, but the dirty little secret about the kingdom of self is that there is no forgiveness because all the negative motivations self must employ are based on unforgiveness.
In the kingdom of heaven, nobody ever has to repeat themselves, either: no reincarnation – no dealing with the past over and over and over again – necessary! Halleluah!
In both Hebrew and Greek thought of the 1st century the seat of emotion was the bowels, intestines. Thus, “tender-hearted” is a Westernism. But just imagine if this were translated “tender-bowelled.” This term eusplagchnos is also found in 1 Peter 3:8, usually rendered “tender-hearted” as well, though the Greek word for “heart” is kardia. This latter term is used more for the center of the intellect (sometimes used interchangeably with the Greek nous, “mind”) rather than emotion, translated from the Hebrew leb. But kardia has some semantic overlap with eusplagchnos in some contexts.
My favorite metaphorical use of an internal organ in Scripture is in Philippians 3:19: “their god [is] their belly/stomach (koilia).
Craig: thanks for your insights into the Greek language. I will miss these contributions. Also given that comments are about to end did you see my question to you on the Que sera sera thread Aug 21 at 3:07pm? I am interested in your opinion. Regards and best wishes. Do you have a web site connection to keep in touch?
Thanks for your comments. I really didn’t think my contributions re: Greek (and “Christian” perspectives) were appreciated very much. I did see your comment (and George’s), and I do hope to address them soon. I’ve been very busy of late, accounting for my delay. Hopefully, today or tomorrow I’ll provide a proper response.
I do have my own blog, though I haven’t written much of late. (I’m always researching and writing, but many things don’t see the light of day for: {1} some are hunches that are proven wrong or ill-conceived upon further research; {2} some require a bit more research to fully flesh out; {3} I fit it difficult to distill into digestible chunks for the audience–I’ve noticed that the more technical posts receive few views and limited engagement). See here: https://notunlikelee.wordpress.com/.