A Time for the Head and a Time for the Heart
“USE your head!” shouted the impatient mechanic to his helper, a newcomer on the job. “Have a heart! I’m trying hard to find work!” pleaded the unemployed debtor of the banker who threatened to foreclose the mortgage if payments on the interest were not at once forthcoming.
By expressions such as these is recognized the difference between the various faculties of the mind, such as reason, thinking, memory and volition on one hand, and affection, sympathy and pity on the other hand. While some situations obviously call for one or the other, in other situations one must choose. For example, were you to walk along 14th Street in New York City on a busy Saturday morning you would be importuned for help several times in each block. It might be a blind man, or an invalid in a wheelchair, a legless cripple propelling himself along on roller skates or it might be a black-garbed nun. Are they all deserving or are none? Your heart may want to give to all that ask but your head tells you that you cannot afford to do so. Besides, how many of those asking are truly deserving of help?
It calls to mind the principle long ago stated by a wise king: “For everything there is an appointed time, even a time for every affair under the heavens: . . . a time to love and a time to hate.” (Eccl. 3:1, 3) Yes, the Creator, having equipped us with such qualities as wisdom, justice, love and power, expects us to determine which situation requires the application of which quality. One situation may primarily require the application of justice, another of wisdom, another of love. Thus even as it would be a mistake to enforce the demands of strict justice when the facts allow for mercy to be shown, so it would be a mistake to yield to sentiment when the facts dictate that strict justice should be enforced. There is a time for the head and a time for the heart.
Illustrating this principle is the parable Jesus once gave regarding the prodigal son. When, after wasting his inheritance, that son repented and returned to his father’s home, the father freely forgave him, even preparing a feast for him. The father’s feelings took over out of sheer joy to have his son back. But not so with the elder brother. His head governed. What he said was all only too true. He had not been a prodigal but had served his father faithfully for many years and yet his father had never prepared a feast for him as he had for “this your son.” All that the elder son said was true, yet how mistaken he was, for this was, not a time to take an accounting, but a time for the heart, a time for one’s feelings to go out, a time to rejoice because “this your brother was dead but has become alive, and he was lost but has been found.”—Luke 15:11-32.
Illustrating the converse is the Bible record of the time when it became necessary for King David to relinquish his throne because of his old age. One of his sons, Adonijah, instead of waiting for his father to designate his heir to the throne, proudly and ambitiously kept saying: “I myself am going to rule as king!” He even “proceeded to have a chariot made for himself with horsemen and fifty men running before him. And his father did not hurt his feelings at any time by saying: ‘Why is this the way you have done?’ And he was also very good-looking in form.”—1 Ki. 1:5, 6.
Why did David let this good-looking son of his do as he pleased? Why could he not say anything to hurt the feelings of his son? Because David failed to realize that there was a time for the head, a time to be firm and to administer rebukes, and a time for the heart, a time for sentiment, and so he reared a son who tried to snatch the throne from his father before it could be given to the rightful heir, Solomon.
Apparently King David had made the same mistake as regards his even more handsome son, Absalom, for when that traitorous and insolent son was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to usurp the throne of his father, David seemed inconsolable, his grief knew no bounds. He wept: “My son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! O that I might have died, I myself, instead of you, Absalom my son, my son!” Fittingly, his general, Joab, reproved David: “You have today put to shame the face of all your servants, the ones providing escape for your soul today and for the soul of your” household, “by loving those hating you and hating those loving you.” Yes, how unfitting David’s sentiment and grief for his wicked son Absalom were at this time!—2 Sam. 18:33; 19:5, 6.
Today there are ever so many parents who are making the same mistake that King David made, letting the heart govern when the head should, being swayed by sentiment when they should be firm and adhere to and enforce righteous principles, and who are reaping similar results. Thus in the recently published book Teen-Age Tyranny two authorities in the field of youth and education express concern because of “the abdication of the rights and privileges of adults for the convenience of the immature,” the teen-agers. Among other things they tell that police officials in leading vacation states “appear to agree that the most typical reception they get from parents informed by phone at night that their teen-age children have been arrested for drunkenness and disorderly behavior is a mixture of disbelief and anger—at the police.”
But you have no children? Still this principle concerns you because you can apply it in dealing with yourself. There are times when you may be kind to yourself but also times when you must be firm, be hard on yourself, as it were. Thus when Peter wanted Jesus to be kind to himself when Jesus knew that God had marked out for him a course of suffering, Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” And it might be said that Peter’s wanting to be kind to himself when he should have been firm accounts for his denying his Master three times.—Matt. 16:21-23; 26:69-75.
No question about it, there is a time for the head and a time for the heart. Happy are we when we know the time for each!