Who Suffers from a "Hardened Heart"

Some years ago on this blog there was a discussion about what the Bible calls "The hardened heart." The "hardened heart" was the explanation given for why people like me cannot accept the tenets of Christianity. We are unable to believe there are floating spirits and gods or imaginary places people go when the die. Now, a prominent Christian preacher and author has given us a way to diagnose the "hardened heart." It contained some surprises. 

Rev. John Piper, who spoke about the hardened heart, said we can see this in a person who lacks "ordinary tenderness and compassion." He went on to describe the characteristics of a person without the affliction of the hardened heart. A healthy person displays empathy and sympathy. Those with the hardened heart are like stone. Jesus wanted compassion for the poor.

The hardened heart discussion referred to atheists only if they are sinners and then it was indirectly. Sin, Piper said, hardens one's heart against Jesus. I guess that's because people want to sin and don't want to knuckle under to the demands of self-righteous Christians. 

I cannot read a Christian discussion about the righteousness of tenderness, compassion, empathy and sympathy without out remembering the snarling, sneering, hateful and angry protesters at the Fargo abortion clinic. This is still available in a very old 60 Minutes segment done by Jeraldo Rivera. Rivera hired an actor, a young woman, to park her car near the clinic and walk toward it as if to obtain an abortion. Rivera knew his craft. He wanted emotional juices to jump out of people's TV sets. Protesters were so pumped up with their own self-righteousness tbey performed like paid actors, screaming and shouting insults at the woman.  

These Christian protesters were anything but sympathetic, empathetic or compassionate. They had the tenderness of stones. It was Christians, not atheists, who had, and continue to have, hardened hearts. They do not exhibit what author Piper calls, "ordinary tenderness and compassion."

Since abortion and gay haters cannot see themselves in their actual reality, they will no doubt continue to see atheists, not themselves, as those with "hardened hearts."