Don’t Harden Your Heart, Just Don’t Give Liars an Inch
A Framework for MLK Day (and Every Other Day)
One of my earliest memories is playing basketball at the local gymnasium.
They opened their doors to everyone. That’s where I got my hoop skills playing with kids who were hungry, who wanted to be Michael Jordan, and wanted out the only way they can think of. But on the court, I also wanted to be Michael Jordan and it made the game respectable as everyone wanted to be their favorite NBA star (we had a one or two who were members of NCAA championship).
But that’s not why I’m telling you this story.
I’m telling you because of the drive home with the coach who drive one particularly talented young man.
I’d never seen poverty like that before. Didn’t even know it existed in our city. I still remember it. The image never left.
To this day I wonder what happened to him.
That moment didn’t harden my heart.
It widened it.
When you see the discourse and protests we have now, considering Martin Luther King does put things in a different perspective.
There’s a verse in Proverbs that’s been sitting with me for years:
“Happy is the one who is always fearful,
but one who hardens his heart falls into calamity.”
— Proverbs 28:14
Most people read that and think it’s about paranoia.
It’s not.
It’s about moral vigilance.
In the biblical sense, “fearful” doesn’t mean anxious or cowardly. It means alert. Self-questioning. Unwilling to become morally lazy.
And hardening the heart isn’t skepticism or setting boundaries.
It’s when you stop being reachable by the environment around you.
That distinction matters.
You can be wary without being cruel.
You can be guarded without becoming dead inside.
And right now, in the middle of culture wars, DEI backlash, and everyone accusing everyone else of bad faith, we’re losing that distinction fast.
We are in the Squid Game phase, that great show on Netflix presented from Korea, where everyone is in it for themselves.
And yet there was time in the 60s that everyone gathered around common causes.
Look at who Martin Luther’s advisors were, quite the lineup:
Stanley Levison — Jewish, former Communist Party associations, fundraiser, strategist. The FBI kept obsessive files on him.
Bernie Sanders probably can learn something from this guy
Bayard Rustin — Black, gay, socialist, architect of the March on Washington. Constantly sidelined because he was inconvenient.
Definitely not Don Lemon
When I was doing some research for on this holiday, I couldn’t find anything except a book and many FBI reports on these fellas.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t just monitor these men. They watched them like Costa Nostra. Detailed notes. Personal surveillance. Relentless. And comproming details that no one wants to have made public.
No one’s perfect
If the FBI was monitoring many Civil Leaders (even John Lennon) every step they took, imagine our “freedom” now and the liberties we have given up to get a “like” or a “book” on Amazon or a free “$5 coupon”
Are we the Indians that sold New Amsterdam for trinckets?
And that’s how hearts harden—not through hate, but through constant suspicion.
Many things are outrageous and disappointing but what’s new under the sun?
What here’s what I refuse to do:
I refuse to harden my heart.
But the Liars? Don’t Give Them an Inch.
Not hardening your heart does NOT mean being soft with manipulators.
There is a difference between:
The vulnerable who have no choice but to accept the terms offered
The manipulator who uses words to hide the reality of what is occurring.
The people who game moral language, who exploit sympathy, who abuse institutional power they depend on ambiguity. They live in the gray area where decent people hesitate.
Wisdom is understanding both without confusing them.
People flatten Martin Luther King Jr. into a sentimental figure.
The real MLK was sharper, tougher, and less forgiving than he’s remembered.
This was a real march with real dangers.
(Not some cockamanie one dreamed up by Stephen King)
Here’s what MLK Jr said on shallow moralizing:
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
Unlike many of the words and actions spoken today, he meant every word. Those words he lived by. The nation was inspired. And they came true.
It’s now a new era in the US, but truth never disappears.
Yet you have to believe what you say.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”
Make this a powerful and meaningful 2026,
Eric