We live in an increasingly brutal, dog-eat-dog world. We may sentimentalise gentleness but that’s because we despise it. Our heroes are the ambitious, the ruthless, and the bold. The social order and the public square have become territories to be conquered - peopled by our ideological enemies that need to be vanquished. Our newsfeeds are designed to make us anxious and angry. In our feelings of frustration and powerlessness, feelings greatly amplified by the COVID 19 pandemic, we look to power, strength, and dominance as the virtues that will reassure us.
Is there another way? Does gentleness perhaps provide more guidance for us than we think? Gentleness is at the heart of the ethical teaching of Jesus - but does he have an answer to his modern critics, like Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche? In The Art of Gentleness, Dr Michael Jensen will show that the virtue of gentleness is exactly what we need for today’s outraged and divided world - in business, education, and in politics.
