In The Hardness of the Heart I suggest that if “from the beginning it was not so” reveals God’s ideal, then “because of the hardness of your hearts” reveals why our lived religious history falls so short of it. Article 3 now moves from what Jesus points back to (original oneness) to why God has tolerated so much distance from that ideal—and what that means for us personally.
Jesus’ explanation to the Pharisees is brief but explosive:
“Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives:
but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matthew 19:8)
Here He names a tension that runs through all Scripture and all revelation: God sometimes permits what He does not prefer, because He is dealing with hard‑hearted, developmentally immature human beings.
1. Eden and the Birth of Hardness: “I’ll Do It My Way”
To see what hardness of heart really is, we have to go back again to Genesis—not just to chapter 2, but to chapter 3.
The temptation surrounding “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is not a random test. It is a premature grasping. Humanity reaches for a mode of godlike autonomy—defining good and evil “for ourselves,” in our own time, on our own terms—before we are ready to bear that responsibility in oneness with God.
The serpent’s lie plays on this:
“You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
In other words: You don’t have to receive; you can seize. You don’t have to trust; you can take.
That impulse—“I’ll do it my way”—is the essence of hardness. It is not just stubbornness; it is a willful refusal of relational dependence. It says to God: I want Your power and benefits, but not Your authority or timing.
The immediate results in Eden are:
Hiding instead of walking openly with God.
Blame instead of mutual recognition (“The woman whom Thou gavest…”).
Shame and fragmentation within the self.
What began as a precocious bite of forbidden fruit becomes a posture of the heart. Over time, that posture solidifies into culture, and then into institutions.
2. From Hearts to Systems: How We Build Around Our Hardness
By the time we reach Moses, God is not dealing with innocent gardeners; He is dealing with tribes shaped by centuries of violence, patriarchy, and hardness. In that context, men are already discarding women, often brutally. Moses’ legislation on divorce (Deuteronomy 24) is not a blueprint for Eden; it is damage control in the wilderness.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 19 expose this dynamic:
Moses “suffered you to put away your wives” – he permitted, regulated, contained a destructive practice.
But “from the beginning it was not so” – the fact that God regulates something in history does not mean it reflects His eternal preference.
The tragedy is that we then build religious systems around these concessions. We codify them. We create careers, commentaries, and councils that turn therapeutic allowances into permanent norms. Institutions begin to reflect—and then reinforce—the very hardness they were meant to restrain.
This is not unique to ancient Israel. Churches, sects, even new religious movements can fall into the same pattern:
Starting as radical calls back to God’s intention.
Gradually solidifying into structures that defend the status quo of the community’s current hardness of heart.
Quoting their own “Mosaic” concessions as though they were the ideal.
The key point is uncomfortable but essential: our institutions are mirrors of our hearts. The desert is not only “out there” in the system; it is “in here” in the soul.
3. One Message, Different Doses: Divine Mercy in Concession
Seen in this light, divine concession is not divine inconsistency. It is divine mercy. From Moses to Jesus to Bahá’u’lláh, the spiritual north star does not move:
Turn away from self‑worship.
Turn toward God.
Enter into deeper oneness—with Him, with each other, within ourselves.
What changes is the dose and form of that truth appropriate to the patient.
Moses confronts a brutal, tribal society; Jesus confronts a religious culture skilled at managing failure; Bahá’u’lláh confronts a globalizing world tempted to worship the self and the nation. Each applies the same spiritual medicine—detachment from ego, fidelity to covenant, pursuit of unity—in a way calibrated to that age’s hardness.
ʻAbdu’l‑Bahá describes this healing work in deeply personal terms:
“O ye friends of God! True friends are even as skilled physicians, and the Teachings of God are as healing balm, a medicine for the conscience of man. They clear the head, so that a man can breathe them in and delight in their sweet fragrance. They waken those who sleep. They bring awareness to the unheeding, and a portion to the outcast, and to the hopeless.”¹
The danger is to mistake the balm for the goal—to cling to the bandage and refuse the surgery. Hardness of heart loves concessions because they allow us to feel “treated” while we keep doing things our way. Jesus’ words strip away that illusion: what God has “suffered” in us is not the measure of what He desires for us.
4. Bringing It Home: Letting the Diagnosis Land
For this mixed audience—Christians, Bahá’ís, and seekers—the practical question is not mostly about ancient Israel, or “those Pharisees,” or “those churches.” It is:
Where have I built my life around what God has permitted in my weakness, instead of what He intends from the beginning?
Where am I using religious language to justify “my way,” rather than to surrender more deeply to His way?
In The Hardness of the Heart I share how this diagnosis landed in my own story—how my failures in marriage, faith, and community were not just “bad luck,” but expressions of that Edenic impulse to seize rather than receive. God, in His mercy, did not abandon me. But He also refused to let His patience be mistaken for approval.
This third article is meant to bring readers to that same threshold: to see hardness of heart not as an abstract theological category, but as a living reality in their own decisions, relationships, and participation in religious systems.
From here, we will pivot in Article 4 to Joe Atman’s framing of Eden as a “philosophical war”—a courtroom drama of consciousness where this inner hardness is put on trial. That will help us see that the Garden story is not childish myth, but a profound diagnosis of our condition.
For now, I’d invite you to reflect: if you had to name one area where you suspect you’ve treated God’s concession as His preference—where “I’ll do it my way” still subtly rules—what would it be?
¹ ʻAbdu’l‑Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ʻAbdu’l‑Bahá, sec. 12.
