The True Story of the Christian Teen Who Created the 'Paradoxical Commandments' for Effective Protest

Lina Portman3 days ago

0 6 minutes read

Going viral before the Internet was a rare feat, but not unheard of. One text that appeared here, there, and everywhere in the last decades of the 20th century is “The Paradoxical Commandments.”

If you've read this short treatise before, it may have been titled “Whatever.” The lines begin, “People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered / Love them anyway.” They continue in this vein, emphasizing the heartache you'll incur by doing the right thing, but insisting that it be done no matter what. Often, the text appears with a note that it was posted on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta; sometimes the lines are misattributed to her. In many versions, it ends, “You see, in the final analysis, it's between you and God / It was never between you and them anyway.”

I never liked those closing lines. They suggest a preciousness and spiritual pride mixed with disdain: I am God's good little child, and what I do is really for him, not for others. It appalled me to think that Mother Teresa could mentally withdraw into herself in that way.

Eventually, I Googled it and had no trouble discovering that the unsettling ending had been added by an unknown embellisher; it was not in the original version that Mother Teresa had implicitly approved. Without it, “The Paradoxical Commandments” states a truth that is not, at first glance, the one that anyone wants to hear: Doing good is its own reward. And it was articulated, of all things, by a teenager urging his peers to base their crusades for world change on basic humility.

A Handbook for Student Leaders

Kent Keith was a Harvard undergraduate in 1968 when he published the “Commandments” as part of a handbook he wrote for student leaders. In it, he called on young people to reject ostentation and embrace quiet, effective strategies for change. Even in those days, when narcissism was generally frowned upon, this idea was hard to sell.

But Keith, a lay Christian, felt it was necessary. During his studies, he helped mentor leaders and spoke at student council workshops and conferences across the country. In his 2021 book The paradox of personal meaning, He wrote about what he observed in his generation: “They gave up, because the change they were looking for was not happening, and people did not appreciate what they were trying to do. I told them they had to love people, because love is one of the only motivators strong enough to keep you with people and with the process until change is achieved.”

His 1968 manual, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in Student Councildoesn’t dwell on the subject of love as such. It simply collects Keith’s thoughts on how to achieve gradual but reliable change by prioritizing the greater good over one’s own public image. Fifty-six years later, in the wake of seismic shifts in the media, most young people have a “public image” in the truest sense of the word, truer than Keith’s generation could have imagined. In this new era of student activism, the challenge of doing the right thing for the right reasons is exponentially more difficult. And Keith’s clarity is still preternaturally mature.

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While reading The Silent Revolution is a curious experiment. The voice is quaint and many of his examples are banal, making you imagine Keith’s audience as teenagers from a bygone era: in short socks, well-combed, more concerned with getting home than the Tet Offensive or the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. But his ideas—which fall into that realm of things that are obviously wise but rarely put into practice—offer a glimpse of the self-sacrifice that true leadership requires at every level.

For example, Keith reminds his readers that defenders of the status quo are human beings like any other, who are likely acting in good faith. Rather than viewing these leaders as enemies, students who want to challenge them should seek to understand them. Since we are all fallible in our reasoning, he suggests that we “move forward with a set of 'tentative conclusions.' When new knowledge emerges, we must be flexible. So add a touch of humility to the next decision.” You won't be as confident as someone who takes an absolute position, but that person's sense of security is false: “To take absolute positions on many issues is simply to run away from them…today's problems are complex and must be faced in all their complexity.”

Keith M. Kent's “Paradoxical Commandments” was mistakenly attributed to Mother Teresa, and the last line was added later by an unknown source.

He has an instinct for basic psychology and its implications. While he advises getting “properly angry,” his definition of “properly” in this case boils down to replacing verbal protest with effective action. One reason: “constant expressions of anger.” [your anger] “It will easily become a matter of self-righteousness… Nothing stands in the way of progress more than people who are more interested in their own purity than in doing something important.” Name-calling and picketing stir up defensiveness and strengthen opposition. If the counselor or principal (I read “college administrator” here) associates your name with a crisis, then every move you make will trigger a fight-or-flight response from them. Build a relationship with them and you will have a better chance of getting a fair hearing.

Keith advocates sensitivity and compassion, but the best word to sum up his approach is“practical.“He is less concerned with proving a point than with aligning the protesters' goals and actions. For example, 'If you think there is not enough free speech in school, should you make so much noise that you get suspended and can't talk to anyone about anything?' A strong leader does not need to be dominant in all things, but must pick his battles – 'maximizing his strength by concentrating it.'

Even his admonition to reject black-and-white thinking is grounded in a results orientation: “Problems that exist in the gray must be understood in the gray in order to be solved.” Watching effective leaders in action is soporific. They formulate reasonable proposals, identify and then accept acceptable concessions, and build the trust necessary for future negotiations with key stakeholders.

There is a common thread in all this: a desire for ego-erasure. Even tolerance for boredom is a sign of humility; a humble person is willing to do basic, unglamorous work if it serves a worthy purpose. The revolution, Keith argues, will happen “quietly,” and most people are unlikely to ever know who is responsible for it. Gaining recognition—or even respect—is not the point.

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The pure paradoxical commandments end thus:

Give the world your best and you'll get a kick in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

No mitigating qualifiers, just the hard truth: endurance is the best part of heroism, and heroism is going to hurt.

And yet my reaction to Keith's advice is one of refreshment. In a culture prone to self-deception and pretense, the degree of honesty in these simple lines is like a refreshing balm.

Keith notes in The paradox of personal meaning The paradoxical commandments have been dubbed the “personal declaration of independence” and the “no-apology policy.” Their message encompasses both: freedom from what we cannot control and the obligation to persevere. Freedom and responsibility are always two sides of the same coin.

Even more than in 1968, our culture ignores the less conspicuous virtues that Keith espouses: perseverance, reason, humility, the capacity for compromise, and quiet efficiency. We are still prey to our incurable enthusiasm for form over substance, and a loud voice that declares it will never give an inch risks being celebrated and valorized for its very intransigence.A positive event happening behind the scenes is like a tree falling in the forest. If there are no witnesses to like, comment and share, it is reasonable to wonder whether it really happened.

And then there’s Keith’s cheerful promise to be ungrateful. Most of us know, in theory, that managing expectations is essential to avoiding disappointment and resentment. If we expect to be ignored or even attacked for doing what we think is right, we may have more courage to stay in the game despite those insults.

But “expecting insults” is never the preparation we receive. On the contrary, in a thousand explicit and implicit ways, we are given the message that life is transactional, that meaning lies in the symbols of value exchanged between humans, and that we should always seek to win. The preferred symbol is money, but others matter: popularity, attention. At a minimum, we should do things to be recognized or approved of.So we support causes and make it known through stickers, signs, and social media posts. We make these displays without thinking too much about what we want to accomplish. It seems clear that what we are looking for is meaning through the positive gaze, the testimony, of other human beings.

Those who added these bogus lines to the “Paradoxical Commandments” may have been trying—clumsily—to achieve this result. Seeking our reward in the approval of others guarantees unhappiness. But a Christian life is always between you and others. You must love them—actively, in thought and deed—whether they reciprocate or not. Faith is the superpower through which we can realize this unconditional love, because it allows us to understand that the disdain, anger, or gossip of others has no impact on the living water that sustains us.

This water remains, even though it will take generations for our efforts to bear fruit, even though we are not certain that the world will change. Faith sustains us regardless of external rewards or motivations. Indeed, our conviction is not that a specific desired goal will be realized, but that our source of life will never dry up, no matter what earthly events result from it.