Current affairs and the everyday human condition have left
me thinking lately about the balance that Christianity aims to strike between
justice and mercy. The fact that we are all in need of instruction on the point
is evident in how poorly we often are at applying it.
I first remember dealing with the challenge of balancing
mercy and justice in my mind when I began high school – before this time, all
my exposure to views on the gospel had come from my French Catholic elementary
school, and my Latter-day Saint Christian home and congregation. Personally, I
came out of this with a fairly ‘justice’ focused concept of Christianity,
focused on correlated consequences and behavior. I think this had as much to do
with my personality as my background.
In high school I was introduced to a variety of Protestant
friends, many of them from non-denominational congregations. Many of them
surprised me with what seemed to me to be an extreme focus on the ‘mercy’
concept of Christianity. Not all, but some of them, placed a much lower
priority on obedience to the commandments in favor of a theology that supported
Christ’s forgiveness extending to us all in such a way that we would be saved
through Him regardless.
Initially I considered these views cheap, developed for the
convenience of the believer. How easy it must be, I thought, to follow a
religion that placed so little priority on keeping the rules! While neither my
nor their perspective really matched what Christ taught, nowadays I’m sad for the
way that high school me didn’t give fair credit to the awe-inspiring teachings
of love, mercy, and tenderness that they emphasized so heavily.
Still a fool but marginally improved now in my adult years,
watching the news, I realize more poignantly how desperately needed those
lessons are. The recurrence of white supremacy; The rise of Christian churches teaching
intolerance; Political leaders that place kindness and compassion at the bottom
of their priority list. On the other hand the ever-present desire to justify
our actions; A need to blame other generations for the shortcomings of our own;
The ubiquitous irresponsibility that is ignoring the poor and needy around us
and the war-ravaged overseas – No balance of justice and mercy.
This isn’t a ‘new thing’ for humanity. It’s a fundamental
human problem.
People have struggled with balancing mercy and justice for
all of known history. Christians commonly do all of Christianity a disservice
when we call ourselves ‘more new testament Christians’ or ‘more old testament.’
One of the most common phrases in the Bible explains that God does not change,
that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Even when Christ was
teaching, people mistook His words to be a proverbial changing of the divine
guard. He corrected His followers, explaining that He had not come to destroy
the prophets come before Him, but to fulfill them.
Why the apparent distinction?
Believing that the two testaments present different
theologies is to misunderstand that Christianity is an extremely simple but
challenging balancing act. To the justice-serving and unmerciful Jews of his
time, Christ taught the need for mercy and kindness, just as through ancient
prophets before him whose audience were a lawless people who followed no rule
but carnal desire, He taught law and order. Context is crucially important when
understanding any writing, and the Bible is no exception. Still, the master
teacher did not make the mistake of overreaching, and in important moments he
highlighted the necessity for obedience, self-mastery, and strictness of
devotion to the laws of God.
What then do we take away from this?
How can we be the Christians that Christ teaches us to be?
As I was listening to an old talk given at BYU by Gordon B
Hinckley, his paraphrasing from the oft-quoted versed in the book of Micah hit me like a ton of bricks. “Do justly, and love
mercy.” I must have heard this phrase before but I’ve repeated it in my mind 500 times since, turning it over
and trying to understand its amazing invitation better in the context of these thoughts. “Do justly, and love
mercy.”
Do justly. Justice
is not a tool to punish the sinner. Its purpose is not to separate the wicked
from the righteous. In a sense, justice is less an action we take than an unequivocal
foundation of reality. Actions have consequences, and they are inescapable. To
do justly is to make choices whose consequences are desirable by the law. But justice
can only be applied where a law is given!
Christ whipped the moneychangers not because it is Gods
pattern to go out whipping people who don’t do what He likes, but because these
men claimed to be His priests, to love God, to serve in His house, and then
used a sacred responsibility to glut themselves on filthy lucre, robbing the
poor to fatten their purses. In fact, God has indicated His preference for
those that act contrary to Him and accept this over those pretend to love Him
while harming others. The responsibility for acting justly is one we hold for
ourselves and to ourselves. Those of us who make covenants believe that certain
promises to be better, to work harder, and to give more of ourselves will bring
greater happiness, greater peace, a knowledge of truth, in exchange for a
covenant to live the law.
But to hate or persecute people who do not live God’s law
but have never covenanted to do so is to punish others for not playing by the
rules of your own game! This is true wickedness.
The human conscience, or as Latter-day Saint Christians
refer to it ‘the Light of Christ,’ inspires all human beings to basic morality
from birth. It is sufficient to teach the mentally healthy that stealing from
others, harming the innocent, and disloyalty to family and friends is wrong. It
feels wrong.
Religion teaches things that basic conscience does not. In
the case of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this includes not
drinking, not smoking, not having sex outside of marriage, marriage being
between a man and a woman, and others.
Where conscience and the teachings of society would not
instruct a person in the same way, then it is in fact wicked to believe that people
should be punished or thought poorly of because they have done these things in the
absence of any moral obligation to not!
The idea here is not to divide humanity into an ‘us vs them’
mentality – the rules are not a tool for dividing the devout from the
destitute. On the contrary, when taught properly they are a simple
invitation
that is delivered without compulsion and brimming with love and hope: ‘learn of
me… and ye shall find rest unto your souls’ ‘…whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst.’
Love mercy.
Recently Elder Christofferson visited Buffalo and taught a wonderful principle
of Christianity whose overlooking or straight ignoring by Christians has led to
immeasurable death and suffering: “One of the most beautiful and freeing and
liberating principles of Christianity is that we do not have to figure out who
is good and who is not. Besides being impossible, it is simply not our job. We can
simply love and forgive and leave the moral arithmetic to the only being in the
universe who is qualified to perform it.”
He was teaching the simple principles of Christ: “I the Lord
will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men,”
and “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
It is the baser part of human nature to try to apply justice
to others in a pathetic attempt to make ourselves superior, to evaluate them
based on moral criteria that place us above and them below. Such an easy trap
to fall into! People are not generally evil, but this tendency absolutely is.
Christ invites us to forsake this inclination of the natural
man and love mercy. If he teaches us to do good to those that hate you, love
those that despitefully use you, to turn the other cheek, then how much more
those that simply do not believe as we do?
I’m thinking particularly of people who’ve done others no
harm, just lived a different lifestyle than the one we choose for ourselves,
but it makes me think of Christ on the cross, in immense suffering
and pain,
looking up to a mourning Father in Heaven and, in the spirit of love and mercy
that serves as the shining light for all of us to reference, and the final
bastion of hope for all of us who sin, pleaded ‘Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.’
Who did He say that for?
It would not have been for His Father – A perfect loving
Father, God’s capacity for forgiveness and balancing mercy and justice towards
his beloved children is beyond our comprehension.
It would not have been for Himself – He had only the night
before performed the Atonement, in which He suffered the pains of all mankind
past, present, and future, so that He could empathize and find mercy for each
of us. He knows his Father will know whom to forgive.
It was for us. Like His entire life, it was simply an
example for us. Even in the most extreme depths of agony, He says: ‘Love mercy.’
Love it so much you wish it for every person -- you desperately need it to be a
possibility for everyone because you are one of every one! Those who are easy
to love, those you just can’t bring yourself to love, and everyone in between.
This is not an easy thing to do. It is an incredibly hard
thing to do. But Christianity is meant to be hard, and I can improve each day at
doing it.
We will need that mercy ourselves, and when the day for it
comes, every one of us will want it to be applied as liberally as justice will allow.
To this day, achieving this balance seems to be the hardest
thing for Christians and Christian religions to do, keeping their covenants
with justice while loving mercy for all their brothers and sisters, knowing
that in doing so they will find mercy for themselves from Christ. Failure to
accomplish this is the thing for which I see Christians most often condemned by
others.
How can I challenge myself to apply the balance of mercy and
justice exemplified in Christ in my daily life?
We do justly, following the covenants we’ve made, repenting
when we fall short.
We love mercy, not seeking to judge others, but to love them
as they are and hope they find it in their hearts to love us as we are.
We try with all our hearts to do justly, and love mercy.
