Do Justly And Love Mercy

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.