In the Absence of Mercy

Memories are powerful.

As moments from our past flash through our minds, we can find ourselves at one moment unknowingly smiling at a ridiculous situation that happened years ago and at another moment thrown into the depths of despair as deeply painful experiences flood our minds, leaving us filled with terror, frustration, or heartache.  

When we find ourselves lost in the past, especially if the memories are painful, it can be incredibly tempting to start to imagine what our lives would be like if those moments never happened.  Perhaps, with a bit of editing, we can live as if the mistakes we’ve made or the pain inflicted on us by others never really happened.  

We want a do-over - a mulligan - a reset. 

I don’t think that this is only true on a personal level, but also on a societal level as well.  Groups, institutions, and even entire countries can look at unflattering moments from the past and come to the conclusion that it would be better if we covered them over with something a little less violent, prejudiced, or overall lacking respect for another’s dignity.  

In one way, it makes sense - why focus on the negative events from our past? Why not just focus on either our successes or on the direction we want our lives to go from here? 

Living without a past, however, has the very real possibility of leaving us lost in a fantasy world.  Untethered from reality, every step we take into the future is made on an increasingly fragile worldview that will do anything to keep the pain of humiliation, rejection, and defeat out of sight.  

Perhaps one of the most significant problems with this approach is that if we reject every mistake we’ve ever made or gloss over another’s mistakes that caused us pain, we miss out on the opportunity to receive or share mercy.  

Mercy is hard.  It means actually confronting the mistakes that we or another has made and dealing with the consequences of those actions.  Our culture - and in turn, all of us formed by our culture - seems almost allergic to the idea of mercy.  It is so much easier to either pretend in one extreme that mistakes never happened or on the other extreme to live as if mercy is nonexistent, casting out those that mess up in one way or another with no hope of forgiveness.

This is a significant crisis of our times - we, as a culture, have forgotten the need to be merciful.  We will happily dole out a distorted sense of justice in abundance - cutting off friends and family members who think or live differently than ourselves - but when confronted with a need to forgive or be forgiven, I (or preferably the other) would be better off dead.  Living this way becomes a zero-sum game: there can only be one winner and one loser, and to be merciful is seen as a losing tactic.  The thought of being merciful or asking for mercy doesn’t even cross our collective minds as we have become so used to the toxic environment that has emerged in a world only concerned with lifting up the proud and the mighty, and believing that our satisfaction can only come at the expense of another’s defeat. 

When society lacks a foundation in mercy it deeply warps our capacity to live in communion with one another.  Patience, gentleness, and kindness are thrown out the window and replaced with an unnatural rigidity, hell-bent on proving how we - and everyone else - are irredeemable.  The rotten fruit of this inflexible lifestyle shows itself only as blame, accusation, and, ultimately, self-hatred.  When we look in the mirror, our vision is clouded by an unrealistic view of ourselves as we think that we are either far superior or completely inferior to those around us.  This world without mercy is unrelenting in its desire to lead us to believe that we are either the absolute best or the absolute worst, leaving no room for grace and only a misshapen sense of perfection. 

True perfection is rooted in mercy.  We have probably heard Christ’s desire that we “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) many times before; yet, Jesus also yearned that we, “be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).  Our imitation of Christ becomes an imitation of the very heart of the Father, that is, an exercise in mercy.  This is what Jesus teaches us as we come to know not only his Father, but our Father as well - “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” 

A civilization rooted in practicing sharing and receiving mercy stands in stark contrast to the rigid world of false perfection.  In the real world, a world reflective of our Father’s merciful heart, we can find that the memories of our past, the mistakes we’ve made and the pain inflicted on us, don’t need to be reset, they need to heal.  By practicing mercy, we learn that our wounds can actually be integrated into the story of Christ’s saving work in us.  The hands, feet, and side of the resurrected Christ show us that even our God doesn’t do away with his wounds, but rather they become transformed into an opportunity for us to encounter mercy.  

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote.”  The world will be repulsed by the saint because he or she is exactly what they need.  I think that this is true of mercy as well.  Mercy, if wrongly understood, can be seen as weak, unnecessary, and something that allows others to get ahead of us - it looks like poison.  Properly understood and lived, mercy will not only transform our hearts, but also the hearts of all those who reap the benefit of this curious way of living.  

St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2).  This renewal requires mercy - a merciful view of our past as well as a choice to receive and share this forgiveness no matter where we will be found in the future.  Our world needs this renewal - it needs healing… and we will only find it in ordering our hearts to the merciful heart of our God.