The balance of Justice and Mercy.
When you think of Justice, what emotions come to the surface? Is it fear, or a desire to punish, or a desire to never be in the position to make a decision of justice?
How about Mercy? Did you think of how much you want it, or how hard it can be to give, or how some people are given too much of it?
These are powerful words, because they link us immediately to the all too human aspect of judgment, where we are at once the perpetrator and the victim; the oppressor and the oppressed.
I think it’s a sign of our addiction to binaryism that we tend to think of justice and mercy as separate, when in truth, they can only exist together.
Justice without mercy is tyranny and brutality, and ceases to be justice. Mercy without justice is anarchy and chaos, and ceases to be mercy.
But if we are to balance justice and mercy, we have to go deeper into ourselves to understand our own needs, and to see how they impact the choices that we make.
Do we choose to punish harshly out of a desire to revenge ourselves on someone for a perceived wrong that occurred far in the past, but which haunts us still today? Do we choose to apply mercy out of our own guilt for past wrongs that still call to us in our quiet hours?
Most of all, how do we apply justice and mercy to ourselves?
My guess is that you find it easier to apply mercy to others, and you save justice for yourself. Maybe out of a fear of ‘not being a good person’, or because you believe that you are fundamentally flawed, unworthy of love and kindness.
Perhaps there was someone in the past who acted in such a way that you accepted their flawed version of reality as your ongoing truth.
The hardest choices we have to make in life are the balances between two seemingly opposing forces, until we realize that they are one not two. Decisions of justice and mercy are not between two mutually exclusive realities, but a balance of two essential components of our life and our futurity.
Today, I invite you to examine the balance of justice and mercy in your own life. If you have given yourself more of one than the other, I implore you to find a balance that respects your humanity and your dignity.
You cannot become all that you are meant to be by holding yourself down with a justice you never deserved, and you will never grow to be the light that you can be if you deny yourself the mercy that can transform you.
The two must be one, for one is none.
Find your balance, believe, and become.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings