"I Desire Mercy, Not Sacrifice"

A major part of Christianity (but one that is still secondary to certain other aspects like justice), mercy can be sought after even by those who trample on it, disregarding it once it is given only to seek it again and again.  The Christian deity is indeed in one sense eager to show mercy.  Hosea 6:6 says, speaking for God, "'I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.'"  The context is ironic because God had mentioned his judgment only right before this, and yet mercy is a voluntary abstinence from inflicting a just penalty on someone.  In this very verse, which comes in between condemnations of insincere Jews, God addresses how even in the era of the Old Testament (as if the Bible does not present him as unchanging in his moral nature and mercy), mercy is something he was not reluctant to extend.

Though Hosea 6:6's contrast between God's priorities does not directly specify everything about why mercy is desired over sacrifice, the reason why is not particularly difficult to discover.  The sacrifice of animals was only morally required if a sin had been committed, and thus the only reason a person would need to seek God's mercy again and again is if they continually faltered, perhaps through a lack of sincerity or concern for grand matters.  To sacrifice an animal is in an ultimate sense a mere symbolic admission that the "wages" of sin is death, and that the person on whose behalf the animal corpse is offered has trespassed against the being whose nature grounds morality.  It is not something a Jew should have become comfortable with as a superficial way to seek forgiveness for unrepentant wrongs.  Thus, for someone who has sought reconciliation to God, constantly looking to animal sacrifices instead of honoring the initial mercy would have been abominable.

Even the sacrifices themselves are hollow rituals without a contrite mind.  As the prophet Samuel says in 1 Samuel 15:22, to obey God is better than to sacrifice creatures for sins.  At most, animal offerings were a way to actively seek out divine forgiveness while being reminded that sin demands death (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23), but to avoid the need for sacrifice altogether is of course the superior course of action.  No one would have needed to present an animal to God for sacrificial purposes if no one violated their moral obligations in the first place.  To show mercy and welcome people back to a restored relationship with him is what the Biblical deity wants more than any noncommittal, gratuitous outward deed of atonement that is treated as a superficial escape from justice.  This also has ramifications for how people are to treat others.

While mercy by nature cannot be obligatory, and thus no one can morally err by not showing it, to show mercy--without trivializing both mercy and justice by universally avoiding the pursuit of justice for anyone--is to mirror God's willingness to pardon the repentant.  In spite of not being mandatory, mercy is still truly good on the Christian worldview.  Hosea 6:6 on one hand means that mercy is what delights God more than all the animal sacrifices that could be made, but it also would on the other hand follow from this idea that openness to showing mercy to others satisfies God by reflecting his character.  To seek justice--both criminal justice and "social" justice as mandated by the precise tenets of the Torah, not by gratifying one's subjective desires or yielding to irrelevant cultural norms--is to be like God; to show mercy without emotionalism or tolerance is also to be like him.

There is no contradiction in this because mercy is not obligatory.  If the opposite notion was part of Christian philosophy, then of course at least that part of Christianity would be false by necessity: justice and mercy cannot both be obligatory at once, and mercy cannot be obligatory at all since it is refraining from treating someone as they deserve in a punitive sense.  Biblical philosophy is not what it is characterized as by some who think it an ideology in which mercy is a moral necessity and justice is the optional thing.  No, it could only be the other way around.  It is still the case that mercy is encouraged alongside this because it, like justice, is a characteristic of God.  Without a moral nature on God's part, there is no such thing as morality and thus neither any sin that deserves particular reactions nor a just punishment for any deed, and without justice, there cannot be mercy.  Justice is the more important thing by far, and mercy still is a crucial aspect of Yahweh's being.