Within Christian philosophy, mercy is good because God is merciful, and God is the grounding of righteousness. To be merciful for correct reasons, not for its potential emotionalistic appeal or to fit in with church conditioning or because one thinks mercy is mandatory, is to be like Yahweh (Luke 6:36). To be merciless cannot be evil, however, because the opposite treatment is never deserved. To be unjust through cruelty is immoral, but not the mere withholding of mercy. Acting towards people as they deserve is the opposite of morally erring even if they despise the fact that what they deserve might not be pleasant! To not kill a murderer (Exodus 21:12-14) is mercy if done for the right reason, yet this penalty is Biblically right, rather than any sort of extended torture, a lesser penalty, or no penalty at all. A murderer might not like this, but their approval has nothing to do with whether it would be true or false, as with anything.
In the very first chapter of the New Testament, we are given an example of someone who is presented as merciful. Faced with an impending marriage to a woman who is ultimately pregnant via miraculous means instead of sexual immorality (Matthew 1:18), although he is not initially told this, he is said to want to divorce Mary quietly (1:19) instead of having her executed (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). Joseph is said to be righteous in some translations, but in this situation, though it would have only seemed as if Mary had committed a sin, his intention was to be merciful. The penalty of death for having sex with someone engaged to another person was not what he wanted to enforce. He could not have been just by this if what seemed to be the case was true. He could still be a morally upright person for how he would have handled the situation.
Joseph would not automatically be obligated to have her killed even if she had sinned since Mosaic Law does not forbid mercy. It is just that mercy should not be something a person always holds to without ever allowing or pursuing justice in any scenario. It is not valid to have it as a ceaseless default goal. Choosing to rightfully impose justice on others is not evil. It is what one should do, short of opting for mercy for philosophically valid reasons. Of course, if something is just, it is not and cannot be evil. Yahweh does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17). The man or woman who sleeps with someone engaged to another person from outside the relationship still deserves to be killed, albeit not with the methods of many pagan societies, as opposed to the quicker, less brutal methods prescribed in the Bible. Mary would not have deserved this fate because she had not committed any corresponding sin, but the penalty itself is universally righteous when applicable according to the Bible (Matthew 5:17-19).
This is true and it is also true that the Bible presents Joseph as a good person and his mercy as an expression of that--as something that is in no way contrary to the total keeping of Mosaic Law. It is not until after Joseph had already settled on a divorce without great publicity an angel tells him in a dream that he should proceed with his marriage Mary and that she has conceived through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20-21). The desire to be merciful, though, would have spared her life otherwise, and this is not described as some moral shortcoming of Joseph. No, if this was the case, it would mean God is in the wrong for every time he shows mercy or longs for reconciliation to sinners, and yet it is logically impossible for God, whether the real uncaused cause is Yahweh or some other being, to be immoral. God is either amoral and thus everything is also amoral or his nature is what makes something good.
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