The Possibility Of Redemption

Mercy, by nature of what it is, cannot be obligatory: if it was, one would have an obligation to be just and merciful simultaneously, which is logically impossible.  It is astounding how many people will ignore this and still try to construct arguments for the conclusion that mercy is obligatory.  Anything else results in contradictions that nullify either justice or mercy, which is ironically what many people are trying to avoid by invoking both justice and mercy at once.

One argument that we should be merciful (in other words, that we have an obligation to be merciful) to people, generally or always, cites the fact that people can change.  This is true.  There is not a single person who is incapable of shedding an immorality or fallacy in favor of embracing righteousness and truth.  Yet the possibility of redemption does not and cannot mean that mercy is obligatory, only that an act of mercy might allow a person to seek personal redemption at a later point in time.

If people consistently showed mercy to everyone else in the hope that those treated with mercy will eventually change for the better, no one would seek actual justice (of course, justice itself, and not petty cultural ideas about justice, has authority).  Life would be anarchistic at best, with there being few or no (depending on the extent of the mercy) terrestrial attempts to right wrongs or enact just punishments.  Any Christian who mistakes mercy without discrimination to be a sign of Christian maturity has a deeply incorrect understanding of Christianity!  Justice is demanded by the Bible; mercy is supererogatory.  That is, it is good, but by no means obligatory.

If Christians truly forgave and enacted mercy only in the manner in which God does, they would withhold both until an offender requested them.  God does not bestow the mercies of salvation upon anyone apart from their intentional commitment to Christ.  However, there is nothing sinful about a person showing mercy apart from an offender's specific request (Deuteronomy 4:2).  If only Christendom at large recognized these facts!  That showing mercy to all or many people is viewed as an obligatory aspect of daily life by many evangelicals is yet another glaring indication of their massive deviations from reason and Scripture.

I am morally free to arbitrarily show mercy to whomever I wish and to withhold all mercy from whoever I wish.  This is precisely because mercy is not obligatory--I cannot have an obligation to be just, therefore treating people as they deserve, and be merciful, therefore not treating people as they deserve, at once.  Only one or the other can be a core obligation.  The other is supererogatory at best.  Justice, not mercy, is inherently obligatory.  Thus, criticizing a person for rarely or never choosing mercy is to criticize without logical or moral soundness.

A person might go his or her entire life without being merciful to anyone, and there is nothing immoral about this.  A person might only show mercy to a select group of people based upon arbitrary preference or relational closeness (I fall into this category), and there is nothing wrong with this.  Ultimately, whenever it comes to ethics, it does not matter how a person who is given mercy will respond.  The possibility of redemption is completely irrelevant to the morality of mercy.