The Desire For Mercy

A desire for mercy does not have to be motivated by a petty, selfish wish to trivialize justice.  The two are still separated so that seeking mercy is by by nature seeking something other than justice, just not necessarily for the sake of injustice.  A common but idiotic misunderstanding of Christian theology holds that there is something obligatory about mercy, when this would by necessity mean that there is an obligation to never treat people as they deserve.  Mercy cannot be obligatory.  There are Christians and non-Christians who would pretend like it is, or at least like it is something that should be desired more than justice.

The confusion seeps into issues of how people should treat others in everyday life and, by far most importantly, what criminal punishments should be in place.  For example, many evangelicals would not have a consistent framework injustice to understand the following in any thorough sense: if it is morally wrong to cut off someone's arm as a punishment (which actually would be prescribed by the Bible is very select cases) but there is a country that practices this, then someone who does not enforce that legal penalty is not merciful.  They are instead just because they did not treat someone in an unjust way by supporting or inflicting an action no one would deserve.

Now, even the typical evangelical who might revere the idea of mercy out of hope for personal gain might still think they care about justice sincerely and consistently.  They just will make avoiding justice for themselves (if not themselves and otherd) an erroneously inflated priority.  The desire for mercy does not have to be rooted in selfishness, yet for most people, it seems to be based on how they trivialize or try to sidestep justice at whim.  Notice that almost no one appears to care about mercy until they think it would be useful for them.  It is true that experiences can prompt sincere thought about mercywith the intention to actually not mistepresent it, but if it was sincere, there would likely be no setting aside of moral concerns, but a more grave desire for mercy so that one can avoid making the same mistakes again.

There is no evidence many people want me4cy out of a sincere desire for positive change and there is much evidence to the contrary (hypocrisy, backsliding into rather major sins, fallacy-riddled stances on mercy, and so on).  Mercy is almost invariably sought out of self-interest and an arbitrary desire to be excused for whatever injustices a person has committed while longing for justice for the sins of others.  One can see that a person who asks for mercy or who at least pretends to care about it is a philosophical fraud the moment they do not show mercy to everyone who asks for it as they have, or when they try to argue for the elevation of mercy over justice despite professing awareness of what it means for something to be just.  Insecure, morally shipwrecked fools are of course the ones who would have the most to gain from believing or acting like mercy has some sort of inherent need to be pursued other than the arbitrary willingness of God or other people.

It is not that mercy is evil, of course.  Only the idea that mercy is obligatory or superior to justice could be evil.  Within Christianity, mercy is a supererogatory (good but not obligatory) quality.  It is just that there could be nothing immoral about a world without mercy no matter how much a person craves it out of sheer subjective preference or out of desperation behind personal guilt.  Whether or not one assesses the issue from the context of Christian theology, it is clear that mercy cannot be obligatory and that, although by definition no one can deserve mercy, those who desire mercy in order to save themselves from true justice would "deserve" mercy less than anyone else.