B
Bill_Martin
Guest
Some stuff I’ve been thinking about…
It often seems that an all-just God could not simultaneously be an all-merciful one. While it might be easy to conceive of God being just in one moment and merciful in another, God is not bound by “moments”; He simply is. Thus, the apprent contradiction must be reconciled.
I think the confusion comes from our human conception of justice as an externally imposed state. We have a “justice system” in which a judge dispenses punishments on an offender, or, alternatively, dispels with them and has mercy. However, this is a flawed idea of justice. I do not think it is possible for humans to ever achieve perfect justice. Perfect justice would be allowing each action to receive the true and total consequence of it. We cannot do that. We can’t even know what those consequences are. At best, we make a guess and set up earthly punishments for abhorrent acts that are a rough approximation of what we think they deserve, and call this justice. I will refer to this as earthly justice.
Mercy, to humans, is lessening this punishment or consequence in some cases. But this contradicts earthly justice by removing some aspects of it. If a judge gives a 10 year sentence instead of 25, earthly justice is now lesser than it was before thanks to mercy. In this way, mercy contradicts earthly justice.
However, true justice does not work this way. If God is the source of all goodness, then all acts that steer away from God lead to badness. Free will allows us to make these choices, and God’s justice neither stops us nor lessens the consequences of them. If we make choices that lead us away from God, we are left with strife, evil, suffering, and ultimately, Hell–a total separation from God.
Thus true justice is not imposed by God on us the way a judge imposes a sentence because God. If you walk away from the light source, you are in darkness. If you walk away from the fire in winter, you get cold. The light did not make it dark. The fire did not make you cold. Likewise, if you walk away from God–the source of goodness, joy, peace, and existence–you are left with evil, despair, discord, and nothingness. God did not impose these conditions.
But God is also merciful. While His justice allows us to receive the full and complete consequence of our actions without His interference, His mercy allows us a way out. We are always able to turn back. Unlike human mercy, this does not contradict justice because the consequences are not lessened. The wages of sin is still death. But God became man, and bore those consequences for us, “trampling death by death”. We are free to accept it or not. Mercy is just as freely chosen by us as Hell is. Since God imposes neither on us without our free choice, there is no contradiction between divine, true justice and divine mercy.
My $0.02.
It often seems that an all-just God could not simultaneously be an all-merciful one. While it might be easy to conceive of God being just in one moment and merciful in another, God is not bound by “moments”; He simply is. Thus, the apprent contradiction must be reconciled.
I think the confusion comes from our human conception of justice as an externally imposed state. We have a “justice system” in which a judge dispenses punishments on an offender, or, alternatively, dispels with them and has mercy. However, this is a flawed idea of justice. I do not think it is possible for humans to ever achieve perfect justice. Perfect justice would be allowing each action to receive the true and total consequence of it. We cannot do that. We can’t even know what those consequences are. At best, we make a guess and set up earthly punishments for abhorrent acts that are a rough approximation of what we think they deserve, and call this justice. I will refer to this as earthly justice.
Mercy, to humans, is lessening this punishment or consequence in some cases. But this contradicts earthly justice by removing some aspects of it. If a judge gives a 10 year sentence instead of 25, earthly justice is now lesser than it was before thanks to mercy. In this way, mercy contradicts earthly justice.
However, true justice does not work this way. If God is the source of all goodness, then all acts that steer away from God lead to badness. Free will allows us to make these choices, and God’s justice neither stops us nor lessens the consequences of them. If we make choices that lead us away from God, we are left with strife, evil, suffering, and ultimately, Hell–a total separation from God.
Thus true justice is not imposed by God on us the way a judge imposes a sentence because God. If you walk away from the light source, you are in darkness. If you walk away from the fire in winter, you get cold. The light did not make it dark. The fire did not make you cold. Likewise, if you walk away from God–the source of goodness, joy, peace, and existence–you are left with evil, despair, discord, and nothingness. God did not impose these conditions.
But God is also merciful. While His justice allows us to receive the full and complete consequence of our actions without His interference, His mercy allows us a way out. We are always able to turn back. Unlike human mercy, this does not contradict justice because the consequences are not lessened. The wages of sin is still death. But God became man, and bore those consequences for us, “trampling death by death”. We are free to accept it or not. Mercy is just as freely chosen by us as Hell is. Since God imposes neither on us without our free choice, there is no contradiction between divine, true justice and divine mercy.
My $0.02.
