Have Mercy...

Last Friday (Dec. 14, 2012) was another sad day in our world. A young man, deeply disturbed in heart and soul, chose to end the lives of over two dozen people, most were small children, and then ended his own life. It was, at the outset, what appeared to be a random act of horrible violence.

First thoughts turn naturally toward outrage and anger. Then comes confusion - there must have been a reason for such a tragedy. We need to make sense of the senseless in order to keep our own reason in check. Surely there must have been a reason, we wonder. We suspect a broken relationship that pushed him to a darker side beyond hope.

But then more anger appears. We want to find the culprit. We need to blame something, and our next instinct is to seek out the intangibles as the reason for this insane act.  If we had only better, tougher laws, if there had only been some sort of warning signal - a red flag, perhaps. Maybe this could have been avoided or at least averted. Who missed the signs?  Surely they were there.  But that doesn't ease the burden of the truth that lies at the deepest recesses of our beings.

No, what lies deeper than the anger, the blame, the excuses, is something we don't like to admit, even in our most transparent moments. We are creatures buried under the weight of sin. Our collective brokenness is evident each time something like this happens. And its revelation is unnerving.

Our sin is evident in the ways that we treat one another. From the beginnings of our socialization to the very last breath we take. We seek to identify those who are like us, who make us comfortable, and those who are not like us. Who make us ill at ease. We sort and segregate in what appears to be a random set of criteria, all the while secretly wishing - hoping - that our own fallabilities will remain undiscovered, which might risk our own exclusion from the circle we so desperately seek to maintain.

This goes far beyond the playground cliquishness of our childhood, although no doubt the patterns likely begin there. One unkind word spoken, another exclusion from acceptability, and yet one more remark that slaps a label on someone that will leave a scar deeper than any physical mark is one, two, three too many.

When we as a culture stop treating mental illness as a stigma, a taunt, a byword, and start treating it with openness, kindness, compassion and sympathy, we will have begun to follow a Godly pattern of grace and mercy. When we stop isolating those who are different, and begin to honor the differences with the respect and dignity that we all deserve, we will have begun the first step toward acting civilized.

Our problem in this country is not with the thing we have created, but rather with the distinctions we have established that separate, and alienate. One cannot blame guns for such senseless violence any more than one can blame male anatomy for rape.  The tools used are just that - tools. Used in anger. Used in rage. Used with only one thought or purpose in mind - to regain power where power has been denied, where dignity has been withheld, where integrity and worth have been cheapened.  We need to begin to deal with the anger, the rage, the sense of hopelessness, the sense of worthlessness that pervades so many people's lives.

I am convinced that the First Epistle of John was right - the role model we are to espouse is that God is Love, so therefore, let us love one another. It is too easy to hate, to condemn, to isolate, to ignore, to mistreat.  It is perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to love - especially the unlovely or unlovable. But this is precisely what Christ has commanded.         

I recognize that there are voices on all sides of these issues, and that there will be many who will consider me to be naïve.  Perhaps there is truth in that.  Still, can one hope that there will be a world where we will cease to insulate and isolate one another?  Can there be a world where we actually do seek to lift one another up, to encourage one another to reach the God-given, God-ordained potential that resides within each and every one of us?  I hope and pray so.

In the meantime, I choose to look upon everyone I meet with a new set of eyes – eyes that hopefully will not be detached from the soul.  I choose to see each person as a child of God, no matter how perfect or imperfect, one that Jesus felt passion and compassion for, and chose to die on a cross to redeem them for God.  I know it won’t be easy.  I suspect there will be times when someone will likely need to look on me with this same compassion – and if I know myself, those sometimes will be many indeed. 

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions…For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…Hide your face from my sins, and blot out my iniquities…Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:1, 3, 9-10 NRSV)

Have mercy indeed.