Regular readers may recall that I once write a study on what is vengeance, or rather why does it belong, in theological writings, to God alone. I concluded that this was because only God is wise enough, powerful enough, not to use vengeance. You may recall I opposed the death penalty on the grounds that it wasn’t cruel enough, rather preferring that people have their bones broken, healed and then broken again to teach of the consequences of their crimes. From this we can conclude that I am not a good person, lacking in wisdom.
The world is full of broken things. Broken windows, broken mirrors, broken glass and, mostly, broken people as Hemmingway wrote…
‘If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.’
In Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a child asks an old man what war is like. To save the children from pain the old man replies, ‘everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt’.
This is the essence of mercy. Mercy is the most broken of all things for one must first be broken to be able to bestow mercy. One must then transcend the brokenness and go into the broken world and heal the brokenness with mercy, something which comes at a terrible personal cost. However, as Leonard Cohen wrote:
‘It’s broken where there’s beauty
It’s broken where there’s death
It’s broken where there’s mercy
But broken somewhat less’
What he meant by that even he may not know, the cold and broken hallelujah had long been on his mind, but I would argue mercy is broken less for it is the embodiment of all that is good and that is love, as Plato wrote, ‘the greatest God of all’.
Mercy is the broken side of love. It is when one is so full of love that one can spread love into the world to heal it. It is no secret, as Hemmingway said above, that the most beautiful people are dammed to suffer,
‘Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth’ (Dostoyevsky, as you all know as I quote him often),
but their beauty is shown in their love and compassion, and generosity and kindness, something that cannot be diminished no matter how broken the world may be, how broken the individual may be. Father forgive them, thus spake Jesus a man so full of love and compassion for his fellow that he gave the ultimate sacrifice that that he dedicated his life in the attempt to lessen the brokenness by bringing just a little more love into the hearts and lives of those whom he met.
Whilst vengeance may be the domain of gods alone, mercy is the right and duty of all of us who claim to be human, that vile and disgusting creature crawling through the sewers of a broken world with ‘the broken mirror of innocence reflected on each and every face’ (Dylan)
‘Till next time
thegreaterfool2016 