Justice and mercy are two words that really intrigue me a lot. We seem to want these, though we tend to want them on somewhat of a situational basis. When someone wrongs us, we want justice, and we want it now! But when we are the one who did the wrong, we really hope that the other person responds to us in mercy, and may actually get upset if they call for justice.
The balance of these two is difficult, both in the lives we live as we encounter other people, but also when it comes to our faith in God, and in what God has done for us in Jesus and the cross. In our own lives, we may wonder if we should demand justice in a certain situation, or if we should show mercy. And maybe a small illustration will help us as we consider this.
Let's say you are a parent. Your child calls you up one afternoon because he/she has been caught stealing a movie from a local electronic store. For the moment, this is all you know. What are your initial reactions? We might be angry at the child. After all, we taught him/her that stealing is wrong. Even as we get into our car to go over and pick this child up, we may be thinking about the appropriate punishment and consequences to their actions.
Now, here is where I could ask this question. How many of us would first of all think about showing mercy to the child? Would we think that, even if things are as bad as we are thinking, we should show him/her mercy for this trouble? Probably not. We think that they should know better, and so it seems that some justice is called for.
So we get to the store. There's your kid, talking to an office who was called in by the store. What is going to be your first reaction to your child? Anger, because he/she should know better? Anger because they got the police involved? Anger because it reflects badly on you? Anger because you had to take time from other things to come get this situation taken care of?
So you go over to get to the bottom of the story. That's when the officer says that they've gotten to the bottom of the problem. It seems that a couple of your child's friends tried to play a joke on your kid, and put the movie into his backpack while they were in the store. He/she didn't know it was there, and then, when leaving the store, the alarms went off. The other kids had already left, which left your kid there to take the full brunt of the situation. They've looked at the video and seen that your child didn't do anything wrong.
I think most of us would agree that punishment and consequences would not be called for in this situation (at least, not for your kid, but maybe for the others). We would probably want justice to be served now on behalf of our kid. And tomorrow, I'll dive a little deeper into this whole situation. But as I close today, just a couple of quick thoughts.
First, why do we typically assume guilt before innocence?
Next, why is anger typically a first response when something doesn't go the way we want or hope for?
Another one: what would justice look like in this situation for your kid?
Final one: would you apologize to your kid for assuming that he/she was guilty, even though you may not have said anything to them about it?
The balance of these two is difficult, both in the lives we live as we encounter other people, but also when it comes to our faith in God, and in what God has done for us in Jesus and the cross. In our own lives, we may wonder if we should demand justice in a certain situation, or if we should show mercy. And maybe a small illustration will help us as we consider this.
Let's say you are a parent. Your child calls you up one afternoon because he/she has been caught stealing a movie from a local electronic store. For the moment, this is all you know. What are your initial reactions? We might be angry at the child. After all, we taught him/her that stealing is wrong. Even as we get into our car to go over and pick this child up, we may be thinking about the appropriate punishment and consequences to their actions.
Now, here is where I could ask this question. How many of us would first of all think about showing mercy to the child? Would we think that, even if things are as bad as we are thinking, we should show him/her mercy for this trouble? Probably not. We think that they should know better, and so it seems that some justice is called for.
So we get to the store. There's your kid, talking to an office who was called in by the store. What is going to be your first reaction to your child? Anger, because he/she should know better? Anger because they got the police involved? Anger because it reflects badly on you? Anger because you had to take time from other things to come get this situation taken care of?
So you go over to get to the bottom of the story. That's when the officer says that they've gotten to the bottom of the problem. It seems that a couple of your child's friends tried to play a joke on your kid, and put the movie into his backpack while they were in the store. He/she didn't know it was there, and then, when leaving the store, the alarms went off. The other kids had already left, which left your kid there to take the full brunt of the situation. They've looked at the video and seen that your child didn't do anything wrong.
I think most of us would agree that punishment and consequences would not be called for in this situation (at least, not for your kid, but maybe for the others). We would probably want justice to be served now on behalf of our kid. And tomorrow, I'll dive a little deeper into this whole situation. But as I close today, just a couple of quick thoughts.
First, why do we typically assume guilt before innocence?
Next, why is anger typically a first response when something doesn't go the way we want or hope for?
Another one: what would justice look like in this situation for your kid?
Final one: would you apologize to your kid for assuming that he/she was guilty, even though you may not have said anything to them about it?
1) It's simpler that way. As parents and also human beings, we presume that we won't have to encounter those types of situations. We want everyone to be honest and sincere people, but since that is often not the case- we presume guilt so that we won't have our hearts broken if it turns out to be true.
ReplyDelete2) I don't necessarily believe that "anger" is the first response. I interpret it as shock or frustration. We are surprised that we have even had to encounter the situation in the first place and frustrated at ourselves for not "doing what was right in the first place." It's often that we project our feelings of frustration as "anger towards our child for not doing what we had taught them to."
3) I don't think that I would. I would definitely talk to them about the kinds of people they are hanging around with, but if this was my child's first incident of being "in the wrong place at the wrong time" I wouldn't say anything. I would hurt my child's trust, as I would hope that we would be able to talk about these kinds of things and not point fingers and lay blame. I would want to talk about the situation when I knew that they would be capable to understanding that I hoped that they weren't guilty, but I was preparing my heart for the worst.