have mercy

A short comment was made at my office the other day stating that maybe God doesn't show mercy. While I don't agree with this, I don't fault the conclusion. Even C.S. Lewis pointed out that he was in danger of viewing God as evil or uncaring.

This issue is relevant for me, though, because a foundational theme of Christianity is that God is merciful. If you don't believe that God is somewhat merciful, you have to believe that either the crucifixion was con game or that it didn't happen at all. Belief in God is not really Christianity if it doesn't accept this mercy.

The following is not an indictment of those who do not see mercy in God, but rather a question of whether there is even any way for us to determine whether He is merciful.

When this issue of God's mercy is bothering me the step I usually take is to question how I would interfere if I were God. I think that there would be two complications that I would run into if I were God. First, I don't believe that abolishing all pain is a good thing, because having a cushy life really does make a person rotten. An all-knowing God would be well aware of this. Second, I would have to allow people a semblance of free will. Otherwise, all of creation is just an elaborate marionette set.

About abolishing all pain, I have observed that almost always if someone has selfless demeanor it came out of some sort of pain. A lot of people turn more evil when they go through pain, but few or none who haven't had to deal with pain are not at least selfish. This fact would make the process of how I interfered with others' lives harder because people want cushy lives. No matter how cushy their lives are now, they want them to be just a little cushier. Unless everyone knew for sure that everyone else's life was equally cushy God would appear unfair. People are unique, though, so such a "fair" setup hardly seems ideal.

The second problem I would run into is that I could not stop every evil act that someone might commit because I would eventually be removing free will. If I said that I would simply not allow truly evil things like murder or rape to occur, the complication that I would run into is that since people now don't know about murder and rape, they will still think me unmerciful because I have not removed the next worse evil from their world. Maybe there are more horrible crimes than this that God did decide to remove from existence, but that act of mercy is lost on me because I don't know anything of that evil. If I keep on removing the ability to perform evil acts, eventually there is no such thing as free will.

After I have worked through this logic, as I have done hundreds of times, I always conclude that I have no means of knowing that God is unjust, so I have to go on faith that God is or isn't unmerciful. This is not a conclusion that I enjoy, because I don't like answers that do not completely address my concerns.

I have to live with this being a faith issue, though. It is like baby who has no way of knowing whether his parents are caring for him or if they are just meeting enough of his needs to keep from being reported to the authorities. A baby does not have any frame of reference for what a caring or an uncaring household looks like. In the same way, I have no frame of reference for what a universe ruled by a caring or an uncaring God would look like, so I have to accept that this is something that I cannot deduce through logic, like a lot of things that have to do with God.

I sometimes think that using logic to define God is like washing my hair. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. At least I have clean hair.