Mercy

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 18:20-32, Psalm 138 and Luke 11:1-13.

Last week I alluded to the death tolls of two Communist nations in the 20^th century. Where did I get the data? From a website I discovered years ago called the Historical Atlas of the 20th Century by Matthew White, a librarian who loves statistics. The section of the website I used is called Necrometrics, where he has collected death counts all across history, going back to the 2^nd Persian War. White stopped updating this section in 2014 but he used the data to publish a book called Atrocities. In it he lists the top 100 multicides, or mass murders, in recorded history—major wars, massacres, persecutions, etc, which have a body count of 300,000 or more. He gives not only the number of deaths, or in ancient history the best estimates according to historians, but also a 2 or more page summary of what the event was, who participated and who usually gets the blame. His purpose was to objectively look at the part of history that gets ignored when we focus on “Great Men” and movements, namely the cost in human lives.

I was particularly interested in the chapter towards the end of the book containing his analysis of what he found. Unsurprisingly 4/5s of the multicides in history were wars, which cause by far the most deaths: 315 million. Half of the top 100 multicides took place in the last 200 years and 1/3 in the last century. 85% of the people killed in wars are civilians. And of the top 100 multicides, 13 were primarily religious. As for the number of mass deaths caused by all religions over recorded history, it came to 47 million out of the total of 455 million people killed since 480 BC. Or about 10%.

Which means 90% of the mass deaths caused by humans are motivated by other things, like institutional oppression (141 million), Communism (67 million), ethnic multicides (74 million), and economics or greed (154 million). Still the fact that anyone was killed over religion, especially when one or both sides claim to be Christian, is appalling.

Because Jesus denounced it. He told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44), to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and to put away the sword (Matthew 26:52). That last he said to his disciples when they tried to stop his being arrested. This is not how his followers were to act because his kingdom is not from this world. (John 18:36) And when his disciples tried to stop someone doing good in Jesus' name because he wasn't part of their group, Jesus said, “Don't forbid him, for he who is not against us is for us.” And when 2 of the disciples wanted to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village that refused to receive them, Jesus rebuked them. (Luke 9:49-56) It goes against the Spirit of his mission. Jesus came to save people, not destroy them. It's weird how many so-called “Christians” forget—or worse—ignore this!

Every Sunday, and it should be every day, we say the prayer Jesus taught us and it clearly asks God to forgive us as we forgive others. Jesus said, “For if you forgive others their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your heavenly Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15) The whole idea behind following Jesus is to become more Christlike. And Jesus forgave people.

As C.S. Lewis said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive...” And he added, “...as we had during the war.” The war he was referring to is the Second World War, the number 1 multicide of all time, with a death toll of 66 million people: 20 million solders and 46 million civilians, including 6 million Jews. Lewis noted that in the wake of what the Nazis had done, any talk of forgiveness was “greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible.” Yet Jesus said we are to do it.

Lewis points out that we are to love our neighbor as we do ourselves. He says, “Well, how exactly do I love myself? Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently, 'Love your neighbor' does not mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive.'” God is not commanding us to somehow change our natural emotions. Loving others is not about feelings but actions. We are to treat others the way we wish to be treated and the way we in fact treat ourselves.

We don't like everything about ourselves. We know that we have thought and said and done some bad things, and we have neglected to do things we really should have done. These are things that we would have a really hard time admitting to and telling others about. But we usually forgive ourselves. And part of loving others as ourselves is forgiving them just as we forgive ourselves.

Some people do have trouble forgiving themselves but Lewis points out that if God forgives us, we should forgive ourselves. Otherwise we are acting as if we are a higher tribunal than God. But this brings up a good point. Forgiving something is not excusing it. It is not pretending it isn't bad either. If your child does something bad, you continue to love your child, even if what they did was terrible. If your child has committed a crime to support an addiction, you should neither reject the child nor condone either the crime or the addiction. Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the Columbine shooters, has spoken and written about her struggle to understand how her son whom she loved could become a mass murderer. Contrary to popular belief it is possible to love the sinner and hate the sin. We do it all the time.

And especially when it comes to ourselves. And so we aren't being asked not to hate cruelty or betrayal or rage or other harmful things in others. But, Lewis says, we are to “hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.” Lewis concludes, “That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.”

Again look to Jesus. We know how strongly he felt about adultery (Matthew 5:28) but he nevertheless saved the woman caught in adultery from being stoned and said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” (John 8:3-11) To the murderer crucified next to him, who admitted he himself deserved this punishment but not Jesus and asked to be remembered, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43) He asked God to forgive those who crucified him. (Luke 23:34) When Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, “ he meant it.

But, wait a minute, you might say. In the Old Testament God doesn't always come across as merciful. What about the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah? And today's reading immediately precedes that story. We usually focus on how persistent Abraham is when pleading with God about sparing the innocent in those two towns. We often forget that God is offering no resistance to Abraham's arguments. He lets Abraham whittle down the number of righteous required for God to withhold executing justice upon the towns. God agrees that he will spare them if as few as ten righteous people live in those two places. If anything this shows how merciful God is. He will not destroy the majority who are wicked for the sake of the minority who live justly. Similarly Jesus says his followers are to save the world, very much like salt preserves meat. (Matthew 5:13)

We see this in Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds. When a farmer finds that an enemy has sewn weeds among his wheat, his workers want to pull them up. “But he said, 'No, since in gathering the weeds you may uproot the wheat with them.'” Jesus later explains that the wheat are the people of God's kingdom and the weeds evil people. They will be sorted at the harvest at the end of the world and not before. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

Our lives are so intertwined that if God wiped out every person who does evil, many a good person would lose a parent, a child, a sibling, or a spouse. And it would preclude those people repenting and changing their ways. Except the truth is we all have sinned and fall short of God's standards. (Romans 3:23) None of us are saved by our own efforts but by God's grace and our trusting response to him. Ironically, the fact that people don't just drop dead when they do evil is a sign of God's mercy.

So our passage from the very first book of the Bible demonstrates God's mercy. Unfortunately the people of Sodom were not merciful to God's messengers. In the story we see them breach the rules of hospitality to strangers, to put it mildly. And while people focus exclusively on that, the sexual component of their oppression, the initial reason they got God's attention, the reason why there was an outcry against the town, is revealed in Ezekiel, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50) Their arrogance and their neglect of the poor were the main charges against them.

Today's Psalm says, “Though the Lord be high, he cares for the lowly; he perceives the haughty from afar.” Psalm 10 says, “Lord, you have heard the request of the oppressed; you make them feel secure because you listen to their prayer. You defend the fatherless and oppressed, so that mere mortals may no longer terrorize them.” (Psalm 10:17-18) Psalm 72 says, “He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.” (Psalm 72:4) Which does not look good for folks like those in Sodom since, as it says in Proverbs, “The one who shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and will not be answered.” (Proverbs 21:13)

God is both just and merciful. We are to be as well. But since we have so many self-appointed righteous people, who can't wait to dole out what they define as justice, if you must err, err on the side of mercy and forgiveness. As Paul writes, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord. On the contrary: 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:17-21) The part about burning coals may be a reference to an Egyptian ritual where a guilty person carried a basin of glowing coals on their head to show their repentance. But the gist is that by returning good for evil you may make the person burn with shame over their conduct towards you. And in an honor/shame society that is a big motivation for them to change.

Kindness and mercy have changed many a heart. Blues musician Daryl Davis, a black man, has collected 200 Ku Klux Klan robes. He has befriended that many Klansman and once they get to know him, they realize their hate is misguided and eventually quit the Klan and give him their robes. He often begins by saying, “How can you hate me if you don't know me?” Most of them have never sat down and talked with a black person. He says “when 2 enemies are talking, they're are not fighting.” And hopefully they are learning that the other person is a human being as well with the same needs and hopes.

Anger and revenge are the easy way out. It's easier to slam folks than to understand them. It's easier to hit them in the mouth than hear them out. It's easier to judge people and hate people than to get to know them and to show them mercy. But Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy...Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:7, 9) He never said it would be easy. He said it's what we have to do if we truly want to be like him. And that's the whole point of following Jesus: to be like the person who embodied God's love and mercy for all.