JUSTICE AND MERCY - Part 2

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  (Micah 6:8 NIV)

You can’t have one without the other. But just as we so often separate evangelism and social action, many in the Church today divide justice and mercy as well. Even worse, they secularize these holy terms. Conservatives seem to emphasize justice over mercy, then compound the problem by adopting the secular definition of justice, that is, punishing wrongdoers and seeing that everyone “gets his due.” So every man, woman, and child must carry his or her own weight -- no matter how heavy the odds against them -- as if poverty could only be God’s judgment and punishment for indolence.

Meanwhile, many a liberal latches onto mercy, believing it requires him to provide food, shelter, clothes, and entertainment for anyone who cannot provide for themselves. So justice and mercy have been divorced from one another, and Christians take up sides, choosing their church -- not to mention their political party -- according to a destructive dichotomy.

This false dichotomy between justice and mercy creates unhealthy extremes in our political and social policies in the United States. I think it is because believers have not stood in the gap. The church has too often bought into the secular definitions of these godly terms, thus ruining the possibility of a witness of what our Lord requires of us -- to do justice and to love mercy. Nor have we been a particularly convincing witness of “walking humbly” with our God. 

-- Charles Colson in an article entitled “Doing Justice, Loving Mercy, Walking Humbly” in “Discipleship Journal” No. 63

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