More Thoughts on Mercy

I’ve written a couple of posts making reference to the healing revival going on in Lakeland, Florida. You can read them here and here to get some background for this post. But for the time being, I want to focus some attention on a statement I made in the last post I wrote about it:

“An act of mercy does not constitute an act of validation.”

I made this statement to say that just because God shows up and works miracles, it doesn’t necessarily mean He approves of everything that is happening. He doesn’t do things like that because we deserve them, but because He loves us. I believe God is displaying His grace and mercy in Lakeland, despite the churchy hype that we church folks so often add to the mix.

But the statement above is much farther-reaching than how we explain a move of God. It really has much deeper and much more personal implications for us.

Despite what the Bible teaches, many of us still struggle with being task-oriented in our faith. We believe if we do things right, we please God and He rewards us; if we don’t, He is displeased and He either punishes us or withholds His blessing. Thus, when we receive a blessing or see someone else get blessed, we take it as God’s approval and validation, as though someone had to do something to get that blessing. On the other hand, when we see someone get blessed that we feel does not deserve it, we might get angry because our sense of justice has been violated.

I don’t discount the principle of cause-and-effect at all here; but seeing our faith only through that lens does not take grace and mercy into account.

In my life, regrettably, I have withheld myself, my affection, and my kindness from many people whose behavior was bad (sometimes deplorable); but I didn’t withhold these things out of anger or to punish, but simply because I was afraid that any act of kindness on my part would be seen as affirming or rewarding their bad behavior. I somehow thought if they sensed my displeasure, they would change.

Not only is this messed-up thinking, but it doesn’t really work. Someone who feels less-loved because of their actions tends to act out even more. But what does Scripture say? “The kindness of God leads us to repentance.”

An act of mercy does not constitute an act of validation. Just because I am nice to someone, do something kind, or show mercy, it does not mean I approve of that person’s behavior. It’s just mercy, and mercy has nothing to do with whether that person deserves it. Coming to understand this is freeing me to experience love and compassion for people that I haven’t had before.

Now, I know there has to be balance. I know mercy can be corrupted to become enablement, and I am not suggesting that we do things that enable others toward destructive behavior. The balance to this is that true love does what is best for someone else, not just what they want, or what would make us feel good. But there are so many instances where we can be consistently merciful and kind to someone without enabling them. I am coming to understand that for the most part, my act of mercy does not give someone permission to do something they were going to do anyway, nor will my withholding of mercy stop them from doing it.

Many of us have children who do not always behave as we would like. That does not mean we don’t love them or do them good. We approve of the child herself, even if we do not approve of her behavior. Why would we think our Father God is any different toward His children?

Donald Miller has some cool thoughts on this in one of the chapters in his book Blue Like Jazz. It would be worth checking out sometime.