The Line Between

Most people will overlook an offense, no one can or should overlook an injustice. An offense is an injury, an injustice is an insult to injury. And injustice should never be overlooked, as its perpetual nature will bring havoc on the world. To turn a blind eye is to become party with it, and therefore align yourself as a complicit instrument with its destruction.

Miroslav Volf, Yale divinity professor, former ambassador to the UN, and Croatian genocide survivor once said- that it isn’t until your village is burned down, your mothers and daughters raped, and your fathers and sons of gunned down in front of you- that you realize that someone has the pay. In the end, it will either be you, by doing the daily grueling work of forgiveness, or it will be them when you enact your vengeance upon them. However make no mistake about it: someone will pay. When the injustice is real, so is the debt.”
At the very same time Volf says, as a devout Christian that, “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community if humans and myself from the community of sinners.”

So here is his balance: To favor mercy to the point where you disregard justice is to not really value mercy at all. It is nothing but sentimentality that paves the road for future victims. Where is the mercy in that? However to favor justice to the point where you disregard mercy is no true justice at all. It is tyranny- how does anyone ever learn without ever failing? Where would that leave anyone? We all fail, and to carry out justice selectively, and not objectively, is to carry out an injustice.

Justice and mercy have to coincide, there has to be balance. If you favor justice over mercy – seek mercy. If you favor mercy over justice- seek justice. But never disregard one for the other. For both are rendered meaningless without the complementary nature of the other.

What are your thoughts on this?
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