#mercy and justice

[spiritualdirections]

I thought this might be of general interest.

I gave a presentation at the 23rd Annual Conference of Notre Dame's De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture a few months back, and someone asked me to work the talk into a full paper. I've just finished that, and posted it on Academia.edu here.

Here's the abstract:

"In recent years, important voices in the Vatican and the Synod of Bishops have drawn a contrast between the Church’s doctrine on the one hand, and what is “merciful” or “pastoral” on the other. The doctrines are praised as true and just, and no argument is brought forward to change them in themselves. However, it is argued, when the purportedly praiseworthy doctrines are “applied” to “real, actual, concrete situations”, merciful and pastoral considerations should lead the Church to allow the faithful to not practice the doctrines. This vision of mercy and the pastoral seems to be associating mercy with equity or prudence, which makes the general rules of justice more determinate in concrete situations to better serve justice. Instead, it actually associates mercy with leniency, with not holding people to the standards of justice and what is right. There are insuperable problems for these ways of understanding mercy. Mercy is best understood as the virtue that seeks to right wrongs, so that mercy does not set aside justice, but rather has justice as its end and seeks to bring about justice in a fallen world. The merciful and pastoral approach to sinners is not to lower the standards for them, but to help them rise to meet those standards. Only a mercy that maintains and upholds the high expectations of justice promotes the dignity of those to whom it is shown."

[geminiagentgreen]

I'm still reading through 2 Samuel and I just gotten through all of chapter 12. Man, this chapter is so bittersweet.

Previously we are seeing David's utter success as the Lord is with him and David is with the Lord, yet how swiftly David moves to sin and what sins he commits in such a short string of time. I say this not to shame a man greater than I - Father God knows I have committed atrocities against Him myself - but to recognize how scary and how frankly easy it is to fall. Never the less, the Lord had taken away his sin (2 Sam. 12:13, which shows something significant of how salvation is truly in the Lord's hands for there was nothing David had done prior to Nathan's message of cleansing), and would go on to bless him and Bathsheba with Solomon/Jedidiah ("loved by God"). But we also, of course, have the tragedy of David's sin play out in the week long dying of his son. A powerful punishment, a poignant message, and the more I think about it all I can really think of is the Cross.

Father God, I thank you for your Word, I thank you for both history and living text that I may learn of what was and what is. I pray that I would have a heart like David's, and that I would not see myself as better or more safe but honestly as a man forever indebted to your love, grace, and mercy. Kill all pride within me, for there is nothing of yours I can or should take credit for, and make me useful to you.

In Jesus's name I praise and I pray, Father God your will be done with my life.

[judahmaccabees]

[phantasm-echo]

Echo with a laser canon arm capable of causing mass destruction??? Don’t mind if I do… (I rewatched young justice a while ago and mercy’s arm really inspired me lmao)

[mercifulmoon]

Kon visiting Tim in that time when he gave up Robin is real in my heart

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Huge fan of God's salvation plan being "here are the rules I created them we have to follow them there's no justice without them. However. Here is also a loophole I created which entirely fixes things."

[tales-of-the-ghost-zone]

DP X DC crossover prompt

Sam and Tucker, thanks to living in Amity Park and being overshadowed and controlled by ghosts so many time, had become very liminal. Until an accident while trying to stop the newest ghost enemy led to the two of them becoming halfa’s. Sam’s ghost form looks like what she looked like during the whole Undergrowth thing. And Tucker’s ghost form looks like his King Tuck design.

After a reveal gone wrong, Danny, Sam, and Tucker flee Amity Park. The trio run away to Gotham, and using money Sam managed to snag from her account before they left, they buy a nice sized building right in the middle of Crime Alley. They decide to turn it into a bookshop and cafe. There’s a garden/greenhouse attached to the back end of the building where Sam grows all her plants and herbs. Tucker has his own tech room in the basement alongside Danny’s tiny lab space. They live together in the apartment above the bookshop/cafe.

One day while out on a walk, Danny stumbles across two tiny twin half formed baby ghost cores. They’re nothing more than tiny little balls of glowing light at the moment. Baby ghosts that are just starting to form but are nothing more than cores at the moment. But they seem to be slowly fading. Danny refuses to let them fade away into nothing. He scoops them up, infuses them with some of his ectoplasm to get them going, and then shoved them into his chest for safe keeping and so that they can be close to his own core which starts slowly feeding them energy.

Danny rushes back to the shop and drags Sam and Tucker to the upstairs apartment and shows him the baby ghost cores he’s found. The three all agree that they’re going to help these cores develop into actual ghosts. They switch off on who carry’s the ghost cores around. Some days it’s Danny. Some days it’s Tucker. And some days it’s Sam. Each of them feeding the cores a little bit of their ectoplasm to help them grow.

One of the cores feels distinctly female and has a purplish blue glow to it. The three start jokingly calling her violet. The other core has a distinctly male feel to it. It’s an orangish red and has a small crack along one side of it. Danny jokingly said one time how he (the baby core) kind of looked like Nemo’s egg at the beginning of Finding Nemo and ever since they’ve been calling him Nemo.

The two cores have been developing very slowly, both seemingly unable to absorb the needed ectoplasm, to form into full ghosts, quickly. The trio is fine with this, they can be patient, and wait to meet their twins.

Then one day there’s some kind of massive ghost attack. Maybe a cult or something attempted to summon the ghost king but messed up the summoning and accidentally summoned something else. The Justice League try and fight the thing, but they’re no match for this ghost monstrosity. And the JLD aren’t available to help for whatever reason. The trio decides to step in and help. They kick the crap out of the ghost pretty easily and send it back to the ghost zone. Then Danny, in his King Phantom garb (crown of fire, whispy white fire like hair, a regal looking version of his hazmat suit, the ring of rage on one finger, and a cape around his shoulders, the outside being pure white but the inside looking like the vastness of space) approaches the cult and rebukes them, telling them how even if they had managed to summon him he never would have helped them take over the world.

After that the trio become members of the Justice League. Thanks to some of Danny’s previous time travel shenanigans, and Danny being the ghost king, and Sam and Tucker his consorts/mates(?) the Justice League all think that the trio are ancient eldritch ghost gods.

And then one day when the trio are in the Watch Tower with the rest of the League their twin baby ghost cores come up. Maybe it was time to switch out who was carrying them, and mid meeting or lunch or whatever, Danny just reaches into his chest, pulls out two small glowing orbs. He cradles them close to his chest for a moment, looking at them lovingly, and whispering something soft to them in ghost speak. Then hands them over to Sam, who does the whole cradle them close and whisper softly in ghost speak before shoving them right into her chest.

They look up from this to see the whole League staring at them wide eyed and confused. Danny just casually explains that those are their children but they’re still forming so the trio needs to keep them close to their cores to help them grow, but they like to switch up everyday who carry’s them. Every member of the Justice League becomes super protective of the trio after this. They see it as the three essentially being pregnant (sort of), and they don’t always know which one of them is carrying the baby ghost. So best to just be protective of all three. The trio finds this kind of amusing and a touch bit sweet.

When the twin baby cores finally develop into actual baby ghosts, the two kind of look like a mixture between Danny, Sam, and Tucker’s ghost forms. Though Violet has dark purple hair and eyes and Nemo has bright orangish red hair and eyes.

[winter2468]

Reading Ancillary Mercy rn and Seivarden has really been on the journey of all time. In a coma. Woke up. Whole family dead. Only person who recognises her is her former company car, who's decided to go and shoot the president. Not kill, just shoot. The car shoots the president several times. The president gives the company car her own company car. Seivarden can come along. Seivarden is in love with her former company car. The company car never liked her. Her company car is now in love with another company car. The company cars are openly discussing this in front of her, including Seivarden's own feelings for one of the company cars. Sequence of events of all time.

[olrinarts]

cotltober Day 19: Reveal the True Form (happens a few minutes before day 17: corruption)

1 / 2 / 3 / ficlet conclusion

Turns out day 17 wasn't what it looked like on the surface

In other words, my brain gave me context for it and here we are:

in essence, the Lamb & the Red Crown cooked up the plan to 'betray' Narinder as a last ditch effort to spare both him AND the Lamb, and afterwards, once they could explain, the Lamb intended to abdicate the Crown back to him. Unfortunately (and reasonably, in a way), Narinder took it extremely personally, to the point of remaining with the cult but pointedly refusing to have literally anything else to do with the Lamb or the Crown, both of whom he blames for it

This leaves the Lamb stuck as the God of Death, which they are not equipped to handle, and the only person who could give them any real help would pay an arm and a leg to kill them personally (or so they believe). They can't do the job, and though the Red Crown hates it, it's the job of the Crown to make sure its domain is in capable hands

Meanwhile, Narinder's been in the cult, seeing what the Lamb built for him, and how much they'd clearly intended to have him take over - and that means something went wrong. So he already suspects the Crown was behind the betrayal, though he believes the Lamb must have been deceived too, as they were clearly as devoted as he'd believed they were before the betrayal

The only way the Red Crown can see to get Narinder to take possession of it again is to trick him into it, so the Lamb agrees to let the Crown take over so it can fight Narinder and intentionally lose, even though both of them know doing so is going to essentially unmake the Lamb's soul, the way it would have been if the sacrifice had succeeded

Narinder realises shit's about to go down last minute, but he doesn't get there in time

and that's where we are now :)

[blueberry-puffin]

no denying how repeatedly linked harrow and mercymorn are (tricky & wretched of john to entrust harrow to the person who also had a nun in their equation, and tag ianthe onto someone connected to franticide) but ortus’s declaration towards the end of the book applies more to mercymorn than to harrow — who do we blame when the one we lost is both the victim and the killer? where does that hate go, can we really stomach it? these words a bullet that grazed but ultimately missed harrow, because she could never allow herself to hate gideon again. so she hates the person hating whom is second nature, self blame as familiar as breathing. but mercymorn had resisted leading that emotion to its source, and she lived beside this grief's river mouth for 10k years, and she held that emotion close, but slightly to the side.

mercymorn, shrill, critical, unlikeable pink haired mercymorn rattles my brain because female rage can sometimes work like a bargain. scraps and empties, bruses and falsehoods, anything to placate, to pacify, to pin that rage in place for a little while longer. was there really no other way? was our mission truly worth it? did you love cristabel?

and there was another way, and the mission was not worth it. and god never liked cristabel. the second time she died, mercymorn was there to pick up the pieces, but the first time god left her body and soul alone, bloody and shattered on the cold floor. did that mercymorn, - not mercymorn the first, but the first mercymorn - find cristabel? did she go into that room where he'd left her because she checked for her everywhere? did she go on to die herself for john with ignorance or radical acceptance?

the unloveable mercymorn dooming all the nine planets because she was an atheist in love with a nun; someone who loved god well enough to die for him twice, and did not love mercymorn well enough to live for her once.

and god did not even like her.

[spiritualdirections]

St. Cyprian: God’s “faithfulness” is his mercy, and his justice

The Office of Readings for today includes a point that I did not emphasize enough in my book on Mercy. 

I did emphasize a point which even many Old Testament experts miss: in the Old Testament, the word for God’s mercy (hesed) just means his faithfulness to Israel. This is often neglected in translations of the Old Testament, where the same word “hesed” is translated as ‘mercy’ sometimes, sometimes ‘love’, sometimes as ‘steadfast love’, sometimes ‘faithfulness’, and sometimes even ‘covenental love.’ I think they should always translate ‘hesed’ as mercy. 

The reason that people don’t is that they misunderstand the meaning of mercy. They think that mercy means “leniency” or “not punishing someone” or “compassion”, and often the context of the Old Testament use of “hesed” makes it clear that “hesed” does not mean any of those. I argue in the book that the central meaning of “hesed” is that God is faithful to his part of the covenant (that he will be Israel’s God) even when Israel breaks its part of the covenant by following other gods. Israel can always return to God, because God is “hesed”--steadfast and faithful and patient in his continuing to make the covenant available to Israel, but conditioned upon Israel’s repentence. 

But this is just what mercy means. ‘Mercy’ does not mean a deviation from justice (as ‘leniency’ does), so that justice and mercy are opposed, but rather that 1) God always wants Israel to keep the covenant, which is what it means to be just; 2) God always offers Israel a chance to repent and returh to the covenant after they sin; which means 3)) God always shows solidarity with his people even when they sin and break the covenant, which is what it means to be steadfast or faithful. All of these are aspects of mercy, I argue.

What struck me this morning was that St. Cyprian, in his Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, at the end of chapter 22, notes that this is also true in the New Testament. I wish I had emphasized this in my book. Here’s what St. Cyprian says:

“John also in his epistle [1 John 1:8-9] admonishes in these words: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we acknowledge our sins, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.’ In his epistle he has combined both, that we should both entreat for our sins and that we should obtain indulgence [indulgentiam] when we entreat. Therefore, he said that the Lord was faithful to forgive sins, preserving the faith of His promise, because He who taught us to pray for our debts and our sins promised that [a Father’s] mercy [paternam misericordiam] and forgiveness would follow.”

In commenting on “Forgive us our trespasses,” Cyprian calls attention to 1 John 1:9, that Jesus is being both faithful and just when he forgives our sins. The justice of God’s forgiveness comes from his being faithful to his promises--i.e., to his covenant:

Jesus promises us that if we ask for forgiveness, that God the Father would show us mercy every time. 

To keep one’s promises is simple justice. 

Thus, steadfast faithfulness to one’s promise is also just. 

In this case, the promise is to be forgiving and merciful if someone asks for this. 

So, for God to act mercifully is thus to keep his promise of mercy, 

which is to keep a promise, 

which is just.

Cyprian here helpfully shows how justice, mercy, and faithfulness all work together. This is the same notion of covenental mercy as in the OId Testament.

A lot of people assume that the God of the Old Testament is about “strict” justice and the God of the New Testament is about mercy. St. Cyprian’s reading of John’s first epistle shows that God is merciful, in the exact same sense, in both.

[a-side-character]

I am once again thinking about Breq and Mercy of Kalr.

Specifically, I'm thinking about how and why their relationship is so different from any other relationship in this series, and what that means for them as characters.

I'm thinking about Breq's response to being told by other people, often people she likes or respects, that they don't see her as an ancillary. Because they (for the most part) mean it as a compliment, a way of validating her and expressing that they care about or think highly of her. But she never takes it as such, and is always made uncomfortable by it.

Because she IS an ancillary, and by using "I don't think anyone here sees you as an ancillary" as a compliment, or as a reason why her life matters and she deserves to be taken care of, only furthers her belief that what she IS is wrong, is inherently less deserving.

I'm thinking about how the only time people use it/its pronouns - the identity she used for 2,000 years and continues to use to refer to her cousins and fellow AI - to refer to her is when they're trying to disrespect or demean her. How her crew looks at her, horrified, and says "sir, none of us would ever call you it" while continuing to use those same pronouns to refer to their own ship. It shows her that the only reason people think they care about her is because they're too caught up in the version of her she pretends to be (human, Radchaai, she), however wrong that viewpoint may be.

I'm thinking about how, in Ancillary Mercy when Breq breaks down and repeats the line "ships don't love other ships", Mercy of Kalr responds with "ships love people who could be captains." It doesn't say 'well that's okay, because I don't see you as a ship', it doesn't treat her as some exception to the supposed rule that ships and ancillaries aren't people worthy of love, it tells her 'you, Breq, Justice of Toren, One Esk Nineteen, YOU are my captain, and I can't help but love you.'

I'm just. thinking

[scaredforboomboom]

[cassyblue]

I made a imperial radch tumblr community. I dont know how this community stuff works. But it's a companion to the radchdome 3.0 public fan server. (invite: https://discord.gg/WNMwPQSD)

🐢🐢🐢-> Radchome Tumblr Community <-🐢 🐢🐢

EDIT: pls comment for an add bc apparently I gotta do it manually.

[periwinkla]

Did I add further ridiculousness? .... Yes.

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

Honestly I think the league used to fucking CHUNK baby Dick like a football because a. they could and b. he loved it.