This is day four of twenty-one days of posts between January 10th and January 30th of 2021. Hello again to those who read previous days, and hello to those of you who may have stumbled across this post “out of order”. You should go back and read from Day 1, for a few reasons. It explains why I am doing this. It is the first one, and I may make reference to something in it in this post or a later one. It also has a list of each day’s post (once they are available) and you can jump to whatever topic you are interested in. Thanks for reading!
No, I’m not asking for mercy for myself. I am asking to be able to offer mercy to others, to not immediately jump to the worst possible explanation for any and all perceived slights against me, intentional or not. It is almost automatic these days. That car that just blew past me? They are trying to weasel their way into my lane when what they should have done is get in the lane earlier. They did it because they think they are more important than me and every other car on the road. Maybe they are…who knows?
But why must I jump to that conclusion? Why can’t they simply be commuting along and suddenly realize they need in the other lane? What if their destination just changed? What if they were distracted by some problem they were mentally chewing on and just realized they were closer to their turn than they thought? The saying goes, “assume stupidity before malice”. Hanlon’s razor is probably right the vast majority of the time. If I could make myself apply this rule of thumb more, I would certainly be in a better mood when I arrive at work.
Back to mercy. Not only am I an introvert, but depending upon the situation, I can be very judgmental. I violate Hanlon’s razor on a regular basis. I didn’t use to do this. I blame this (and a lot of other things) on COVID. This virus changed society in ways that were undoubtedly negative. The stress of dealing with pointless lockdowns, mask mandates, and the like took a toll not only on the banks accounts of small business owners and a huge swath of the working populace, but also on the emotional and mental state of people. It coarsened what interactions people did have. People were labeled by how they reacted to the virus. “Science denier”, “mask Nazi”, “Karens”, and other slurs caused conflict and strife. There was no mercy shown between opposing pools of thought.
I was not untouched by this madness. I began to ascribe malice to actions that I previously would write off as stupidity or ignorance. I’m hoping that this fast will return to me my more merciful tendencies. Knowing what I know about mercy, specifically that the merciful shall receive mercy (Matthew 5:7), I need to be able to show mercy to others, even if they have no idea that I am upset with them. I need to automatically assign to stupidity or ignorance the actions of others, instead of assuming they bear me ill will.
Why? Because James 2:13 says-
…judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
We are commanded to show mercy, so I offer this prayer to that end:
Lord, please remind me that I must show mercy for mercy to be shown to me. Help me to properly handle any situation where I could potentially show mercy, particularly toward those who actually do bear me ill will. You say blessed are the merciful. I want to be blessed by you, so show me how to automatically show mercy to others.
Thanks for reading!
Featured Image: Photo by Shelby Miller on Unsplash