Justice and Mercy

The end of a semester always gives me a chance to think about theology!  That is meant partly as a flip comment and partly it is an honest reflection on the process of being a religion professor who, therefore, thinks about things in theological terms.  What I would like to do in these few paragraphs is lay out my life in both of those worlds---my life as a teacher and my life trying to be a guy on a spiritual path with God.

One of the things about teaching that I have struggled with for decades now is the whole grading thing.  Although most folks likely seeing grading as the means of evaluating students, I choose to see them as different, but related.  I actually operated under a system once in which we did not give grades.  We agreed we did not philosophically agree with grades.  But then I watched the group decide we had to figure out who passed and who did not.  Furthermore, we felt like we wanted to honor somehow those who did well.  I laughed because effectively we created our own system of grading without calling it that!  And so, I am resigned for the time being to A, B, C and so forth.

I am more intrigued about evaluation.  A key issue for evaluating is deciding what you want to evaluate.  Do you want to evaluate ability to memorize details?  We could approach evaluation in many ways.  I am most interested in what students learn and how they have learned to think.  As with most things, students are not all equal in the beginning.  Some already have fairly well-developed skills.  Others are nearly at 0 and anything advanced is huge.  Which should get an A?  

As I near the end of the semester, I already think I can evaluate fairly well whether students have learned.  But I also want to be “fair” when I read their papers and whatever else I assign.  Fairness is a measure of justice.  Sometimes justice is a matter of equality and that is easier to measure.  Fairness requires some judgment and then justification.  Faculty talk about being objective and that surely is laudable.  But I am not sure I can park all my biases when I am reading a paper.  

On the surface, every student wants me to be fair.  But then I have to deal with those who finally realize they don’t want fairness.  They want me to “give” them something, if they were honest, they likely know they don’t deserve.  If I have been lazy, had problems, etc., I may actually not be able to do very well.  For me to be just---to give them what they deserve---will be bad news to them.  They wanted an A, and I gave them a C.  It even gets picky.  I give them an A- and they are bent out of shape, since they felt like they deserved an A!

In fact, they really want mercy.  Mercy, like grace, is a gift.  Mercy means that we actually are treated better than we actually deserve.  It is the second chance, a new start---all those ways of describing this phenomenon.  I certainly am capable of mercy.  In fact, I sometimes think I am too quick to be merciful.  And that is the rub.  When do I stay with simple justice and when do I move to mercy as more appropriate than justice was in the moment?

This is where it is easy to move to theology.  Thinking in terms of analogy, God now becomes the professor!  And life is like our semester.  I realize in my own life, I am near the end of the semester.  Finals are coming and I will be given my life’s grade.  There is some anxiety, since I know I have not been perfect.  Will God be just with me?  Or is there any reason for hoping there may some mercy in store for me?  Now I feel very much like the student!

Let’s develop this further.  In the first instance, this scenario assumes there is a final reckoning.  I will get a final grade and you will, too.  Traditionally for Christians, these final grades are talked about as heaven and hell.  “Will you make it or not,” becomes a loaded question.  If God operates purely in terms of justice, I may be in trouble if heaven is my aspiration.  I find myself hoping for---or pleading for---mercy.  “Have mercy on me, O Lord,” is language of the Psalms that I understand and appreciate.  I know many folks think in these terms.  And those who have a particular theology feels pretty sure they are going to get the A---heaven is guaranteed.  I am not in the camp.

In fact, I think maybe the semester of life is not configured that way.  What if God is actually a much better professor than I am?  And what if God is working in a system that makes much more sense than my system?  Can I imagine a situation in which it is not justice vs mercy?  I have a feeling that God is evaluating more than God judging.  Maybe it is not actually a passing/failing life we are living.  

I have a sense that mercy is the bottom line, since I do believe that God is love.  God is always love; that is God’s nature and God can’t be anything other than loving.  Mercy is love in action.  And mercy is often at work trying to get us who are lacking and falling short to learn and grow and become more loving.  

And the most merciful thought of all.  Heaven is not something we get to; we are already in it.  Mercifully, we are all already in it.  We just have a great deal to learn in order to start living lives befitting heaven.  Justice is the loving work necessary to grow us all into heavenly beings.  That’s good news!