We are one week away from an election in the United States, and my emotions exist along a spectrum of hope and dread. This is not just any election, this is defining choice about the values that will guide Americans as the world is renewed after Covid has all but closed it down.
While no one would wish for Covid, I am grateful for the giant pause it has created. The path we were on was not sustainable. Four years ago, Americans made a mistake. Succumbing to the worst parts of our humanity, the country looked past the red flags and choose a façade.
The question I am left asking now that many Americans have voted, or will vote in the coming week, is what defines Americans now?
The question I am left asking now that many Americans have voted, or will vote in the coming week, is what defines Americans now?
The temptation is to offer ideas like hope, progress or even healing; but I do not believe we are there yet. After so much woundedness, I think the more realistic options are justice or mercy. At least those are the words most people will use for ideas that are much more about punishment or forgiveness.
Cornel West so famously said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” If this is true, then perhaps justice and mercy are not such opposites after all. Perhaps justice IS mercy, and mercy IS justice?
Cardinal Walter Kasper writes in his book on the subject, “Mercy is not opposed to justice. Mercy does not suspend justice; rather, mercy transcends it. Mercy is the fulfillment of justice.”[i]
We also know this as restorative justice. As a teacher, I am always frustrated by our response to the kids who misbehaved the most: rather than help them better participate and belong in the classroom, we cast them out in suspension or expulsion. We do the same things to adults in the American prison systems.
There is a helpful remedy in the Bible. Under the law of Moses a person with leprosy was banned (Leviticus 13:44-46), but Jesus centuries later and said punishment is not the answer. The goal is healing and so Jesus doesn’t only cure their illness, he helps the sick person reintegrate into the community (Mark 1:40-45).
Jesus makes clear that there is a difference between curing and healing; we can cure the wound, but healing only comes when we learn how to belong. After this election, we will long for healing, but we must first learn how to belong – to our country and to each other – once again. This accountability almost certainly demands justice for all that has transpired, but one way looks like a punishment while the other looks like forgiveness. One is a focus on what has happened while the other is focused on what is now possible.
Is it so bad to want offenders to be held accountable? In his own reflection on this question, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser writes, “All that worry that somebody might be getting away with something and all that anxiety that God might not be an exacting judge, suggest that we, like the older brother of the prodigal son, might be doing a lot of things right, but are missing something important inside of ourselves.[ii]
The invitation of Jesus is to practice justice in such a manner that God still has a chance to be God. The role of the Christian is to hold others accountable without limiting the opportunity for God to encounter the soul of those we meet. If the Christian can create such an invitation to relationship, then justice is mercy, and mercy is justice.
Should Christians be able to demonstrate this, then perhaps they can also begin to heal the pain so many have caused by aligning themselves with a leader who did so much harm to so many people.
[i] Kasper, Walter. Mercy. Kardinal Walter Kasper Instituts für Theologie, Ökumene and Spiritualiät., 2013. Trans. Paulist Press, 2014.
[ii] http://ronrolheiser.com/our-longing-for-gods-justice/#.XDKDui0ZM1h