A Merciful Response to Mercy

“A gentleman is someone who tries to make everyone feel comfortable around him.” (This applies to gentlewomen too. A friend said this to me.)

A few months ago, a few days after Easter, I was in a comic book store. While I was there, I overheard a conversation that a 30-ish-year-old customer was having with the store owner about Easter at his house. Evidently, the two of them were on familiar terms (I was a bit jealous). But their conversation, which was mostly the 30-ish-year-old customer talking, piqued my interested. It went something like this:

“My mother always makes us pray before our meal on Easter and then spends some time talking about Easter. Every Easter. Knowing full well what I think. How could she be any more disrespectful? She knows full well that I do not agree with her. It's so aggravating!”

“Sounds like it.”

“So this year, I resolved to myself that she wouldn't be able to get away with her dogmatism. So, after she said her bit, I stood up, thanked my mom, and said ‘Now, a few of us don’t share this same belief, so I’ll go ahead and talk about what I find important about this holiday.’ I talked about peace and brotherhood and celebrating humanity (I forget the actually traits that he listed).”

“Good for you!”

“She just gets me so angry sometimes. It’s like ‘Hello? Some of us think differently than you. You don’t need to shove your views down our throats.’”

I’m not the best story teller, so thank you for reading through my rendition of the events. Hopefully, it can at least put an image in your mind. I think that it is a common image of children being frustrated with their parents'  beliefs and feeling an inability to express themselves. All-in-all, I understand a desire to wanting to be fully known, but I find what this 30-ish-year-old to have been very unmerciful in expressing his desire.

Most people think of mercy as withholding punishment from someone who deserves it, which is many times what it is. But there is a day-to-day mercy that looks different from this. It is the mercy that allows a person to do what is normal and what is good when they could be cruel with no ramifications.

When you are in a position of power and doing bad things because you can, you are called merciless. We praise rulers for doing good things with their power, but it is rare that we praise them for having restraint. Yet just letting people behave the way that they want when you can control them in certainly an act of mercy. In the instance of a conversation, it is merciful to behave well and try and share information with your fellow man instead of dominating a conversation with your own views. It is the difference between sharing yourself and forcing yourself upon others.

Perhaps the mother in the conversation above is a merciless tyrant. She rules her house with an iron-fist and does not let any view stand other than her religious convictions. Perhaps she ruthlessly condemns her atheist son for his sinful beliefs and tries to force piety upon him. This tyrannical picture is not uncommon, and herson is trying to strike a blow for liberty. But tyrants are often replaced by other tyrants.

But that isn’t how she sounded to me. She sounded like an aged lady with a warm glowing smile who grew up in her religion and accepts it to be true. The type of person who shares her religion out of a love for it, and who probably spends her nights with her Bible praying for her son because she believes that her God brings true happiness and contentment.

If that is the case, her son is merciless indeed.

How dare he try and confront and fix an old woman’s simple, deep, and time-honored religion. What he sees as being oppressive thought is her trying to share her joy, and she does this with no malice and with no sense of force. Out of her love, she wishes to share. Out of his selfishness and insecurity, he wishes to silence her. Her love shares power with him so he has permission to get up and speak in her home; he is a guest in her house and she, the host, has every right to not let him speak. Yet what he does with her gift is try and smash what was sacred to his mother because, like any insecure fool, any viewpoint that is clearly stated and opposite to his own is a threat.

He thinks he is clever because he got away with what he said, but it was his mother’s mercy that allowed him to say it. He responded mercilessly to the merciful.

After he gave his speech at dinner, this is how I imagine his mother’s reaction. She was probably just smiling and happy that she got to hear her son speak. She would lean over and talk to him, trying to find out more about why he loves Easter as an atheist. Having every right to pick a fight with him for his disrespectful tone, she would let him leave at the end of the day, smile, and sincerely tell him that he is welcome to come at any time. Then, when she is alone in her home, she would pray for him, saying something like this:

“Lord, thank you for my son, who is made in your image. Thank you that he can find joy in Easter, and I pray that his joy can become stronger by finding it in you.”