It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore… 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

-William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I

A few years ago, when my father was briefly living with my brother and I, I asked him a question that I trusted him to answer with some clarity. I was taking my first steps into a protracted crisis of faith that would last years; I had ten thousand questions and was lurching my way through life in a fog of confusion, anger, and doubt. It has often been difficult to share these trials with other Christians who generally have little to struggle with in terms of faith; they have no doubts to begin with or their quandaries have been solved and were never quite severe. On the other hand, I have been met with other difficulties in unburdening myself to my secular friends. They do their best, counseling in good faith and sympathy, but they have not had that encounter with the Divine that makes the whole religious enterprise possible and have a confounding time relating to what I’m going through.

Yet although Pop is not a Christian, he has spiritual sensibilities. He has great criticism against organized religion, and yet also has enormous respect for many a religious precept and figure. He calls himself an “ecumenical agnostic.” To him, the two greatest human beings ever to live are Jesus and Buddha, and he believes our species would be much better off for following their direction. I held him to be able to bridge that gulf between the Christian and the… well, non-Christian.

So I put to him the following: “According to classical Western conceptions of God, God has necessary attributes, right? Omnipotence, omnipresence, justice, perfect goodness, etc. Without these attributes, God would not exist. At least goes this train of thought.” He nodded. “Well, let me ask you, is God necessarily merciful? Is He required, in order to exist, to have mercy?” He paused for a few moments, and then answered. “Well, if He isn’t, I don’t know how He could interact with the human race.”

The poignancy and wisdom of this statement stopped me in my tracks. It solidified the nebulous and various doubts I was having on the subject for some time. If there is a God – which I continue to believe there is – mercy must cascade from Him like a waterfall for us to even be aware of His existence, much less for Him to be so involved in the lives of multitudes of our churlish primate species. If God were not necessarily merciful, He would have engendered our extinction long ago, and with capacious justification.

But my father’s pithy insight has had me thinking off and on about matters closer to earth; specifically, as to what mercy is, its nature and necessity. How does this lauded but under-practiced virtue relate to human relations? That question might be somewhat answered by examining contexts where it is absent: those bereft of the receipt of mercy and those who habitually chose not to bestow it. For the former sort, think of those who freeze from being deprived of the gift of human warmth – the friendless and lonely, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the ignorant, the forgotten sick, and the prisoner abandoned to an earthly hell. In addition to their awful plights, they languish in inescapable misery without human contact and support. No one makes their way in the world without others helping them along the way, and certainly not the most disadvantaged amongst us. We are social creatures, created to realize ourselves in community; outside of the love of others, we wither and die. Consider the latter sort mentioned above: those who show no mercy. They are cold, proud, insensitive, bitter people. They laugh only to scorn, they speak only to demean, they act only to advance themselves and walk over others. They too eventually become lonely and cut off from humanity, and are to be pitied most of all, as their souls are in danger in this life and the next.

We might also regard those who lives are full of mercy, both in the giving and the receiving. Those who freely give often have an air of tranquility, and when even that is lacking, a palpable contentment. Their lives are ordered and their sense of purpose is clear, as they know that the goal of life is to serve others, and in doing so, they draw from great reservoirs of happiness and are indifferent to luxuries and extravagances, which are the remarkable result of living virtuously. Those who benefit from this by receiving such mercy are, no matter how downtrodden, consistently uplifted from their unfortunate circumstances or past mistakes so as to, in time, more fully realize themselves. Their necessities are met, their wounds are healed, their pursuits are accomplished, their happiness is attained; and all this being catalyzed by the helping hand of another. Let us not waste time with any talk of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps” (as it happens, that idiom first originated to satirize the concept of imaginary self-sufficiency); we humans were made to support each other and be supported. It is altruism, not selfishness, that should govern our nature, and mercy is one of the most vital manifestations of that principle.

But what exactly is mercy, and why should it be necessary? I would first define it as any act or attitude of intentional good-will in response to human wretchedness. When we patiently tolerate the obnoxious behavior of others or forgive those who have wronged us, we are reacting to unpleasantness in a distinct, deliberate way. When our friend is flat broke and we gift them a few hundred bucks so that they can get their bills and groceries paid, we are intervening in a sad reality that we wish to change. When another friend has broken down in tears because of the pain in their soul, we reach out to them in their sorrow to give them comfort and an anchor in stability. When our hearts are moved to help the homeless, we look past their being disheveled, dirty, and malodorous to provide any way we can to get them food, clothing, and shelter. There are manifold forms of wretchedness in our world, some of which excite our pity, others our revulsion, but when we move beyond our inconvenience, disgust, or anger to actively promote the welfare of our fellow creatures, we are doing the acts of mercy.

Let no one think that mercy is simply some expression of naivete; on the contrary, it is as shrewd as a serpent. When our hearts are full of mercy and our hands are full of its deeds, we are approaching the ugliness of life with open eyes. Cynical people see misery in front of them and make every attempt to avoid it without rocking their boat too much. They apprehend our wretched condition only to try to escape it as much as possible. But the merciful cry, “Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead!” They charge at the squalid realities of life not because they wear rose-tinted glasses and live in a fairyland, but because they see life as it is and want to change it, make it better, ease suffering, or at least try to find meaning in it.

This leads to the necessity of mercy, as wretchedness is ubiquitous and unavoidable. Rarely can a single day pass that we do not encounter someone in need, someone who insults or injures us, someone we find repugnant. Human frailty exists everywhere in every human context, thus to survive and thrive in such a broken world demands a largeness of spirit that doesn’t always come naturally to us, yet the raw choice to exercise that spirit presses on us constantly. We could have no relationships whatsoever – in our families, friendships, professions, acquaintances, strangers – if we did not regularly show mercy, as well as be shown mercy ourselves. If we think of life as a feast, we can think of mercy as that indispensable aspect to any meal: the beverage. Without a drink our throats grow dry and our food becomes unswallowable, but even plain water can do the trick to get it all down. Far from being futile or optional, mercy is indispensable for all human relationships.

We are all agents in the economics of misfortune, as we are all students in the school of affliction. Any advancement is only possible by practicing and doing the gameplan and homework of mercy, and this must be a communal enterprise, as reciprocity is in the very soul of it. Indeed, we may consult the Source of the whole phenomenon, whose very coming into the world was the supreme act of mercy itself, and one of whose first basic teachings is both command and consolation: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”