Thoughts on justice and mercy and forgiveness

[xiphias]

A friend of mine is doing some musing about forgivness in his livejournal -- it's friends-only, so I won't mention who it is, or link to it. It was triggered by this essay.

I had some realizations about forgivness, which I copy here in order to have in my own livejournal, for my own reference.

1. "Forgiveness" is the process of cutting away the importance of something. You can forgive an action, which means that you have cut away the emotional resonance and the importance of the action. You can forgive a person, which means that you have cut away the emotional resonance and the importance of the person. This is why I generally forgive actions, not people. . .


2. "Forgiveness" does, therefore, involve "letting someone off the hook" for something they did, or for something they are. This may seem unfair, and unjust. It is unjust. It is merciful. "Mercy" is the opposite of "justice", and the world needs both, balanced, in order to survive.


3. "Mercy" is never deserved. If it was deserved, it would be justice, not mercy.

Some things I am still pondering: is "mercy" always unjust? It is clear that the converse is not true.

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts. Good thoughts. I grok, and agree with you, as far as I can noodle.

[mswae.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I would say forgiveness is always unjust. As preachermanfeed pointed out, forgiveness is an internal thing. One might finally forgive, for example, a good friend for dying. This is neither merciful, nor just, (nor is it unmerciful or unjust) -- it's internal to the one doing the forgiving, because he/she is the one hurt in the first place.

I think the balancing element is compassion. Both mercy and justice can be harsh, or blind. They are verdicts. Compassion, and by this I do not mean mushy empathy, is a careful, thoughtful understanding of the whole picture. It can involve elements of both justice and mercy, and can involve the consequences of your decision. In other words, it involves wisdom.

So, a wholly compassionate mercy, in a sense, is justice at it's highest ideal. From the idea that, in society, we are all connected and affected by each other, there is no truly merciful answer that is not just.

Of course, I also think that, while striving for it makes us better people, we cannot attain that ideal. Which is why we are lucky to have a truly all-encompassing, all merciful, all just G-d to be that wise toward us.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think I see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure I agree.

I see it more simply, perhaps less nuanced-ly. To me, "justice" is blind -- it is a simple weighing of the situation and acting appropriately. "Mercy" is sighted -- it sees pain, even the pain of those who do wrong, and wishes to alieviate it.

"Compassion" is understanding how people feel. "Feeling with" someone. And that can lead to mercy, or to justice, but, hopefully, leads to a balanced application of both in the right amounts.

I believe that G-d has attributes of Justice (Din or Gevurah) and of Mercy (Hesed). And they are separate attributes.

And I believe that we can influence which way G-d leans, in judging us. That's why, on Yom Kippur, we beg to be judged in Hesed, and not Din. If our begging had no effect, why do it?

[navrins]

Thanks for that link... looks like that'll be an interesting group of essays.

Is mercy always unjust? It had never occurred to me to wonder, but it certainly seems a good question.

Perhaps one might say that justice is about actions, while mercy is about people. Justice may dictate that a person should be punished for his actions, while mercy points out that the person is more good than his actions indicate, and deserves less punishment. A cry for mercy is a cry to judge one by his true character, not by his actions.

Which would certainly justify the balance between them of which you speak.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I believe that mitigating punishment because someone is more good than zir actions indicate is part of "justice", not part of "mercy." "Mercy" is about mitigating punishment even though the person isn't more good than zir actions indicate.

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

I don't think that mercy is always unjust. If I do something rotten to you and then resent you because I feel bad (common-enough occurrence), if I "forgive" you that's not unjust. What was unjust, or at least unreasonable, was my resenting you in the first place.

I like #1. I mostly like #3. Something's not quite working for me, but it's close.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that, in that case, you'd not be forgiving me -- you'd be forgiving yourself for resenting me.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

And this is where I get to thank you publicly.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

"Forgiveness" is the process of cutting away the importance of something.

Thank you. You think good. I've had trouble explaining this for years. But you cut to the heart of it.

Although... for me the experience feels like the causality is reversed from what you said. I don't really believe in forgiveness by force of will, precisely because I don't believe in my ability to cut away importance and resonance.

What I believe is that the importance heals away on its own, in its own time, which can't be rushed even when I'm trying to. I wake up one day and look, the wound is closed, the scar is faded, and I can't even remember where it was exactly.

At that point I'd have to make an active decision to reopen it, or fetishistically dwell on the memory of recieving it, in order not to forgive. Which IMO is sometimes worthwhile, but I find strenuous and generally I'd rather not.

I think a lot of the misunderstandings about forgiveness in pop culture come from a conflation of the "wound not yet fully healed but you feel like you SHOULD be over it" and the "putting the effort in not to let it heal completely emotional scarification" states.

People tell you it saps your energy not to forgive, which I think is true in the latter case. It takes energy, anyway. You have to think real carefully about whether the gain is worth the cost. But I also think it saps your energy to try to force forgiveness artificially, in the former.

I also think people equate forgiveness with starting again, and it ain't necessarily so. I forgive my father, mostly, these days. I'm not quite sure when that happened. But that doesn't mean I want him in my life again. Just because the bruises healed doesn't mean I'm going back in range of the fists. (Metaphorically only. He never hit me.)

I also think you can forgive a role, which is someplace in between an action and a person. You can let go of the importance of what a person was supposed to be to you, or what you wanted them to, without letting go of the importance of the person altogether.

As for whether mercy is always unjust, I don't think justice is so ... small a thing, as that. There's a book called Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin, that I tend to recommend to anyone who'll sit still for it. It contains the line "the perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone."

But Helprin's view of justice is -- big. Mystical. abstract. Devine, almost. Justice is practically a synonym for beauty. Everything balances. He's a little too dismissive of the ordinary sort of justice that a human eye can see for more than a transcendant moment, in my view, but it's still interesting to think about.

I think mercy is often justice, but bigger, including more of the picture. Justice that takes into account the abuser's own abused childhood. Justice that takes into account that being petty and vindictive and fucked up often is its own punishment. Justice that takes into account that hope is as cruel a thing as fear, sometimes, and that to break a cycle and show that you can choose to do a different thing is terrifying to people who don't want to make their own choices.

Mercy, when its done right, doesn't seem to me to be unjust. Only a different kind of justice. Or easy on its victims, if they have any conscience at all. Mercy is the exercise of empathy for those who have not practiced it themselves. Coals of fire, you know?

Of course, mercy when its done wrong lets people off the hook for their own cause and effect and sends them off merrily to do harm again, in the belief that either its not harm or someone else will clean it up.

Mer

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of forgiveness as cutting away the emotional resonance and importance of something. It's similar to something I said in a comment to supergee recently on the topic. However, I think there is something between forgiving the act and forgiving the person, which is forgiving that part of the person. For instance, some of the ways my parents hurt me about weight clearly sprang directly from their issues with weight. Working past that wasn't a matter of forgiving whole-Mom and whole-Dad, but of forgiving the parts of them that (imho) had been warped by a fat-phobic society and had just handed it on. That is a part that it's good for me to pitch the emotional resonance and importance of.

I also agree with you about Mercy and Justice. I first encountered that polarity in Crowley's tarot deck, and then learned it was cabalistic. I like things that remind people that justice isn't the be-all and end-all, sometimes isn't even desirable.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

As a Buddhist, I can't think of cutting myself off from someone. I think of forgiveness more in terms of compassion and a release from anger. It's something I have trouble putting into words. This poem by Thich Nhat Hanh expresses it best.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Thank you, both. I needed that poem, and this discussion, especially today.

A.

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

I have a different take on this -

You can forgive an action, which means that you have cut away the emotional resonance and the importance of the action. You can forgive a person, which means that you have cut away the emotional resonance and the importance of the person. This is why I generally forgive actions, not people. . .

I think when one forgives a person he is basically showing unconditional love. You love them despite their actions which may have been harmful. To me forgiving someone validates their importance to me, it does not cut that away. I may love someone even if they are mean to me. I forgive my ex-husband and I still love him in a spiritual way, but I do NOT forgive some of the things he did to me.

Hrm.. but I think in the end we're actually saying the same thing about forgiveness and it's probably just a semantics discussion.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Justice can involve mercy and fairness both. A lot of our legal code is based on just that premise - restitution for harms done that should not have been done. It is a mercy for someone who causes harm to recompense their victim for damage done, because unfettered Life is the law of the jungle and requires none of that. At the same time, this mercy is also just and fair.