“The quality of mercy is not strain’d.”

My kids came home from going to church with the grandparents, and their Sunday School paper showed a lesson on mercy.  The handout said mercy is ‘showing more love or kindness to a person than they expect or deserve.’
‘Or deserve’.  That phrase kept rolling around in my head.  What an odd teaching, if you really think about it.  Who doesn’t deserve mercy?

The same points, the same wording, lessons from my childhood take life again for my children.  And it is only now, as a 30 year old, that I pause to really consider what is being taught.  Why is a major aspect of our faith based on drawing lines, determining who is worthy and who isn’t?

I have internalized the message that we don’t deserve anything.  From my head, I can tell you we don’t deserve God’s love, his forgiveness, the cross, or his mercy.  We don’t deserve it, because we are such horrible sinners.  But even in our horribleness, we should show love, forgiveness, and mercy, because God says so.

Should.

Because God says so.

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

From my head, chapters and verses; the bullet points.  But from my heart, it isn’t verses that flow out, but themes.  Mercy, love, grace,  forgiveness, freedom.  Qualities whose understanding has been hard-earned.  Spoils gathered from the war of life.

So when the phrase ‘or deserve’ appears, authorized by Sunday School under the guise of God, I cringe and wad up the paper to throw away, hoping the lesson hasn’t yet imprinted itself on my child’s soul.

We perpetuate this belief that we are poor tragic sinners who don’t deserve anything.  And then we wonder why we can’t really feel God’s love or forgiveness.  We surround ourselves with words and actions designed to make us feel bad, make us feel unworthy, yet mercy reflects the divine.

We are made to give mercy.
We all deserve mercy.

It is an attribute to God himself;

My heart and head are finally merging, and I see so much truth and beauty that were never printed on Sunday School handouts.  Made in the image of God.  The truth of that is so much more than a ‘made in’ label on a t-shirt.  And yet that’s how we treat it.  As something we wear, but not something that transforms.

We are all deserving of love and kindness, compassion and understanding.  We hold within us the divinity.  We are a representation of God himself.  Our label is not something we merely wear.  It’s something that transforms us back to the beginning, when all was good.  It’s something that we are.  In our reflection of him, we become mirrors for others.

Jesus didn’t come because we are horrible people who don’t deserve anything.  He came to set the world right.  He came to break the power of sin that is over us, over the world, so that we can be restored.  Restored to who we really are.  The God who deserves everything, and made us like him.

We show mercy because everyone around us is a divine image.  Everyone has that ancient label buried in their soul, even if life has tangled them up and sin has entrapped them.

We don’t show mercy because we should or because God says so, no matter what your Sunday school teacher said.  We show mercy because we want to and because they deserve it.