As Merciful as God
In his reflection, “Perfection of Wholeness,” Richard Rohr equates mercy with “God’s all-inclusive and impartial love.” He then explains that the biblical passage that calls us to be “perfect” as God is perfect should instead be translated as a call to be “merciful” as God is merciful. Therefore, to be merciful, we must be inclusively and impartially loving.
That sounds pretty hard to me. Can we really be impartial? How do we include everyone when we dislike some people and others hurt us? How can we be infinitely merciful like God? We can’t be infinitely anything.
Fortunately, this isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Whatever God is, if God’s mercy is infinite, so is God’s love, and if God’s love includes everyone, even the smallest and meanest among us, then God’s circle of love includes you and me, too. God doesn’t expect perfect perfection, or perfect mercy, from us. So even if we can’t be like God, this merciful God welcomes us. Always. Every time.
Mercy, Shame, and Righteousness
One thing that gets in the way of our being merciful is righteousness. When we imagine that we deserve our blessings, that we have earned them because we’re one of the “good” people, we usually have trouble accepting mercy. To accept mercy, we have to admit we need it. If we need mercy, then we must have sinned. To need mercy, we have to have faults, do stupid things, break rules, fall short, even fall down. Only the weak, vulnerable, and incompetent need mercy. When we are so frightened by the “wages of sin” that we can’t admit we have foibles, we reject any mercy that is offered.
Shame also gets in the way of us accepting mercy. When our parents tell us over and over that we’re no good, we sometimes prove them right by taking drugs, getting pregnant in our teens, committing crimes, and destroying lives. We can’t accept mercy then because we don’t deserve it. If we allow ourselves to feel forgiven and blessed by God, then we’re afraid the world we know will turn upside down. Everything we believe, everything we understand, will suddenly make no sense. To accept mercy when we feel “bad” inside can terrify us.
This is simplistic, of course. Few of us grow up in the such rigid, chaotic households that we can reflect only one aspect of our personality. Most of us recognize we have the capacity not only to commit acts of great kindness and generosity, but also ones of great selfishness and even cruelty. What saves us from egregiously hurting others is our capacity for empathy and the restraint we get from our prefrontal cortex.
Then We Have Our Brains
Personality disorders are persistent patterns of behavior that lead to problems with relationships and overall functioning in society. There are many types of personality disorders. Some include psychotic features; others involve high levels of anxiety. People with cluster B personality disorders, such as boderline and antisocial, tend to be impulsive, aggressive, emotionally unstable, and have difficulty maintaining relationships.
Researchers have discovered that people with these personality disorders share similar deficits in their brains. According to “The Neurobiology and Genetics of Borderline Personality Disorder” by Antonia S. New and Larry J. Silver, people with borderline personality disorder, have a “blunted serotonergic responsiveness.” As far as I can tell, this means their brains produce less serotonin than the norm, and even if serotonin is given in pill form, they don’t absorb it well. This is significant because low levels of serotonin increase aggressive behavior.
Even if we feel annoyed or angry, however, most of us can control our emotional response. That’s because our prefrontal cortex makes us think about the situation and consider the consequences of yelling at or hitting someone. Especially when we are in public, we choose to deal with our emotions in socially appropriate ways.
Damage to the prefrontal cortex, in particular the orbital and medial cortices, can lead to impulsivity and hostility. Serotonin plays a role here, as well, because people who don’t create normal amounts of serotonin have fewer inhibitions and are more aggressive.
Genes and Environment Matter, Too
Our genes and our life experiences matter, too. Dean Hamer and Peter Copeland, in their book Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More Than You Think, explain that how we turn out depends not only on the brain with which we are born, but also on what happens to us. Children who have a genetic propensity to hostility and violence yet who receive loving and consistent parenting may avoid their antisocial and criminal destiny. Those who share the same genetic predispositions yet grow up in chaotic and abusive homes will turn out to be angry and abusive themselves.
There appears to be an out, though, even for the genetically disadvantaged child living in a violent home. In “The Science of Resilience,” author Bari Walsh tells us that any child can be resilient, in spite of adverse circumstances. All she needs is the love and support of one important adult in her life.
This is mercy. This is the inclusive and impartial love of God reflected through human beings. Of course, if we are called to be merciful, we are called also to include everyone in that mercy. We are called to care about each person equally, no matter who they are or what they do.
Mercy and the Unlikable
This can be a challenge. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like every adult I’ve met. I don’t even like every child. Yet if I can get past my judgments, my emotional reactions, my stories of right and wrong, perhaps I can learn to love even the most challenging young person.
What happens, though, when that young person grows up into an unlikable adult? What happens when he ignores social conventions, acts out, and tramples on the rights of everyone around him?
One of our neighbors has a house that fronts onto a dirt road. Across the street is a strip of greenery bordered by a wall. Some homeless individuals are camping on the grass across from her front porch. Her son is developmentally challenged and becomes anxious when strangers are around. The homeless individuals throw their garbage onto the street and defecate in view of her son. When she has asked them to clean up after themselves, or reduce their noise, they declare they can do anything they want. Her concerns do not matter to them.
Mercy and Understanding
I understand, as she also does, that when you have no home, you must sleep someplace. When you have no home, people harass you and treat you as garbage. It’s not easy to camp out every single day, and the stress of living on the streets affects the prefrontal cortex. Who knows what other brain damage these individuals have?
My neighbor is warm and helpful. She is a white, single mom who owns her home. As such, she has privilege, yet also has struggles. Does she not have any rights? This strip on which the individuals are camping belongs to the city, so she can’t tell them to leave. Besides, she isn’t really trying to get them to leave. She just wants them to respect the environment, to observe at least a modicum of modesty, and to care enough about someone else that they might moderate their behavior so her son doesn’t get scared every time he goes outside.
How does she include these urban campers in her circle of love? What is mercy in a situation like this?
Empathy and Addiction
Perhaps these homeless individuals have active substance use disorders. Many people who abuse substances behave in antisocial ways. The psychiatrist David Sack writes, in “What Makes Addicts Stop Caring?” that most drugs reduce our ability to feel empathy.
But is it really the drug that makes us less empathetic? Or do we start out that way?
Some research, Sack explains, shows that “callous and unemotional children” are more likely to become addicted to substances than are compassionate ones. On the other hand, when we abuse substances, our brains change. Not only is our prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of our brain, impaired, but when we start to withdraw from our high, our brains induce desperate cravings that eventually make us trample everything we’ve ever cared about in order to get high again.
Interestingly, though, there’s another reason substances reduce our capacity for empathy. When we get high, we become numb. Not only is our physical and emotional pain reduced, but so is our capacity for loving connection. Studies performed at Ohio State University with college students show that only do illegal drugs reduce our capacity to empathize, but so do over the counter pain killers. As Jeff Grabmeier writes, students who took acetaminophen showed less empathy toward peers who were hurting. Whenever we dull our physical or emotional pain, no matter with what, we also dull our ability to feel concern for the pain of others.
So were these inconsiderate urban campers numb to their own pain, and thus to my neighbor’s pain? Did they care less about anyone else because they couldn’t tell how much they, themselves, were hurting
The Mercy of God
In situations like this, what does mercy look like?
If mercy is an “all-inclusive and impartial love,” then the first thing we must do is love both the homeless individuals and my neighbor. But what do we do after that?
Rohr writes, in an article called “Julian of Norwhich, Part I“: “Whether our wounds are caused by others or by our own mistakes, Julian frames it all as grace, saying, “First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God.'”
In other words, the miss-steps, the failures, and even the traumas of our lives are a kind of mercy. When we feel too numb to care about anyone else, or when we feel anxious and trapped, or abused and threatened, we have the opportunity to transform, to embrace recovery, and to appreciate the mercy of God.
What Does Mercy Look Like?
Which is great if we want to make sense of our own lives. It’s not so great if we’re judging someone else’s life.
It’s also not so great if we want to figure out how to support both the housed neighbor and the homeless one. How do we ease the pain of the person who feels trampled while also showing compassion to the person who does the trampling? Can we be merciful to the antisocial abuser? What would such mercy look like?
Perhaps we can find a medication that will increase the abuser’s serotonin levels and improve the functioning of his prefrontal cortex. If so, do we force him to take it? Is that mercy, and if so, to whom are we being merciful?
If the homeless person has an addiction, do we force her into treatment? Do we give her a shot of Vivitrol, which has been shown by studies to reduce drinking and opioid drug use?
What about the housed neighbor? Does she need to meditate more so she can accept discomforts in life? Perhaps she needs to stop taking painkillers so she can be more compassionate. Or does she need to call the police and get those urban campers to move along so her son will feel less stressed?
Is there a win-win here? Can something that looks initially like a lose turn, in the end, into a win? How do we know? Who gets to decide?
Mercy and Transformation
In his “Perfection” reflection, Rohr writes, “The only real perfection of which humans are capable is to include, absorb, forgive, and transform human imperfection.”
We are imperfect. The “right” solution may elude us. We might be awkward in how we solve our problems. People may even get hurt. In the end, perhaps the merciful thing is to love as much as possible, make the best choices we can, do what makes sense in the moment, then acknowledge our mistakes, forgive one another, and find a way to transform the pain and suffering of life into something of beauty, compassion, and grace.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Photo Credit: By Noah Silliman from Unsplash
Copyright © 2016 Barbara E. Stevens
