Sweet Mysterious Mercy and the Benevolent Math of Infinity
by Michael R. Burch

There are two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle. -- Albert Einstein

While it's easy to chop the Bible up into verse fragments and endlessly postulate theories about how to live "righteously" moment by moment, there are so many verses (and so many dicey methods of dicing) that the results can bring more tears to one's eyes than puréed onions. And so I propose to take "a great leap backward," to try to perceive the Bible as a whole, as an unfolding story and revelation. It seems to me the Old Testament has a different story to tell, or at least a vastly different vantage point to tell it from, than the New Testament, and so I will summarize what I see in the Old Testament, then compare it to what I see in the New Testament, then ask if the two visions blur or concur.

The Old Testament is the story of a family: of God the Father, and Adam his beloved but wayward son. The older Adam (the human race) grows, the more estranged from the Father he becomes. While Adam's sin is a constant problem, as long as he is conscious of and admits it, there is hope of reconciliation. The Father gives Adam "the hard truth" in the form of a list of commandments, and for periods of time Adam lives by them, though seldom if ever graciously, and never for long. But toward the end of the Old Testament, it seems that Adam has become convinced that he can simply offer sacrifices to appease his Father. Adam is the son who drinks, beats his wife, neglects his kids, rips off his customers, consorts with prostitutes, gambles, and attends séances, but thinks that because he sacrifices and occasional ox, he is "in good with God." He no longer sees any need for reform, because he has become self-righteous: righteous in his own eyes, by his own lackluster standards and methods. For me, one of the critical verses of the Old Testament is Hosea 6:6 -- For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. By the time of Jesus, hundreds of thousands of lambs and other animals were being slaughtered at the Jerusalem Temple, so that the Kidron Valley below ran red with blood. But God was not pleased with sacrifice; he desired mercy. The King James version of the Old Testament ends with the word "curse" followed by four hundred years of silence. If you discount the New Testament, make that two thousand four hundred years of silence, and still counting. Adam rejected the hard truth of the commandments, and he also rejected the tender truth of mercy. He settled into a sham religion that was all about sacrifice meant to appease God, which did not please God at all. God and Adam comprised a highly dysfunctional family. However God frequently promised that He, without any help whatsoever from Adam, would provide a solution ...

The New Testament has a shocking tale to tell, although we may not see just how shocking the story was in its day. Jesus was a rule-breaker, a rebel, a heretic. He did not accept the religious norms of the Pharisees (the Moral Majority of their day). The Pharisees taught that any work on the Sabbath was illegal, even helping the sick. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath and said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Pharisees despised the outcasts of society (harlots, tax collectors, Samaritans), but Jesus ate and drank with them. The Pharisees were all about rigorous rules, stringent sacrifice and unstinting self-righteousness. They ignored the fact that God desired mercy and they depended on a system of sacrifices that God had rejected. When the people began to flock to Jesus and it seemed they might make him their king, the Pharisees decided to have Jesus killed. But they had two big problems: (1) Jesus was a good man, not guilty of any sin punishable by death, and (2) with Rome in control of Palestine, the Pharisees could not invoke the death penalty themselves, so they would have to convince the Romans to kill Jesus for them. Undeterred, the Pharisees arrested Jesus surreptitiously by night (although he taught openly in the Temple by day), bribing one of his disciples to betray him. They conducted an illegal trial replete with biased judges, false witnesses and flimsy accusations. When they took Jesus to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who had the authority to execute Jesus, Pilate was incredulous. He wanted no part in executing Jesus. In his interrogation of Jesus, there is a curious exchange. Jesus says to Pilate: To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate responded: What is truth?

The sons of Adam, both Jewish and Gentile, were deaf to, and had no knowledge of, nor any interest in, God's truth. They did not believe in any absolute truth: they believed entirely and only in themselves, in their form of "religion" and their form of "government." The Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus and Pilate finally acceded, washing his hands of the matter. The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus Christ was "full of grace and truth." What did Jesus do when the Pharisees and Pilate rejected the truth? Instead of calling down legions of angels to destroy the world and save his life, he showed men grace. He went to the cross, and while hanging there, he asked God the Father to forgive those who killed him. He died in the place of murderers. That, in a word, is mercy. Radical mercy.

Jesus redeemed
the defamed
name of God.

In summary, the Old Testament is the story of how Adam became estranged from God by creating a sham religion that stressed sacrifice, rules and performance over mercy. The New Testament is the story of how Jesus Christ demonstrated the true mercy of God, and therefore revealed the true face of God to the world, redeeming men from their sins, but also redeeming the defamed name of God (defamed by men who purported to speak and act for God, but who spoke and acted without mercy, grace or love). When men could not accept the hard truth of God, God showed them the infinite tenderness of mercy. When men hid their faces from God, God revealed His true face in Jesus Christ.

Are the two stories true to each other? To me, they are. The Old Testament shows what God wanted from man. The New Testament shows God's provision for man when man proved himself incapable of mercy, grace or love. Man proved himself to be an invalid. A good Father doesn't expect an invalid son to do what he is incapable of. God provided for the invalid, who is still limping painfully, waywardly toward rehabilitation.

Where do we stand today? In many ways, the sad tale of religion is that it always seems on the verge of backsliding into self-righteousness, into rules, ritual, performance and sacrifice. Yes, Christian churches donate billions of dollars to very worthy causes. Yes, we pray and weep for our family and friends and sometimes even for our enemies. But we still think in terms of sacrifice. And we still condemn those who are not as "righteous" as we are. What is God's standard of mercy? What do these passages mean? ...

Judge not that ye be not judged.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Why is forgiveness of others the only thing we are instructed to take upon ourselves in the Lord's Prayer, with everything else left up to God? We do not say that we will make God's kingdom come, or that we will make his will be done, or even that we will feed ourselves. We do not say that we will avoid temptation ourselves, or that we will overcome Evil (the Evil One) ourselves.  We ask God to do these things for us. All He expects of us in return, it seems, is to be forgiving  (merciful) to others. Perhaps the reason organized religion has failed so often and so miserably so many times is that it has tried to do everything except fulfill its primary function on earth. The Christian Church in its various incarnations has tried to: make God's kingdom come, make His will be done, make the world eat the bread of life forcibly, make the world resist temptation, deliver the world from Evil.

If only there were a mathematical equation or a geometrical "picture" that would help us put mercy into better perspective! Well, perhaps there is:

To fall an inch short of infinity is to fall infinitely short.

I believe this to be an original statement, though surely not an original idea. And yet I'm glad to have thought of it. Albert Einstein came up with "thought experiments" to test and explain his theories. My "righteousness" thought experiment is this: Think of two men who set out to reach heaven, which is infinitely far off. One hops on a pogo stick at the rate of about a mile a day. The other travels in a rocket ship at a speed of 1,000 miles per second, or 86.4 million miles per day. After traveling fifty years, the man in the rocket ship would seem to be immeasurably far ahead of the man on the pogo stick (although the man on the pogo stick might be having immeasurably more fun). Which one is closer to heaven? Neither, because they are both still infinitely short of heaven.

To fall an inch short of infinity is to fall infinitely short.

The best saints alive, whoever they may be, are in the same leaky barge with the most hapless and hopeless of sinners, all bailing furiously. The saint in the sleekest rocketship of righteousness is no "closer" to God than the slimiest sinner worming his way toward God on his underbelly. 

To fall an inch short of infinity is to fall infinitely short.

If we realize this, we can easily understand the uncomplicated mathematics of infinite mercy. Mercy is imperative because all men fall short of the righteousness of God. Self-righteousness is to sneak a peek behind and applaud oneself at the expense of various "laggards." But mercy is more than merely the opposite of self-righteousness, for in looking steadfastly ahead we find an unexpected bonus: once we realize that we are no better off than any other laggard, we will also realize that we are no worse off, either. The race is not to the swift, and so we can have rest. We can put all our faith in God, accepting the righteousness freely offered in Jesus Christ. We can forgive others to the best of our ability, expecting to be forgiven in turn.

And all the while, although we fall infinitely short of God in the flesh, we are seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenlies, as discussed in The Very Mysterious Metaphor of Entanglement.



Note: If you like this article, you are free to cut and paste it, to print it out, and to distribute it freely, however you see fit. I do ask that you abide by the following: (1) Please be sure to accredit the authorship of the article correctly and to cite www.thehypertexts.com as the original publisher. (2) Please do not interject your words so that they seem to be the words of the author: instead, interject your thoughts and opinions in square brackets with your name, initials or nom de plume attached. For instance: [I agree about mercy, but I think the author completely misses the mark on obedience. – Holy Roller]. (3) Please be sure that this note is attached to the article whenever and wherever the article is printed out, forwarded, re-published, or otherwise distributed. My sincerest thanks! -- Michael R. Burch