Grace, mercy, and justice

Justice: getting what you deserve
Mercy: not getting what you deserve
Grace: getting what you don't deserve

This was brought up today in the Bible study class I attended today and I really like thinking about this. There's two ways to think about this - in terms of others, and then in terms of oneself.

Justice - everyone should get what they deserve. If a person does something wrong, they should be punished for it. That's why the term poetic justice exists in literature. We watch a movie or read a book, expecting that the bad will come to justice, or at least hoping that they will. Even in real life, we hope that there is justice in our daily lives and fight for it (well, most people do, or at least in what people envision as the ideal, everyone will fight for what is believed to be just).

Now let's personalize this. If you commit a wrong, do you want justice? Most likely, you will want mercy.

Mercy - every time someone does something wrong, they want mercy. They want to be the exception to the rule. Why? Because it sucks to have to deal with the consequences of one's actions. Of course the ideal is if one does not do anything wrong or commit that wrong to begin with. However, no one is perfect and everyone has their faults, intentional or not. So then, the one time that one commits a wrong, does it seem fair to have to deal with those consequences? Of course here, most people understand human's imperfections and will say that it is just to be merciful.

However, justice in its purest form would be that everyone must deal with the consequences of their wrongs. (Oh, you could argue that such things shouldn't be so black and white, but then, where is justice in the slippery slope of mercy?)

And then there's this idea of grace. Honestly, I think most people take slight offense to the idea of grace. "Why should he (or she) get that? They don't deserve it!" Think of the criminal that gets away, some undeserving (usually we think ungrateful) child who reaps the benefits of their parents' hard work, etc. The list can be endless when we think of people who have what they don't deserve.

Again, let's personalize it for a second. You've done something bad. You deserve to be punished. Instead of being punished, someone else gets punished for you, and you get something kind of really awesome instead. That joy, I think, would be indescribable, but I think there's also a plethora of feelings that go with that. The crushing realization that you don't deserve that something, the guilt of having it, the guilt, too, that someone else had to suffer because of you, the pressure of showing the appreciation, etc. Can you full appreciate that which you got that you didn't deserve?

It's an interesting concept to roll around. Grace works in interesting ways. I mean yes, this could be in the Christian sense but I think generally speaking. I think grace in its purest form can only happen with God because when someone does something for you, they usually have some kind of expectation of getting something back (whether you live a good life or whatever). Like, if I went to jail for some punk kid who deserved it, that little brat better be working his/her ass off to make a better life for himself/herself, y'know?

Hm. I think grace would be interesting to explore by itself. This idea of grace (both with and separate from Christianity).

I'd rather be "us"

There is separation when it's you and me.

You are still you and I am still me.

When you becomes "u" and the self becomes "s"

To create us,

There is no distinction anymore of a you or me,

But a whole, complete unit that cannot be separated

Into you and me.

Spent pens

There is something refreshing about fully used up pens. Mind you, this is different from pens whose ink has dried out. There is a feeling of waste and a slight twinge of regret in having to dispose of them.

In throwing out these used up pens, there almost seems to be a sense of clearing out the clutter.

Perhaps I simply have too many pens.

I meander

Perhaps this is how bad habits are formed.

Perhaps this is why it takes me so long to do things.

Perhaps this is why I love both late nights and early mornings (and yet sleep trumps both if I'm ever tired).

Yet if I am relishing the moments I have as I meander through life, is that all that should matter?

The balance between meandering and taking the direct path.

I prefer to meander.

Dance across my heart

Things out of context seldom sound right but I like this phrase. (I suppose that's my thing right now - pretty phrases... though I feel like that's always my thing...)

Anyway, the rest of the passage was cloyingly saccharine and I didn't want to share the rest of it but I liked how those four words sounded.

I think that depending on context, it can also sound unfortunate (in that when someone dances across one's heart, that person could be playing with one's heart) but I like to think of it as a metaphorical manifestation of the way someone can come up in one's thoughts and the feeling that the thought of the person gives feels like that. They are dancing across one's heart in a beautiful and poetic way because of the happiness that stems from thinking of the person. One's heart beats a little faster, a blush becomes deeper, and a smile unwittingly plays across the lips because that person brings that kind of joy to one's heart and mind.

Hehe. *^_^*

Brushing my teeth with my non-dominant hand

This is from an article about willpower:

"Just like practicing self-control in one aspect of your day (resisting a brownie, say) depletes the entire well, it also strengthens the entire muscle. “If I'm practicing self control in any domain, it should help me in all the others,” says DeWall. Multiple studies have illustrated that when you exercise self-control in one area of your life -- such as brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand -- you can exert more willpower in another area, such as suppressing aggressive behavior. The two behaviors may be very different, but they share a common energy source."

For some reason, the thing that I got out of this is:

I want to brush my teeth with my left hand. That's it. Hahahaha

Hey, if it helps me learn to exert more willpower, why not? :D

For the full article, click here.

The poetry of subjective moments

I don't know why, but I think the phrase is beautiful.

Moments that can only be interpreted by the person who feels it, yet there is poetry to that moment.

There's beauty in a situation for only the person who is experiencing it, and the quality of that experience can only be translated and mediated through words.

I can tell you about the beauty of something I experienced, but the experience is already once removed in my telling because it was my personal experience; the fact that I brought in my own insights, thoughts, and feelings at the time that contributed to the beauty and poetry of the moment makes it hard for someone else to understand how I truly felt.

I don't know if it's beauty though. Poetry means more than just beauty. The aesthetic quality of something personally experienced perhaps?