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).