Should mercy and justice be separated?

Mercy and justice were described to me as: “Hundreds of people keep falling from a hill. Mercy takes care of the wounded below while justice runs to the top to stop them from falling above.”

I’ll never forget my trip to Thailand last spring to work with children and the prostitutes caught in the sex trade. I think I bawled for the next month straight totally gripped by the injustice on those girls. I’ll never forget their stories from our brief encounters over a couple diet cokes between their clients. Their faces seem forever etched in my mind.

A different sort of injustice here but it carries the same DNA. A battle of equality. The value of life torn from its foundations and shaken until nobody flinches when say... genocide takes place or every year 4 million people are bought or otherwise treated as slaves or in that same year 1.3 million unborn babies are killed.

So, how do we battle injustice? How do we team it with mercy, and should we be separating the two?

What sparked this (most recently) was a newspaper article I saw stuck to the floor of a pee stained latrine. “Nuba mountains at risk for increased conflict”. I covered my nose and bent over the paper to read more. The column talked about how with attention on Darfur, this region was now the “target” and armies were “beefing up” (lol my words not theirs).
My button was pushed. At first thought I think “Peace is in the Kingdom. Kingdom’s in me. Nuba needs some Kingdom. Let’s head to the Nuba mountains!”
But realistically (for now) I look at history for the “likely future”. War breaks out. People are killed and thousands become IDP’s (Internally Displaced People) or refugees.

Now in mercy, WFP steps up with their bags of maize.
Great. However daily food rations replace farming. War brings development to a halt and disease goes wild in a humanitarian nightmare called IDP camps.
Feeding programs are fabulous and oh so needed. I love them. Mercy, saving lives, but I’m thinking; only if they’re just the foundation.

I look at Uganda and with the horrific war in the north causing over a million people to live in IPD camps where the refugees sometimes described themselves as “prisoners in Hell”. What started as a great way to protect people from abductions is now ending in disaster. Not saying I have the solution or that I think IDP camps were bad. No. BUT is this a case of mercy without justice? Feeding them today but not preparing them for tomorrow? Or even really working hard to ensure they have a tomorrow with rebels still chillin in the bush.

Mercy and Justice.
I see the mercy in setting up schools but I see the lack of justice with school fees making it just out of reach for children coming from poor families.

I see the mercy in giving out medicines but where’s the justice when people die from a lack of knowledge of basic health care.

Signs that read:
“Watch out, malaria kills!” But you can’t afford a bug net.
“Careful, AIDS ruins lives!” Yet you don’t have access to condoms (or education on self control for abstinence ;)

Mercy is great. Honestly, I don’t want to under value it. I’m always giving out a dollar to the beggar or a bread roll to the hungry kids but... should you separate mercy and justice? Why is that child hungry or the beggar clued to his park bench? Perhaps justice is more work, or it costs more. But if it costs more, then does it yield a higher return?

Isaiah 58- “Loose the chains of injustice... AND feed the hungry and clothe the naked”

The two are put together. But for the sake of my bias, when we look for solutions it seems justice often gets the short end of the stick. Why?
Where are the William Wilberforces of our time? Those who chose to take action before the Nuba mountains become the Nuba flat lands. The Davids who bring food to the battle field AND kill the giant.

As Margaret Mead once said “Never doubt that a group of concerned citizens can change the world-indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

So, lol. When changing the world, should mercy and justice be separated? Or is it true, some people are meant to implement mercy while others fight for justice?

I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud.
I used to be all about mercy but as I’m faced more and more with impossibilities that attract heaven I’m falling more and more in love with justice, to now, my thoughts leave me asking the questions about the marriage between the two.

It’s a huge topic, I know, one that could fill much more then just a little blog post. I’m just gripped with a million different questions and topic issues and the tip of this one just happened to make the blog.
=)