Is Christianity a religion of "No?"

[RDKirk]

We have very different concepts of justice. Justice is not just punishing people for sin. It's restoring the right. Timothy Keller on Justice in the Bible

We may also have different concepts of mercy. Mercy is not leaving someone in sin.

But mercy does, in fact, start with the person being in sin. God was merciful to us long before we decided to repent.

 

[FireDragon76]

We have very different concepts of justice. Justice is not just punishing people for sin. It's restoring the right. Timothy Keller on Justice in the Bible

We may also have different concepts of mercy. Mercy is not leaving someone in sin.

Justice involves giving a person what is their due.

Mercy is treating somebody with compassion.

That's how I see it as a non-Christian who tends to understand those concepts outside of an exclusively Christian framework. The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. Evangelicals like to see it otherwise, but they are doing that for apologetic purposes and distorting the broader meaning of the terms.

 

[hedrick]

Justice involves giving a person what is their due.

That's what Plato said. But I'm not convinced it's the Biblical concept.

 

[Bertrand Russell White]

There is no such thing as a "merciful way of doing justice." Mercy is justice deferred, by definition.

In an absolutely just world, we'd all have been struck by lightning before we'd reached our teens.

I agree that there are different ways of seeing this even within the multiple Christian cultures in America and around the world. Grace should also be included in the discussion as it is a central idea in these discussions. In fact, I would say justice and mercy are really secondary to grace in a traditional Christian sense. There are of-course prior issues that make all of this problematic. In the original configuration, taken literally or figuratively or mythically original sin has always been problematic. Why didn't god just create a world with free will + no sin? Is there any need then for justice, pain, suffering, evil etc. ? If you take an evolutionary/Christian hybrid view, then there is no need to explain sin at all - except maybe redefine it. Of-course you have the problem of explaining any real significance to Jesus' death. Finally, many people today see no need to overly complicate all of this and just drop the Christian part altogether. A sociological - evolutionary based ethic seems to work at least just as well for many people. Very secular societies like Denmark seem to be doing very well with a highly secular system without religion.

 

[FreeinChrist]

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