It occurred to me recently that discussions of Mercy and Compassion have come up a lot recently. Might be a friend’s post about her own seeking of the divine mystery of Mercy. Might be the potential bombing of Syria. Might just be my own relationships and how I have recently been accused of not showing any mercy to someone I am choosing not to have in my life.
So here goes my take on mercy, its relationship to benevolence, and the need or desire for compassion.
Mercy is an action. It, as I see it, is the act of taking away someone else’s torture. How this happens is never really up to the receiver. It is up to the granter. Taking away torture could mean a multitude of things, but most it is an act that makes it stop. Mercy does not make things better. Take a man in Roman who has been a slave his whole life. As he begs for mercy as he is dying of thirst from a Roman soldier, and the soldier kills him, the soldier’s act was merciful. It ended the suffering. It ended the torture. It was an act, not a feeling. It was completely in the control of the decider. Torture is like that, in that the receiver of a torture really has no choice. Mercy is a position of power.
Related to that is Benevolence. As I see it, benevolence is the act of mercy, with kindness attached. It may not look any different on the surface that straight-forward mercy, but the difference is intent. Benevolence allows the giver of mercy to act with kindness to end suffering. But here is the kicker, it is still an act. It is still at the view point of the giver, and granted by the giver. The power to end the torture still resides outside of the tortured’s grasp.
So in comes compassion. This is the hard one. Compassion is the emotion. The act of compassion may result in neither mercy nor benevolence, but is the act of doing as the person who is asking wishes.
Let’s go back to the Roman slave. If he was killed and it ended his torture, it may have been mercy. If his death ended the slave’s suffering, it may even have been benevolent. But what if the slave asked for water for other slaves? What if he asked for a bath? What if ending his torture was a baseball cap and a fly swatter?
I know that sounded like I just trivialized slavery. That was not my intent. What it was meant to illustrate is that Compassion is about listening. Mercy and benevolence is nothing if compassion does not allow for the receiver of the mercy to decide his or her own fate. I can’t be inside someone else’s head and know their pain. I cannot know what haunts them. I cannot know what tortures them. I cannot know, or even begin to pretend I am helping if I don’t listen.
All of us have those people in our lives. You know the ones, the ones who can’t seem to get it together no matter what we do to help them. And we have tried to help them, honestly, with everything we have done. We have been both merciful AND benevolent in our dealings with them, and yet, they are just still so messed up. We throw our hands up and wonder what else we could possibly do.
The answer: Nothing. We can do nothing. Our mercy and benevolence is not enough if what we are looking to do is help in a meaningful way. THAT, requires compassion. It requires us to stop thinking inside our own box, and act based on what we learn from an individual.
For me personally, there are things I torture myself with that all the benevolence and mercy shown by other people cannot make better. They cannot alleviate or end the torture with any act on their part. I might be able to do it for myself one day, but it is still my torture to bear. Compassion in this case is all someone can offer. A basic listening to the terms that would end my torture, whether they could fix it or not.
See, not so easy. We are built to want to fix things through actions. Fix it and call ourselves merciful. Fix it and call ourselves benevolent. Fix it and call ourselves compassionate. What the hell do we know about a slave's wishes for freedom? What do we pretend to know about an entire country struggling to right its own wrong? What do we think we know about water rights, and marriage quality, and racial profiling, and gang affiliations, and death?
I don’t know anything. I only know that those around me who profess to be merciful and benevolent while having no clue about the restorative power of compassion, even compassion without action, are a waste of my time. I will sit here and quietly torture myself without your mercy, thanks.
