Mercy for the Undeserving

• Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Director

  “Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven't earned it, who haven't even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients...”   

  That’s Bryan Stevenson, in Just Mercy,  a memoir about the beginnings of the Equal Justice Initiative, which Stevenson founded. The work of the EJI is focused on wrongly incarcerated people, children sentenced to life in prison, the sharp racial inequities of the death penalty. 

  Stevenson writes,  “We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated.”

  But his concern is not limited to incarcerated people.  “An absence of compassion,” he writes, “can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy, and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others.”

  I understand compassion as not wanting others to suffer, and doing my best to not cause others to suffer.  Mercy goes a little further.  The Oxford Dictionary says it’s compassion for someone within my power to punish or harm. 

  There’s a lot to unpack in all of that. 

  I want my actions to contribute to transformation that means more and more people thrive -  have what they need to be well, and to live into their own capabilities.  That’s got to mean liberation from systems of ideas and actions that work against thriving.  

  Stevenson says mercy is most likely to have a transformative, liberating effect  when I apply it to those who haven’t earned or even sought it, the “undeserving.”  But who fits that bill?  Who do I have the power to harm by withholding my compassion?

  I can see how it could apply to people who are incarcerated, wrongly convicted or having caused harm. Personally, it doesn’t occur to me to characterize them as undeserving; I’m with Stevenson there.  

  What I’ve been thinking about is those of whom I am afraid, with whom I am very angry, who’s deliberate speech or action directly threatens thriving and even life. I’m thinking of people whose fear and anger, or greed, or arrogance, or bigotry has made them vindictive and abusive.  Are those people the “undeserving,” the “most meaningful” recipients of my mercy?

  I can extend compassion; I can – with steely practice, not want them to suffer. But what of my mercy?  

  Stevenson argues against a culture that leaves no room for change after a serious mistake, suggesting that a core component of mercy is the second chance. Writer, scholar and activist adrienne maree brown seems to reflect the same concern when she argues against “cancelling.” 

  “We find out someone or some group has done (or may have done) something out of alignment with our values,” brown writes, “then tear that person or group to shreds in a way that affirms our values. We create memes, reducing someone to the laughingstock of the Internet that day. When we are satisfied that that person or group is destroyed, we move on.” 

  “We” brown is quick to establish, are the people who care about liberation. “We call it “transformative justice,” says brown, “when we’re throwing knives and insults” at people we vehemently disagree with, or fear, or who have earned our rage – even rightly.  

  It’s so, so easy to do. brown owns that, and so do I.  But that is the opposite of compassion. It is the opposite of mercy.  I remind myself of Stevenson’s warning, “An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.”

  It can corrupt my decency. It can corrupt the decency of an organization or a school. Most importantly, it doesn’t work. 

  I’ve been thinking, and writing about compassion for a while. Mercy is a new level of challenge.  Withholding it does nothing to contribute to liberatory transformation. Stevenson and brown argue that withholding mercy  can make things worse.

  And this is a struggle for me. I can withhold my vote, my financial support of a business or organization.  I can withhold my cooperation with unjust actions.  But if I use public forums like this, or social media to insult, tear down, reduce someone or some group to a laughingstock ---  am I working against liberation?

  I think the answer is yes.