Thank you so much for your thoughts and comments! They really helped me sort through and clarify my thoughts. What I’ve concluded is this:
We ought to pray for justice. We ought to pray that evil be acknowledged for what it is- evil. But we also should pray for mercy. We should pray that God will reveal himself to these men and women and teach their hearts to fear and then relieve their fears with grace.
Justice requires that the guilty are tried and and found guilty. It requires that the sentence be paid.
God’s mercy doesn’t exempt us from earthly consequences, but he does offer to pay our eternal sentence for us.
More thoughts on your individual comments:
Alexandria-
While the phrase “with your God” specifically links to “walk humbly," Alexandria’s right. We can’t act justly and love mercy without God. Reading Alexandria’s comment on the consequences of sin reminded me of one of the purposes of justice: to condemn what is wrong.
When we pray that God will bring someone to justice, we are praying that evil will be recognized as evil. A mercy that denied the existence of evil wouldn’t be mercy at all. Because of this, justice is a prerequisite to mercy.
Judah-
I have to admit- I had to look your examples up. I didn’t remember those stories. Apparently David’s sparing of Shimei was out of respect for the Lord, because in chapter 16 David states that God told Shimei to curse him. David’s decision, however, was not entirely void of mercy. In chapter 19, Shimei states that his curses were sinful, yet once again, David overlooks his curses. If these curses really were sinful, as Shimei believed, then David had the right to kill him.
Perhaps, however, this example is inapplicable to the justice debate. After all, slander is a personal offense. It was directed at David, and so David had the power to forgive him. It was more like forgiving your brother when he hits you than a policeman “forgiving” a traffic violator or a judge “forgiving” a murder.
With the example of Nabal, would it have been right for David to kill Nabal? Obviously Nabal’s response was wrong, but from reading the text it appears to me that if David killed him it would be out of revenge. This seems to be more of a revenge vs. mercy scenario than justice vs. mercy scenario.
David-
Your post made me ask a question that I’ve asked before, and to which I still do not know the answer. How should we understand the psalms? Are they truth merely in the sense that was how the authors, men of God, truly felt, or, does the inspiration of Scripture require us to believe that positions held are the positions we ought to hold?
The Lewis quotation made me realize that I wasn’t drawing a distinction between one type of justice and mercy and another. When I say that I have received mercy, I do not mean that I’ve received exemption from jail or court or whatnot. Like anyone, I expect to pay my parking tickets. What I do mean that I have received eternal mercy.
When I pray that these men will come to justice, I can pray that their eternal justice will paid for by Jesus Christ, so that they can receive eternal mercy just as I have. But I can also pray that they will receive earthly justice so that wrong will be acknowledged as wrong.
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