Love mercy, but act with justice

We can’t create compassion, but mercy is a decision

I read through Robert Lupton’s Toxic Charity, a book that had made it’s rounds and gained popularity, mainly among faith-based organizations. I must take issue with, in particular, his explanation of the prophet Micah’s call to act with justice and love mercy. Because his understanding of this text appears to be the foundation upon which he builds his approach in working among the poor, it would be crucial to his argument that he get it right.

To begin, Lupton makes the mistake of defining mercy as “a force that compels us to acts of compassion.” This is confusing and simply not correct; he actually has it backwards. Mercy is not a force; it is the act. Compassion comes closer to being defined as a force. For example, compassion is the deep-seated feeling that Jesus had (it is described as dwelling in his very bowels) for the oppressed crowds that drove him to acts of mercy. But one can have feelings of compassion without ever engaging in a show of mercy; it happens every day (just as one can extend acts of mercy that are not driven by feelings of compassion). My point is this: Micah is appealing to a directive from God that says “act.” One cannot be blamed for a lack of compassion; the feeling is either stirred or it isn’t. You can’t create it upon command. You can act however, and this is what Micah says to love – love mercy. According to Micah, God gives no directives on our love for feelings – compassion. He wants us to love acts – mercy.

When it comes to justice, Lupton is at least partly right when he says that “justice without mercy is cold and impersonal, more concerned about rights than relationships.”  Well, justice is very concerned with the pursuit of and the protection of one’s rights – whether an individual or a population. It has to do with setting things right – balancing the scales. And what does Micah say? Do this. But Lupton is claiming that acts of justice and acts of mercy are an inseparable pair. Each is useless, and even deadly, without the other. I’m not sure how that claim is deduced unless it has to do with them appearing together in the same sentence. He’s all over the place here. First, he continues to treat mercy as a force, without which justice is “cold and impersonal.” And it is here that he shows his hand. He’s trying his best to tie these two together in order to support the premise of his book, that mercy without justice, (the thing he will define as justice) is a dose of poison – that when these two are “divorced, they become deformed.” But then he shifts and begins describing mercy as an act, one that without justice, “degenerates (one) into dependency and entitlement…” And we can all see where this is going.

Giving someone a meal DOES NOT foster dependency

Lupton defines justice above as actions concerned with rights, but then it immediately disappears into a new definition, the one he wants to operate from – the intentional move “in the direction of development.” It’s hard to figure out how Lupton squares this with Micah’s idea of justice, but based on the logic of his reasoning, somehow the idea of justice is wrapped up and found in his following axioms:

Immediate care (mercy) with a future plan (justice).

Emergency relief (mercy) and responsible development (justice).

short-term intervention (mercy) and long-term involvement (justice).

Heart responses (mercy) and engaged minds (justice).

The idea is that acts of mercy are “irresponsible” if not coupled with developmental work. He actually says, “What good is a sandwich and a cup of soup when a severe addiction has control of a man’s life?” In regard to food banks, he asks, “Why do we persist in giving away food when we know it fosters dependency?”

Here Lupton strays from Micah’s directives. Developmental work among the poor is hugely important, but it is not what Micah is saying. The truth is, if you take the idea of justice as Micah intends it, doing developmental work becomes infinitely more doable. We are not only to be concerned with acting justly with one another on a personal level but creating systems that operate justly and changing those that don’t. Again, developmental work among the poor is crucial, but you can’t define it as “justice,” put it on Micah’s lips, couple it inseparably with “mercy” and conclude that one without the other is “toxic.” Underlying this conclusion, and the spirit that I see throughout the book, if not stated clearly and unashamedly, is that you should only show mercy to those who deserve it. And it is here where Lupton fully and completely departs from Micah’s directives. Micah attaches no qualifications to the recipients of our mercy. It’s as though he were saying, “If you had rain to mercifully give, it’d be okay to make it fall on the just and the unjust, (See Jesus of Nazareth, Sermon on the Mount).

But according to Lupton, that would be spreading toxins everywhere.