Justice, Forgiveness, and Mercy

By Rev Michael Gemignani

This book examines three concepts that come up frequently in sermons, religious education, and English translations of the Bible, but, like love, have different meanings for different people, and even different meanings for the same person in different contexts: justice, forgiveness, and mercy. All Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) maintain that God is just and merciful and offers forgiveness to those who satisfy certain conditions. But what does it mean to say that God is just when your idea of justice may be different from mine? And I may think that some act is merciful while you may consider that same act to enable inappropriate behavior. I may believe that God's forgiveness, whatever that means, is available to every human being, while you may believe that God will only forgive a certain subset of those who claim to be Christian. But we may, when we spend the time to try to clarify what we mean, find that we are either in closer agreement, or even further apart, than we first thought. We were speaking the same language, but we might as well have been speaking different languages, and, in a sense, we were, because we shared no common meanings of the words we were using. I was speaking my language and you were speaking your language, two distinct languages in which the words look and sound alike but mean something different in each language.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1522092471
• ISBN13: 9781522092476
• Release Date: September 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 137 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"