Have we lost the divine meaning of the word mercy through secular misuse of it?
Divine mercy is not like human mercy, though human mercy can be modelled on the divine original. God’s mercy is shown in his provisions for his creation, even giving rain and sunshine to the unrighteous, and offering free pardon to everyone. He does not show partiality. Those are examples of great mercies on a world-wide scale. Secular ideas about mercy are poor by comparison. For example, a newspaper will report a fisherman with serious injuries being airlifted from his boat to a hospital. “Mercy Flight!” states the newspaper heading. But how do we know whether the helicopter pilot and those who despatched him and those who received him in hospital felt any mercy? We hope that they did, but perhaps they were just doing their job and would not have done it had they not been paid. “The divine quality of mercy is progressively crippled by wrong usage – as if a great angel had been shorn of its wings” is how George Mackay Brown put it. Today we have nothing but jokes about dreadful situat
