Books That Help Us Love Our Neighbor – Just Mercy
Our Pastor Kyle Edwards begins a new series called “Books that Help Us Love Our Neighbor.“ The review comes in two formats—a blog post or video. The content is the same in each so that you can access whichever one you prefer by watching this video or reading the full post below.
2020 has been more tumultuous and challenging than any other year that most of us can remember. The Coronavirus continues to menace us, and the deaths of black men at the hands of police officers and armed civilians has seemingly brought the issue of racism to a tipping point in our national discourse. In July we tried to listen to God’s Word to bring clarity to some of these issues in the “Loving Your Neighbor” sermon series. We looked at the Greatest Commandment, and how this applies even to strangers and our enemies.
But a three week sermon series can’t ever be sufficient to adequately shape our hearts and minds to walk faithfully through these issues. In the interest of keeping these issues before us and strengthening us for a Christ-like witness in this beautiful but broken world, I’d like to introduce an occasional blog and video series called, “Books that help us love our neighbor.” I’ll be reviewing books on such topics as racism, the refugee crisis, and the biblical vision for ethics.
We begin this series with a review of Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, Just Mercy. Bryan Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which, according to its website, “is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.” The title Just Mercy has, I think, a double meaning: (1) just mercy as in only mercy for those for those who have rarely or never been shown mercy; and (2) justice and mercy aligned together. This second meaning especially is apt, for Stevenson has dedicated his life to fight for those for whom the justice system has shown very little mercy and often very little justice too.
Several threads weave through the narrative. The biggest is Stevenson’s defense of Walter McMillian, a black man convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair for a murder of a white woman. As Stevenson meticulously shows, McMillian clearly did not commit this crime. The troubling irony of this case is that the murder occurred in Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, which famously tells the story of a black man wrongfully accused of a crime against a white woman. Life bizarrely and tragically imitates art. The town celebrates its literary fame and yet—in a corrupt police investigation, prosecutorial misconduct, judicial prejudice (moving the trial to ensure a nearly all white jury), and even putting McMillian on death row before the trail began—commits blatantly racist injustice that looks straight out of the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Other threads interweave with the fight for McMillian’s life and the legal recognition of his innocence. Stevenson defends death row inmates whose poverty, race, or mental disability (or all three) contributed in some way to their conviction and harsh sentencing. He fights for prisoners who were sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide crimes committed as 13 or 14 year olds. He argues to the U.S. Supreme Court for the abolition of the death penalty for mentally disabled prisoners.
So what should we make of Just Mercy? First of all, I found it thrilling and moving. The legal drama, especially Walter McMillian’s case, really keeps you on the edge of your seat. The fight for people who’ve suffered wrongly engaged me at an emotional level that was so much more compelling than philosophical arguments on the nature of justice.
Second, I was struck by how deeply compassionate and empathetic Stevenson is. He desires mercy for perpetrators and victims. He wants us to show mercy towards criminals who are themselves victims, such as a young teenage boy sentenced to life without parole for killing his violently abusive stepfather. Stevenson attributes this merciful disposition to a formative moment in his childhood when his grandmother compelled him to publicly apologize to and embrace a bullied, stuttering boy.
I don’t know Stevenson’s personal spiritual and religious convictions, but his words on mercy sound like they have a deep gospel architecture. Consider these statements:
The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace. (18)
I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us. (290)
I thought of the little boy [the bullied, stuttering boy] who hugged me outside of church. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration. (294)
Third, for people who worship the God of boundless mercy and perfect justice, Just Mercy speaks powerfully about the troubling presence of injustice in our society, especially injustice rooted in racism. Stevenson addresses issues such as the death penalty, mass incarceration, and sentencing guidelines. Personally, he persuaded me to his views, yet, due to the complexity of these issues, I believe Christians can hold to a variety of views in good faith. However, I don’t think any sympathetic reader can come away from the book with the conviction that the justice system has always been equally just to all people regardless of race or economic status.
Christians, of all people, should be concerned for true justice and should be aware of the ways that fallible human systems do not naturally gravitate towards fairness for those with less power. The Law demanded that Israel “not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit” (Exodus 23:6). God has a personal and passionate interest in justice: “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15). James hits particularly hard against a preference for the rich over the poor:
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? (James 2:1-7)
And isn’t the gospel itself the supreme and most beautiful example of just mercy? Through the perfect life and sacrificial death of Jesus, God displays wonderful, undeserving mercy to people who do not deserve it and at the same time deals justly with guilt and satisfies the demands of the Law. All who trust in Jesus have been shown mercy, so let us in turn show mercy to others. Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy might just help us do that.