Thursday, April 20, 2017

Mercy And The Lord's Prayer

God's Mercy is not a currency.  Even if it were, it is not for anyone to spend, even though many give it away as if they owned it.  Other than God, only the Son of God can grant Mercy.  He earned the power from God by obeying God, by taking on man's sins, by suffering under man's extreme cruelties and by laying down his life for the love of sinners. Those who have not gone through Christ's Passion are under the delusion of grandeur when they think they can speak on God's Mercy on Christ's behalf.

According to John M. Grohol, Psy.D. (quoted in part without hyperlink):

A delusion of grandeur is the fixed, false belief that one possesses superior qualities such as genius, fame, omnipotence, or wealth. It is most often a symptom of schizophrenia, but can also be a symptom found in psychotic or bipolar disorders, as well as dementia (such as Alzheimer’s).

People with a delusion of grandeur often have the conviction of having some great but unrecognized talent or insight. They may also believe they have made some important discovery that others don’t understand or appreciate.

... 
Grandiose delusions may have religious content, such as the person believes he or she has received a special message from God or another deity. [Emphasis original.]

Given Dr. Grohol's definition, this blogger can certainly be classified as a person suffering under such a delusion since he blogs about God, the Son of God, the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin Mary, on not just the subject of God's Mercy but on every topic that enters his delusional mind as well.  In so doing, he gives Them Their voices (as imagined) in the present era, in which many also speak on Their behalf, which allows this blogger to conclude that their minds are probably no less delusional than his.

Perhaps it is necessary for those who are equally deluded to offer divergent views in order that a scintilla of God's Truth would emerge at some point during their clashes.

Having established the blogger's unhealthy mental state, he nonetheless continues to write whatever that comes to his mind with a certain compulsion, despite the challenges he faces as a lousy writer, requiring edit upon edit, before and  after posting, with still much room for improvement in the finished product.  Given this fact, he is humbly grateful for the readers who are kind enough to give him chance after chance, perhaps with the expectation that he might do better the next time, and return once in a while to check out the condition of his mental state.

In this entry, the Lord's prayer [2] is being re-written below (the part that is in italics), substituting the word "mercy" for the word "trespass":

Our Father, Who are in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name;
Thy Kingdom come; Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and give us Your Mercy, as we give others ours.
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

While no man has the authority to dispense God's Mercy, he can have mercy on another whom he perceives had wronged him, whether or not his perception is accurate.  This mercy allows both sides to heal, and allows broken marriages and families to become whole, provided that the one who is merciful shifts the focus away from the self to the ones who need to be loved.

Sometimes, love can indeed be painful, and the most painful can arise out of relationships that are the closest and the dearest.

Imagine how close the relationship God is to man, so much so that God had sent His only Son to suffer under man in order that man is able to grasp in some small way the immense magnitude of God's love for him; yet, God's endless living love continues to escape the consciousness of many most of the time, for the focus is on them and on the mercy that is their right to have, even as some may pray the Lord's prayer (here, the imagined version) while oblivious to the fact that they are asking God to give them Mercy "as" (i.e., "in the same way as") they give (or not give) others theirs.

It ought to be apparent that the Lord's prayer (the original one as well) never implied that God's Mercy is something one is entitled to, or is something that a religious can promise to sinners.  It is certainly not something a blogger can believe that he can expound on accurately, no matter how deluded is his mind.

However, even a deluded mind can have a moment of clarity, long enough to know that neither God nor Christ had ever promised that life for the fallen man will be painless.  In the midst of life's pains, Christ had shown man how to overcome their many facets, by His obedience to God, by His pure and humble love, by laying down His life for His friends, or those whom one loves [3] and that means everyone in the family and everyone else outside of it.  Christ had said, quoted in part (without references): "'This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.'" [4], [5]



[1] https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/delusion-of-grandeur/
[2] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p4s2.htm
[3] http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/15 at footnote marked by *15:13 (hyperlink omitted).
[4] Ibid. at 12-13.
[5] This blogger had seen these words of Christ being used for a fallen soldier who by his valor chose to die by enemy fire to save others in his unit.  While these words can be emotionally evocative at a military funeral, one ought to ask if Christ had ever intended His words be taken advantage of by men engaged in the killing of one another.  If Christ had been taken advantage of, it would not have been His first time.  Yet, He still loves.  From this perspective, one ought to be able to grasp to a degree the pain of Christ's love for man, and ought to be willing to do endure at least that much pain for someone who is near and dear when giving mercy.

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