Reflexive Mercy (Friday Devotional)

 

But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.

- Matthew 5:22

There are certain reactions over which you have no control—they are truly reflexive and involuntary. If you step outside of an air-conditioned car on a warm, sunny day, you will sneeze. If a doctor hits your knee with a mallet, your leg will fly up. If someone shines a light in your eye, you will blink. These aren’t decisions you make, they are simply the natural way your body responds to outside stimuli.

But there are other reactions where the ball is in your court, where you get to choose how you will respond. When your child isn’t obeying you, you get to choose between impatient yelling and patient discipline. When your coworker isn’t pulling her weight, you get to choose between immature retaliation and direct dialogue. When your spouse is getting on your last nerve, you get to choose between passive-aggressive needling and sacrificial love.

Anger is an emotion, and so your control over it is limited. Like happiness in the face of good times or sadness in the wake of tragedy, anger is a natural reaction to unmet expectations, a reflexive response when you feel disrespected.

But while the feeling of anger may be involuntary, how you deal with that feeling is entirely up to you. Jesus cautions his followers not to allow inner anger to spill out into outer harm. Instead of responding to mistreatment with retribution, Jesus calls us to meet cruelty with love and violence with peace, to radically respond with mercy when our flesh cries out for justice.

One of the enemy’s great tricks is convincing you that retribution is not only your natural right, but your involuntary reflex. He would have you think that you have no control over how you respond to grievances, that meeting hurt with hurt is “just how it is” in this fallen world. But in the Spirit, you are given power to overcome your flesh and live for Jesus instead, to follow his commands instead of your instincts. Anger may be a human, involuntary reflex—but in Christ, you get to choose what to do with it.