PART 2: Good Government?
Questions about mercy, justice, and the role of the bureaucrat
The most powerful institution in human history commands trillions of dollars, the world’s greatest military, and the most sophisticated administrative apparatus ever assembled. If the goal is reducing human suffering, shouldn’t we use every tool available?
This is the honest version of the argument in the pastor’s tweet. The question of what the state owes its citizens and what it is actually capable of delivering is one of the oldest in political philosophy. So let’s explore: What is the government’s legitimate role?
Can it be merciful?
Can it be helpful?
Can it be good?
And what does history tell us when it tries?
What Mercy Actually Is
Before asking whether government can be merciful, we need to be clear about what mercy actually is. Because in common usage the word has been flattened into something like “not being cruel” or “providing material relief.” It is far more than that.
Mercy is an act of the will, freely chosen, at personal cost, directed toward a specific person. It is what happens when someone who has the right and the power to withhold chooses instead to give. It is the Samaritan stopping on the road, not because he had to, but because he chose to. His own oil, his own wine, his own money, his own time, his own promise to return. Every element of that transaction was his. The moment of choice is what makes it mercy rather than procedure.
Mercy is also relational. It requires one person to see another. Not to process a faceless claim, not to assess eligibility, but to actually see a specific human being in a specific moment of need and respond personally. The Samaritan did not submit a report to the Jericho Department of Road Safety. He got off his donkey and touched a wounded stranger. Got blood on his cloak and sweat on his skin. That contact, that seeing, is inseparable from the act.
And mercy is costly to the one extending it. The Samaritan made a promise that obligated him personally. He bore the cost. That bearing of cost is not incidental to mercy; it is what makes mercy morally formative, on a practical level. The person who gives becomes a different kind of person through the giving.
The government can do none of these things. It cannot choose freely, because it acts by compulsion and mandate. It cannot see anyone, because it processes categories of people, adjudicated by eligibility. It cannot sacrifice because it spends other people’s money. What the government performs when it transfers resources is not mercy. It may be justice, rightly enforced. It may be prudent policy. It may be strategic stability management. These are legitimate functions. Mercy is not among them.
To say the government should be kind, generous, or merciful is to misunderstand what those words mean and what the government is. It is not that the government is cruel. It is that kindness, generosity, and mercy are personal virtues that require a person to exercise them. An institution cannot be kind any more than a spreadsheet can love.
Kindness, generosity, and mercy are personal virtues. An institution cannot exercise them any more than a spreadsheet can love.
