Last week in my community a terrible thing happened. In the middle of the school day, just past eleven in the morning, three teens in two cars decided to race down the road from the high school. It’s the primary thoroughfare in the area, and is thus highly trafficked at all times of day.
Police reports said the two drivers were driving recklessly, weaving in and out of busy traffic at a high rate of speed.
The drivers both lost control, sending each car airborne, off the roadway, crashing into trees, and catching on fire.
Two of the students are expected to survive. One died the next day.
It was a terrible thing. On that all agree.
The lack of agreement elsewhere soon became painfully obvious…
Clearly, the majority of responses were full of sadness, grief and encouraging prayers for the affected families and classmates. Such heartache… brokenness… a life gone too soon. Immediately thereafter, “Go Fund Me” accounts were established for those involved and their families. That prompted increased reaction. Some of those reactions, no doubt, were highly, emotionally charged.
Remember that the students were weaving in and out of traffic. They knowingly put all the other innocent drivers and passengers around them at risk; it was a lot of people. A tangent note… I was maybe 3,4 minutes behind them, as I soon saw one of the first responding ambulances in my rear view mirror. I had also first taken backroads this day, which added about 3 minutes to my route. To suggest I was soberly, divinely grateful is an understatement indeed.
Let us, no less, be respectfully candid; what the teen drivers did was not only illegal; it was foolish, dangerous, and it also seriously threatened the very lives of those who had zero to do with the teens’ ill-decision.
Hence, the resulting question: how much mercy and grace do the foolish deserve?
And… do we assess the levels of foolishness?
Allow us to first step back a mere moment, acknowledging the difference between mercy and grace. Mercy means not receiving the punishment we deserve; grace means receiving something we don’t deserve. Mercy is being spared; grace is being favored.
It thus makes sense to me that varied reactions would be expressed in a tragedy such as this.
It makes sense to me that we wouldn’t all feel the same way.
And it makes sense to me not to demand that another feel exactly like me.
It’s ok to react differently.
So what do we do? Do we offer any mercy and grace? Kindness and compassion? Or solely justice and consequence? Is there a combination we can appropriately provide?
Friends, let me never suggest that I know best for all others. That’s an impolitic trap to fall into.
I think back, though, to years ago, sitting with one of my mentors, struggling with a decision. I sincerely asked for help in deciding what to do in a specific situation in which others were involved and would be significantly affected by my choice. I will never forget his prudent encouragement. It went something like this…
“When life is over and it’s my time, if there’s this potential place of divine review in which we look back over the entire course of my life, the decisions I’ve made and all the pockets and places where I screwed up or was wrong, I hope it can always be said of me that I erred on the side of grace. Let me err on the side of grace.”
Friends, I suggest not that it’s easy.
Just makes me think it’s a wise thing to strive for, knowing there are many days we all need it, too.
Respectfully…
AR