If someone plays in the traffic, are we obligated to risk our own lives to pursue them into the road and drag them to safety? And if we are, who should pay for the rescue operation? Those are not abstract questions today. They are real issues as Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy and rescue crews endanger their own lives to save some of the 20,000 residents who ignored the mandatory evacuation of their city.
Is there a spiritual response to the melt down in the credit markets and the hurricane-driven waters that drove people from their homes across Texas? And I mean something more than, “Dear God, let this all pass me by”. Is there a spiritual perspective that does more than either assign blame i.e. “it’s God’s will”, or avoid God altogether? I think there is, but locating that approach demands that we confront some tough questions before we discover any answers. Are you ready for that?
Play with fire and you will get burned. Isn’t that the essence of justice? Isn’t it our ability to rely on that rule which keeps us cognizant of risk and makes us think twice before doing something foolish? And if we decide to take that risk and go for the big payday, or ride out the storm, why should others have to pay?

Why should anyone, be it a failed bank like Lehman or those who willfully ignored the law in Texas, receive a free ride on our dollars? Why should citizens even have to wonder if their tax dollars will be used to bail out people who gambled with either their livelihoods or their lives? This may sound mean-spirited, but that is what justice is all about. And it’s why no religious system I know is based purely on justice.
Mercy is central to every spiritual tradition in the world and without it; Jewish tradition imagines that the world could not continue. But what is the nature of that mercy? How would it shape our response to the big challenges which confront us today? And before I go any farther, I want to be absolutely clear that this is not a piece about forcing religion into the public square. I just think that religious wisdoms may have something to offer us as we consider how to make good public policy.
The Hebrew word for mercy, at least as it is used in this context, is rahamim. That word is from the root meaning womb. So to exercise mercy, according to Jewish tradition, is to love the one who stands before you as if you gave birth to them and to do so in a way that allows them to be born again – to get the world’s biggest do over, as my kids would say. In other words, mercy makes no pretense about what is deserved in cases where people have acted foolishly. From that perspective, the answer is nothing. But from the perspective of a loving parent, the answer to what I want to give them is everything.
In the coming days, there will be ongoing debate about bailing out banks, their stock holders, and homeowners along the Texas gulf. Rather that pound each other over who deserves what, I would love to see us consider what we are able to do for each other, be honest about the costs that will be born by those who did not contribute to the problem, and ask ourselves what we want to do. And asking that question is always the most important spiritual question of all. Because at the end of the day, the one choice we always have is how we want to respond, whether we created the situation to which we are responding or not.