Mercy is good. We’re supposed to want to be merciful. And we also know we aren’t always keen to offer it. It’s that amazing thing we all know we’re supposed to want to show and it is also so predictably hard to do.

For thousands of years, people of faith have not only been taught to be merciful, but to do it willingly, joyfully, and constantly. So the question is obvious: why is it so hard for us? If it is at the heart of faith, why the struggle?

Perhaps it is too easy to overlook the obvious. That our cultures are all oriented the other way. Toward revenge. And with it, escalation. Essentially, we’re taught to distrust and reject. And this gives us an essential way in.

It isn’t that revenge is natural. But it is what our cultures have developed as a starting point.

Mercy, then, isn’t a goal—it’s a strategy. A way of being, a purpose for life, that allows us to live a more generous life together.