We Measure Everything Except Mercy
Poll numbers, approval ratings, quarterly earnings, net worth — we have reduced human beings to data points. Today Jesus walks into the middle of our spreadsheet and flips the table.
Dear friends —
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Each meditation will explore what it means to follow Jesus more faithfully in the midst of American civic and political life — not as partisans first, but as Christians whose consciences are shaped by the Cross.
Lent is a season of repentance, renewal, and resolve.
It is a time to confront our idols, strip away our illusions, and allow the light of God’s redeeming love to search and purify our hearts.
I hope you will walk this forty-day road with me — as your brother and fellow sinner — embracing prayer, sacrifice, and deeper conversion, and allowing the God of liberation to claim every corner of our lives and our public witness in an age of creeping authoritarianism.
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging, and you will not be judged. Stop condemning, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” — (Luke 6:36-38)
We are a people obsessed with measurement.
We measure productivity and quarterly earnings. We measure poll numbers and approval ratings. We measure the worth of a human being by their net worth, their social media following, the neighborhood they live in, and the school their children attend.
We have built an entire civilization around the conviction that the right metrics, applied ruthlessly enough, can tell us who matters and who doesn’t.
And then Jesus — as he so often does — walks into the middle of our lives and our spreadsheets and flips the tables.
“The measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
This is not hyperbole. Jesus is telling us that the standards we impose on others are the standards that will be imposed on us. The judgment we render is the judgment we will receive. The mercy we withhold is the mercy that will be withheld from us.
In other words, we are building the courtroom in which we ourselves will stand trial — and we are writing the rules of evidence.
That should terrify us. Because if we are honest about the way we treat one another in this country right now — the contempt we carry, the dehumanization we practice, the ease with which we sort people into categories of worthy and unworthy — the measure we are using is brutal.
Consider how we measure the immigrant. Not by their humanity, but by their documentation.
Consider how we measure the poor. Not by their dignity, but by their productivity.
