As eighteenth century poet and artist William Blake once wrote: "Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too." The three sensations commented on by Blake are prevalent with the 2008 graphic novel Kingdom Come and 2006 book The Road, but arguably the most interesting is the Christian concept of mercy within the story. The term 'mercy' comes from the Latin word 'merces' or 'merced' which translates as 'reward,' according to an online dictionary the contemporary meaning of the term: "compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one's power; compassion, pity, or benevolence." It is my belief that through the expression of mercy, humanity cannot only better understand God, but their fellow humans as well and help achieve ulimate redemption with the divine.
In the story Kingdom Come, the superheroes of old such as Superman, Green Lantern, and the Flash are living in a type of self imposed exile after a disastrous nuclear accident in Kansas state. When Superman and the other heroes come back to stop the new breed of heroes, meta-humans, who are doing more harm than good, the threat of the end of the Earth looms overhead. The climax of the graphic novel comes when the Gulag, the prison built to house the non-cooperating meta-humans, has been destroyed. As the old superheroes clash with the escaped meta-humans, Superman battles Captain Marvel who has been brainwashed by Lex Luthor and has turned against his former allies and friends.
As the fighting rages on, another threat heads steadily closer to the sight of the small-scale war: a nuclear missile that was launched by the United Nations in response to the Gulag prison break. Superman recognizes two apparent choices i...
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...ne; after all, it is easy to react against those who have harmed you with rage and violence. However, to show mercy and compassion is something extraordinary.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. N.p.: Barnes and Noble Press, 2008.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.
"Mercy." In Dictionary.com. Accessed February 23, 2014. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mercy?s=t.
Perrin, J. M. "Mercy." In New Catholic Encyclopedia, 504. Vol. 9. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Accessed
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Weid, Mark, and Alex Ross. Kingdom Come. New York: DC Comics, 2008.
"William Blake Quotes." BrainyQuote. Accessed February 22, 2014.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williambla124614.html.
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition Bible. Eds. Dom Bernand Orchard, Rev. R. V. Fuller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1966. Print.
Winthrop, John. "from a Modell of Christian Charity." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Canada: DC Heath and company, 1990. 226-238.
living and visible in jesus of Nazareth” stated by Pope Francis. ‘Mercy’ is a concept integral
Imagine a Batman birthed in 1939 aging with his readership, so come 1986 he is retired. Who would his villains be? Not the Joker, or the Cat Woman, but Nuclear War, Reaganomics, a Bipartisan government, and the fear of nuclear attack. And so once again, Superman and his friends helped us solve our problems, the enemies of the common
Winthrop, J. (2008). A Model for Christian Charity. In N. Baym (Ed.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume 1 (pp. 82). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Winthrop, John. "A Model of Christian Charity." Franklin, Wayne, Phillip F. Gura and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007. 147-158.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus endorses agape, or selfless love (in contrast to eros, or possessive love), which consists of dedication to another person’s good, even at the expense of our own good and happiness. People should practice peace and nonviolence, return good for evil and love for suffering (“turn the other cheek”). This leads to a special conception of justice, called the “divine justice”, which is based on giving a person what he or she needs rather than deserves (e.g., in case of a crime, redemption rather getting even).
Elie Wiesel’s the Trial of God represents the age-old question: how can a righteous God allow evil and suffering? Written as a play based on a real event, Wiesel tries to capture the myriad of emotions and theological arguments that were present. Though the trial, in Wiesel’s play, takes place during the seventeenth-century many cultural aspects overlap with twentieth-century Europe and World War II. Similarities between Wiesel’s fictional world and his life experience involve events such as violent actions against the Jewish community. The events of Elie Wiesel’s life heavily influenced the creation of his play the Trial of God.
Overall, Pope Francis places extreme concern on four areas, which are the idolatry of money, the option of the poor, inequality, and the common good/peace. Before reading Pope Francis’s book, I had a general familiarity with inequality and the option for the poor, but I was not completely aware of the idolatry of money in today’s society or peace in a Christian perspective. In Chapter 2, he starts talking about how we have found new idols in today’s society and how our relationship with money has taken control over not only our society, but also ourselves (Pope Francis, 55). Also, Pope Francis discusses how we as Christians need to realize that we are not exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice because it is required of everyone (Pope Francis, 201). In addition, he also talks about the vulnerability of certain groups and the progress of building people in peace, justice, and fraternity, which I will discuss in subsequent paragraphs. Prior to reading this book, I was aware of Pope Francis and some of his beliefs to an extent. I am Catholic, so I remember when he was first inaugurated as Pope and I remember hearing my family discuss some of his beliefs, but I was only somewhat aware of his style as a Christian leader. As a Christian leader, Pope Francis places emphasis on four areas of concern, which include: the new idolatry of money, option for the poor, inequality, and common good/peace.
The purpose of the pilgrim's journey through hell is to show, first hand, the divine justice of God and how Christian morality dictates how, and to what degree, sinners are punished. Also, the journey shows the significance of God's grace and how it affects not only the living, but the deceased as well. During his trip through hell, the character of Dante witnesses the true perfection of God's justice in that every sinner is punished in the same nature as their sins. For instance, the wrathful are to attack each other for all eternity and the soothsayers are forever to walk around with their heads on backwards. Furthermore, Dante discovers that hell is comprised of nine different circles containing sinners guilty of one type of sin, and that these circles are in order based upon how great an opposition the sin is to Christian morality and the ultimate will of God. We see here how Christianity plays a major role in the structure of hell and the degree to which each sinner is punished. Lastly, we can look at the story and see the importance of the grace of God not only to Dante during his journey, but how it affects the souls in hell and purgatory as well.
Wooding, Lucy. "Christian Humanism: from Renaissance to Reformation." N.p., Sept. 2009. MasterFile Premier. Web. 22 May 2014.
Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Rev. ed. Edited by Chad Brand. Nashville, TN: Holman, 2003. S.v. “redemption.”
Turner, William. (March 1, 1907) The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume I, online edition. Retrieved February 2, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01713a.htm
Theme: Mercy vs. Justice. Allusion to justice = eye for eye, tooth for tooth [measure for measure]; allusion to mercy = let him without sin cast the first stone [esp. sexual sin].