Some things linger long in my memory. Pete Hegseth’s prayer at a recent worship service in the Pentagon is a good example because of the many reports that he prayed for violence against those “who deserve no mercy”.

I found those words disconcerting because I believe God expects us to be compassionate and to forgive people even when we think they don’t deserve it. But given his prayer I thought it would be good to go back to the Bible to make sure I wasn’t getting it wrong.

As soon as I did, I was reminded that God is nothing if not merciful. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah summed it up well when he said, ‘His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning’. That’s great news if it’s true because we all fail to live up to God’s expectations. Thankfully the Bible assures that He is willing to show His mercy to anyone however badly they have behaved, and that the Easter story is proof of that.

But I realised that if God is merciful, it follows that we should be merciful too because we have been created in His image! This explains why Jesus teaches us to pray ‘Forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us’.

I also noticed that the New Testament stresses that if we refuse to be merciful, we will have to face the consequences. Take the Sermon on the Mount example where we are told Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the merciful’. If we are not careful, we will easily miss the point because He goes on the say ‘for they shall be shown mercy’. In other words, it’s the merciful who will be shown mercy not the unmerciful.

He stressed the same truth when one of his disciples asked Him how often we should forgive people. Jesus responded by telling them the story of the Unmerciful Servant. It tells of a man whose debts were cancelled but sadly, refused to behave in the same way.

As a result, his master became extremely angry and withdrew his offer of mercy. Indeed Jesus’ concluding words are sobering. ‘You wicked servant’ he declared. ‘I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt’. His followers need to remember then that if we expect God to be merciful to us, He expects the same of us.

His brother James obviously understood this because he wrote ‘judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful’.

Now that’s about as plain as you can get which is why I hope I will never find myself praying for violence against those ‘who deserve no mercy’. What do you think?