Is. Remember the discussion of what is is?
How about mercy or kindness?
There are two verses that outside of the Sermon on the Mount and Love being the end goal that distill down religion and what's expected of us. Micah 6:8 and James 1:27. I'm going to start with Micah for the benefit of our Jewish buddies.
But, before I get get to the actual verse I'm going to lawyer it up and talk about a single word and what could it possibly mean?!
The Hebrew word is חֵסֵד H2617 hesed. It is used 248 times being applied to men and God. In Micah 6, it is applied to man. Brown-Driver-Briggs offers this range of meaning:
According to BDB, both "kindness" and "mercy" are valid meanings. However, "faithfulness" is not mentioned. The emphasis here is not on the faithfulness of man.
The immediate context here is justice to fellow men. Micah is calling the people to love and to show mercy and kindness. Take another step back, the context is appeasing God:
Jesus confirms this importance of being merciful in Matthew 9:13
I'd say that "mercy" is the best translation for Micah 6:8. It is better than sacrifice.
Here's the verse in question. I'm going to bypass all of the varying Christian translations and go to a search of Micah 6:8 Talmud, because well duh.
“You have been told, O mortal, what is good,
And what GOD requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness,
And to walk modestly with your God;
I want to concentrate on the two verbs 'do' and 'love' and specifically why they aren't transposed. We're told to Do Justice, not love it. Here hesed is translated as 'goodness' instead of mercy or kindness. That's what we're instructed to love, we're to actively pursue justice and love goodness and mercy. It is an unfortunate byproduct of our morally self superior state that we often mix the two verbs. We're out here loving the 'justice' as we see it foisted upon our fellow human beings. See Leopards Eating Faces. I'm as guilty of that as anyone. And I am just as guilty of avoiding the kindness and mercy part in the midst of the consequences of the Justice being visited upon them by their Orange god. See Huckabees AR, et al.
That's a really fucking simple command of what is required of me and I fall woefully short in dozens, hundreds, thousands of instances. Woefully, disdainfully short. I ought to be more merciful to those backwoods hillbillies. But, damned if it is hard to do. It's far more fun to love the Justice that is being visited upon them, soybean farmers, cigar sellers, and the other victims of the hacking slash of DOGE.
James starts it off in chapter 1. 'True religion' is what he calls it.
27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
That's the NIV.
Here's umpteen other versions
https://www.biblestudytools.com/james/1-27-compare.html
There are probably more entries on "what does that mean"?! Than there are discussions on how to accomplish the first part, because THAT COSTS MONEY. And those little fuckers ought to die and decrease the surplus population or at the very least stop being so poor. Fatty very plainly stated a while back that he doesn't give two shits about religion and feels no need to do a damn thing to help the poor and needy. How many people share that sentiment that are going to sit in the pews this coming Sunday and yet claim that giving them a free lunch is actually hurting them?
Rage inducing
Which brings me back to that mercy stuff again. I'm supposed to show kindness to those sorry buncha fuckhead?
Yes
Dammit!
So, yeah I don't think I am going to be attaining Nirvana any time soon. I can't even get past the delicious schadenfreude of Leopards Eating Faces.
Dammit. I guess I'm going to have to stick around a while longer.