Recently I wrote an essay about moderation and what might be called the "poison proviso" to moderation: the reality is that truly bad things—poisons, impurities, impossible entities, negatives, vices, vain imaginations—cannot be moderated. They must be eliminated.
As Christ said:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."
—John 15:1–2 (NIV)
This pruning is the principal work of the virtue that upholds moderation: temperance. A temperate soul is ruled by reason, God's first gift to humanity. A searching and disciplined mind is then able to apply Christ's principle—"by their fruits ye shall know them"—to every belief, motive, and action. It ruthlessly lops off every branch that fails to meet the standards of the Divine Gardener.
Only after temperance has become firmly established within us can we properly moderate the many good things with which life blesses us, discovering what Bahá'u'lláh calls, in a passage quoted below, their "settled measure."
An Objection
Someone responded to my earlier essay with the following question:
"If a man steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving children, what's the judgment? And how does 'moderation' play into that situation? Nothing is completely black and white. If that were the case, there wouldn't be mercy."
I replied:
"Moderation applies to ordinary circumstances. As for stealing bread, the folly of prosecuting a desperate person who does so to save another is the very plot of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, which helps explain its enduring popularity across cultures. Most legal systems recognize exceptional circumstances. For example, cannibalism is ordinarily illegal, yet survivors forced to resort to it after a wilderness disaster are seldom prosecuted. The Bahá'í understanding of law and economics is that both society and individuals share responsibility for maintaining the conditions under which the rule of law can flourish."
The objector remained unconvinced:
"What about mercy? Respectfully, your response didn't address mercy."
Mercy and Vanity
Coincidentally, I had just watched an interview with Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Elon Musk and many other notable figures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg2SYwDf5w0
Isaacson relates an intriguing observation he learned from Musk: that what we often regard as mercy or empathy may sometimes be a subtle form of vanity—we want to be liked, so we act compassionately. Musk, of course, carries this argument much further, suggesting that excessive empathy is pulling civilization apart. Whether or not one accepts that conclusion, it identifies one of the central tensions between contemporary liberal and conservative thought.
From a Bahá'í perspective, however, the issue is more nuanced. Bahá'u'lláh teaches that God's mercy exceeds His justice. Were it otherwise, frail mortals could scarcely endure the full weight of divine justice. Shakespeare expressed the same idea beautifully through Portia, whose famous speech reminds us that mercy tempers justice. Like an alloy strengthened by the careful blending of metals and then tempered by fire, justice becomes stronger—not weaker—when united with mercy. This harmonious union lies at the heart of the Bahá'í principle of the Oneness of Humanity.
Justice First
Yet Bahá'u'lláh also places extraordinary emphasis on justice. Indeed, in the second of the Arabic Hidden Words, He declares:
"The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice."
Justice is therefore not opposed to mercy; rather, it provides the foundation upon which mercy rests.
The most just—and ultimately the most merciful—course is to heed the Will of our Creator. Addressing the kings of the earth, and by extension all who hold positions of trust, Bahá'u'lláh wrote:
"Have mercy on yourselves and on those beneath you, and judge ye between them according to the precepts prescribed by God in His most holy and exalted Tablet, a Tablet wherein He hath assigned to each and every thing its settled measure, in which He hath given, with distinctness, an explanation of all things, and which is in itself a monition unto them that believe in Him."
—Bahá'u'lláh, Summons of the Lord of Hosts, para. 12
https://www.bahai.org/r/228887616
The Settled Measure
The expression "settled measure" deserves careful attention. It suggests the point of perfect balance—the "Goldilocks point"—that we ordinarily call temperance. Moderation is not merely compromise. It is the point at which justice and mercy meet in their proper proportions. Bahá'u'lláh gives perhaps the most memorable description of this relationship in the Third Leaf of Paradise:
"If thine eyes be turned towards mercy, forsake the things that profit thee and cleave unto that which will profit mankind. And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself."
—Bahá'u'lláh, Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh
https://www.bahai.org/r/218208370
Moderation marks the place where justice and mercy meet—indeed, where they might be said to embrace one another. Mercy prevents justice from becoming harsh; justice prevents mercy from becoming sentimentality. Together they produce the settled measure that Bahá'u'lláh commends.
The illustration accompanying the final quotation was generated using ChatGPT.
