Mercy cannot be bought with charity
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Re: "Send the condemned men home to Australia", Opinion, March 16.
Tamalia Alisjahbana of the Jakarta Post cites the $1 billion in tsunami relief that Australia gave Indonesia to justify her argument for “exchanging two Australian lives for thousands of Indonesian ones”.
But the words of two important Christian theologians tell me this is a false argument. “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld”, Saint Augustine wrote, while Emanuel Swedenborg contended that “True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense”.
Begging for mercy would be more appropriate and would offer a better chance of saving the lives of these two men.
Songdej Praditsmanont
