I see that the kid took off for school without breakfast again this morning… I left him apple crisp, which he’ll usually snarf down, and God knows there are worse breakfasts. But this time, going by the absence of apple-crisp residue on plate or bowl, he must have gotten up too late.

Ever since he started high school, which starts at the ungodly hour (for teenagers) of 8 AM, he’s up and loping bonelessly off schoolward before his younger brother and mother have peeled their heads from the pillow, none of us being the sort who rises chirping with the larks . I try to impress upon him the importance of having something to eat before school, and he understands and does his best, but he’s genuinely not hungry that early, and sometimes he runs out of time.

Fortunately, the high school has an adequate grasp of human nature, teenaged subcategory, and provides a break between first and second period that many students use to cram food into their faces. Probably kids are breakfasting on stuff that would appall a nutritionist, but at least they get some calories into them, some glucose for their brains, to balance all those hormones.

Of course, in a perfectly regulated world, teen would be up at 6:30, sitting down to a good well-balanced breakfast (probably provided by a white-aproned smiling mother, ugh!). Teen would then put together teen’s perfectly completed homework and be off to school in good time, arriving a respectable 5 minutes before the bell. No doubt some teens are actually like this. Merely, mine's not like that. His idea of a reasonable rising time is mid-afternoon; his idea of nutrition is Coke and Skittles. Fortunately he’s constructed more for speed than comfort or he’d be late more often than once a week. Given who he is, I think he does very well, all things considered. This probably makes me a Bad Parent, but hey...

Which brings a more general and troubling question: should we be (a) setting the bar where ought to be (up early, good breakfast) and if the kid doesn’t make it, tough noogie; or (b) compromising with reality (up at 7:30, cram apple crisp into face, be on time more often than not)? Of course there’s no question which is preferable; the ideal is better than the imperfect. But there is such a thing as human nature.

Schools, I think, seem to wrestle with it more obviously than most, and often in ways that provide wonderful bad examples. Do you set reading standards low enough that most students can pass, thereby protecting their self-esteem at the expense of their competence? Or do you set standards so high that only one student in 100 can get a straight-A average – rewarding the very best, while ensuring that the reasonably good gets counted as failure?

Of course most black-and-white policies are a way of making a point – often to reset people’s way of thinking, and necessary for that reason. But they can also become excuses for not using one’s loaf, and they pass easily into the absurd. It’s far easier to adhere to some simple rule (always pass, always fail) than it is actually to have to think about the case, juggling all the factors and risking inconsistency. Easy, yes; loving, no, and sometimes dumb as a sack of hammers. Do you set a zero-tolerance policy for school violence? Sounds wonderful, and it may be needed to slam on the brakes when a school is out of control--until you hear of the 7-year-old expelled for bringing Granny’s antique silver butter knife to show-and-tell.

So what’s the Christian answer? Paradox – oh wonderful, horrible paradox! We ’ve seen the standard set, and set higher than any of us can ever dream of attaining. The standard is Christ. If we think we can meet that mark, then either we’ve forgotten that Christ is also God, or we’ve forgotten that we aren’t God, we’re human. Either of those failures is a really major booboo.

At the same time, however, we’re told that Christ sits with the guys at the bottom of the class, which is particularly maddening when you’ve worked your buns off to make a B+. We want more credit than that; we want to take pride in our goodness, which invariably seems to mean needing to point out how much worse everyone else is doing. But we’re told that’s not on. That’s our attempt to evade the paradox. We are all sinners and all beloved, at one and the same time, and God asks us to keep both realities in tension with each other. That tension is so hard to hang onto – the hardest work in the world, it sometimes feels.

Paul wrestled with this: we have the Law, telling us how we fail; we have redemption through Christ’s choice to die for us. Redemption does not make either the Law or our failure go away. We are sinners; that fact is inescapable. But we have God’s love regardless. If we count down from the top, being honest about our failures, God counts up from the bottom, holding us as precious in His sight.

The wise and loving thing, in dealing with ourselves and others, is to set the bar at a reasonable height – to have true ideals – and also to accept the fact that we’re not going to make it every time. We have to learn to handle failure, our own and others, lovingly, carefully, with thought, honestly but with humanity and a generous measure of gentleness. For justice stripped of mercy is not justice at all.

God’s mercy is so vast, and it wraps us round more closely than the air. How, then, can we not be merciful to ourselves and to each other?