I'm just glad the kid wasn't hurt. It was one of those freaky things: he'd been sitting on the floor, watching TV, right next to the window. As he got to his feet, he put a hand on the windowpane to steady himself--and the glass gave under his hand. Fortunately it didn't shatter and cut him; it merely--merely!-- split into a dozen or so lethal long shards surrounding a small central break. He got one tiny splinter in his finger, that was all. Thank God.

He was terribly apologetic and felt like an idiot, and any impulse I had to chew him out died away immediately in the face of his contrition. He was also rather frightened, another good sign. Besides, it's good for me to know how to take a double-hung window apart; I'd never done that before, and now I know I can. I carried the broken lower sash downstairs to the front porch, set it on an old burlap bag to catch the nasties, and knocked the broken glass out of it. Reglazing it will cost about $25, the hardware store tells me. Again, it could have been much worse.

There are probably parents out there who would insist on the kid's paying for the window out of his allowance,"to teach him to be more careful in future"--or simply as pure punishment. Some parents hold to the Doctrine of Consequences: if a kid does something Bad, the kid should feel the Consequences, on principle, pure, plain and simple. Which is probably okay, as long as the Consequences are reasonable and consistent, but black-and-white are not my colours. I thought about it some and decided against docking the kid's allowance. He hadn't been horsing around; he doesn't normally do things of this nature, and the chances of a repeat performance are vanishingly small. He'd learned his lesson, big time.

I was reporting all this to my favorite theologian, who also happens to be the kid's grandmother (hi, Ma!). After suitable grandmotherly fussing about the safety issues, we talked a bit about consequences and justice and that sort of thing. I was saying "accidents don't really count," and she gently reminded me about her car, which had been put _hors de combat_ a couple of weeks ago by a 16-year-old in a jeep. He swung out of a parking spot without looking and pronged her car's front side panel, to the tune of about $1,000 in damages (not that it takes much, these days). It was just as much an accident as my kid in the window. But as is usually the case with large and heavy moving objects, the consequences of misjudgment were far more serious.

Which made me think: who'd want to be a judge? I can't imagine a harder job. I find it difficult enough to adjudicate between two kids over access to computer games or the propriety of calling your baby brother a baboon. We have the rule of law to help, in more serious matters, and good doctrines of responsibility (the bigger the object, the more responsible you have to be about moving it around). But we've learned the hard way that any absolute law is a bad law. On the other hand, increasing our flexibility increases the need for wisdom and discernment--and God knows, judges are human too, and some are better than others. It's a real juggling act.

Life would be a whole lot simpler if we could (as some say we should) simply not judge anyone or anything at all. If you still believe in that one, you don't have children--or if you do and manage never to have to adjudicate anything, then maybe I should be taking lessons from you. Although it's getting easier as they get older, I still find myself on the judge's bench several times daily, trying to decide who did what to whom first, whether my intervention is necessary and if so, how I should intervene, and what the verdict should be. It is time-consuming and sometimes difficult work, because it also involves doing a lot of hard listening and teaching--not just "that was wrong" but WHY that was wrong. (And the listening and teaching is the real reason why I do this.) I think it's worth it. But I'm glad I don't have more than two kids.

We have to make judgments to make decisions: am I going to major in English or commerce? Do I want to pursue this friendship or let it gently trail off? Is this the person I should marry? Should I quit this unrewarding job and hope that I can find a better way to make a living? Should I buy this house? Can I afford to take this risk? Most of these decisions are small, but ten small decisions can add up to more than one big decision. Some choices are cumulative, not all-or-nothing--finding God can be like that, for example.

On the other hand, some choices are major forks in the road, and once you've chosen the one over the other, you can never go back. And that can be terrifying, even paralyzing. But to stand dithering, failing to take one because you don't want to give up the other --that too is a judgment call. Am I dithering because it's too soon to make a decision, or should I get my tail in motion and make a choice, even if it might be the wrong one?

It would be so much easier if we just had a set of rules to follow: ALWAYS forgive or ALWAYS impose a consequence, instead of having to work painfully through weighing one set of factors against another and making a (potentially wrong) decision--which is what judging is all about. Easier, true--but that's putting our own ease above real justice. For real justice is never all that simple. It would be easier, too, if God did skywriting, but God doesn't do that either. It's in all this hard work of discernment--the getting of wisdom--that we make our own souls. It has never been an easy or painless process. But skipping it will get us nowhere.

Real justice, proper judgment, is profoundly different from judgmentalism. Justice takes into account all the relevant factors, good and bad: intent, seriousness of the offence, victim impact, evidence of contrition and desire to do better, the whole shebang, and its definition of "relevant" is generous. Judgmentalism, on the other hand, simply looks at the other's wrongness, making sweeping generalizations and condemning the other from on high without really thinking much about the individual or the circumstances --for example, saying of young offenders "just lock 'em up and throw away the key." As though that fixed anything!

Justice is interested in restoration--setting a wrong to rights, bringing the individual to wholeness and health, restoring the community, making the circle whole again. Judgmentalism is interested in punishment or condemnation, not in the person being punished or condemned. For by condemning others, we can make ourselves feel good about our own righteousness; by punishing them, we exploit them as a cheap outlet for our own anger and fear and frustration, at whatever cost to them. Judgmentalism has nothing whatsoever to do with true justice; it has to do with our own egotism, selfishness, and insecurity. And it is using human beings as things, objects for our own ends, not souls beloved of God.

Christ condemned judgmentalism roundly and passionately, over and over again. When we concentrate on "hating the sin and loving the sinner"--which invariably really means "jumping on the sinner with our boots on"--we are sitting in God's seat, passing a judgment that has nothing to do with real justice. Judgmentalism sets the law above love and sneers at those who make the opposite choice, calling them "wishy-washy". But true justice would force us to admit that maybe the other guy does have a case. Maybe we should be reconsidering our decisions. Maybe there's something to be said for the other side?

Easier to "stand on principle" than to step down from that soapbox and look into the other person's human, hurting eyes, trying to figure out what's really going on. Snap answers are always so much easier than carefully though-out answers, and so much less vexing to work through. Clarity gives us such a sense of relief, especially when we don't consider the costs. So we'll lunge for a quick decision, imposing an unfair penalty on a kid out of frustration and anger, and when the kid protests the injustice, we'll re-penalize the kid for questioning our authority. And then we wonder why they won't speak to us....

Only God has all the information, and the wisdom to use it perfectly, and so only God can judge a soul. That's none of our business, and Christ tells us explicitly to knock it off. But we can, in justice to each other, take the time to discern carefully, to listen with respect and attention, and to make our decisions in love and charity for the other, not in snap condemnation or easy contempt. Maybe it's necessary to punish--as I would have punished my kid if he'd broken the window while horsing around--but at least we should listen to the case for the defence.

Our justice, at its absolute best, is probably only a small corner of God's justice--just as basic arithmetic is a small corner of fractal geometry. But we can at least try to ensure that we've done our sums correctly, to do this difficult business to the best of our ability. We owe each other that little.

I picked up the reglazed window from the hardware store, tucked it back into its casing, and reinstalled the strip of molding that holds it in place. It's good as new, and I am pleased with my new skill. The kid can do some extra yardwork to make amends.