I said it almost instinctively, without thinking too much: “Don’t you think that for cruel and oppressive people, we should at least wish a bad end?”
He didn’t react with shock or approval. He paused. Then he said, quietly, “Be careful what you allow to settle in your heart.”
He began by grounding the conversation in a conviction rather than an emotion. “If you truly believe,” he said, “that this world will ultimately be concluded with justice, then you don’t need to carry the burden of delivering that justice yourself.”
He reminded me that faith, at its core, entails trust: trust that no injustice goes unnoticed and that no oppressed person is forgotten. Every account will be settled fully—not partially, not symbolically, but completely. “When justice is certain,” he said, “hatred becomes unnecessary.”
Then he asked me a question that unsettled me. “Why,” he asked, “would you want someone to be deprived of the opportunity to realize their wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness?”
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
He wasn’t defending injustice. He was questioning my inner posture toward the oppressor. “That desire,” he said, “that someone should meet a terrible end without any chance of repentance—that desire does something to you.”
He brought the conversation inward. “Let me be honest with you,” he said. “If I start asking God for pure justice for myself, I don’t know how many things I would be held accountable for.”
That sentence landed hard. “I can only ask for mercy,” he continued. “Because I know my own shortcomings.”
And then he looked at me. “If you need mercy for yourself,” he said, “how easily do you deny it to others?”
I realized something uncomfortable. My anger felt principled. My resentment felt justified. But my heart was slowly hardening.
He explained that this is how moral corrosion often begins—not through obvious cruelty, but through righteous certainty. “We become convinced,” he said, “that we are standing on the side of the truth, and therefore our hearts are allowed to be unforgiving.” That, he warned, is dangerous ground.
He spoke about how easily people become trapped in narratives—propaganda, selective stories, emotionally charged framings that flatten entire groups into villains. “History is full of nations,” he said, “who convinced themselves that they were purely right and the other purely evil.” Once empathy disappears, everything becomes permissible. “That doesn’t mean everyone is innocent,” he said. “It means humans are more complex than slogans.”
He urged me to distinguish between accountability and annihilation. Wanting someone to be held accountable is moral. Wanting someone to be destroyed inwardly or eternally is something else.
“Justice,” he said, “is God’s domain. The state of your heart is yours.”
He gave a simple example: Two people suffer injustice. One says, “I leave this to God. I pray for guidance—for myself and even for the one who wronged me.” The other says, “I want to see him ruined.” Externally, both may look equally wounded. Internally, only one remains free.
He spoke about empathy—not as weakness, but as clarity. “Empathy,” he said, “does not excuse wrongdoing. It simply refuses to dehumanize.” It recognizes that people can be swept by fear, power, ideology, or group pressure. Entire societies have committed horrors while believing they were righteous. “Try to understand,” he said, “without justifying.”
Then he said something that reframed everything. “Praying for mercy for all creation,” he said, “is not about them. It’s about protecting yourself.” Protecting the heart from hatred. Protecting faith from arrogance. Protecting morality from becoming selective.
I noticed that my resistance had softened. I wasn’t being asked to forget injustice. I wasn’t being asked to silence pain. I was being asked to trust God more—and my own ego less.
He concluded gently. “Ask for justice when justice is yours to deliver,” he said. “But when it isn’t, ask for mercy—because you live by it too.”
And as I sat with his words, I realized something both sobering and freeing. I do not need to wish destruction on anyone to stand with the truth. I do not need to hate to oppose injustice. I do not need to abandon mercy to honor justice. Because justice will come—whether I demand it or not.
What remains my responsibility is the state of my heart while I wait.