Justice Vs Mercy

A very long time ago one of our church members met with a fatal car accident. Another car had sped out from a side road and crashed into his car. The church member left behind his widow and daughter. In court, the reckless driver was filled with remorse and he apologised again and again to the family of the deceased. Someone in the family of the deceased said he pitied the driver who recieved quite a harsh sentence - jail term. He felt bad for his family because he was the sole breadwinner and his children were still very young. But someone else pointed out something very true... who then was going to show pity to the widow and young daughter? If you were the widow, would you have asked for a lighter sentence for the man who killed your husband? Tough question isn't it?

I found myself in a similar situation for the whole of last year. Ok, maybe not as serious but the principle is the same. To cut a long story short, a "friend" embezzled our money which was meant for the renovation works for our new flat last year. All evidence led to this fact, he already had the intention to cheat us from the very beginning when he issued us the quotation and subsequently the fraudulent receipts. After he was found out, he could not provide us with concrete commitment to pay back the sum owed, neither was he able to give us concrete evidence to prove his story of how he lost the money. Under such circumstances, we had no choice but to assume that he had misappropriated our funds and had no intention of paying. With no out-of-court resolution possible, we decided to report the matter to the police and press for criminal charges, with the understanding that we would not be able to get any money back.

I asked myself if I was too harsh because if he were to go to jail, his 2 young children would be left with no father in their formative years. Since he was already an undischarged bankrupt, he will probably stay as one for the long time. But then again...who and how is anyone able to make up to us for all the emotional, financial and relational strains that we had to go through for the past year? Was he even repentent? The answer is no. He even tried to cook up some story implying that I was actually the one who in his own words, "pestered" him to renovate my flat because I wanted to save money in order to pay off my credit card bills. Even though I already knew that he was an undischarged bankrupt. Wow...it's not enough to cheat me of my money, now he has to insult my intelligence as well.

The police report was first made in March 2006 and we have not pursued the matter hoping that the law would vindicate us. And in all fairness, he had an entire year to make things right. He could have apologized and return the embezzled funds, he could have apologized and work out with us how he may slowly return the embezzled funds, but more importantly, he could have simply apologized for what he had done. We would have been merciful. But nope...he has shown no remorse and absolutely no repentence. Thus I'm inclined to believe that we've made the right choice in pursuing the matter. He should have thought about his kids before he came up with that elaborate plan to cheat us of our money. When I spoke to the police today, I did not even feel the slightest bit uneasy about it. Maybe it is time to seek justice since mercy does not work anymore...