Reverend, dear sir, convenient for us to have met again in this drab quarter, you going about your holy business, me confessing away my sins. Suppose you would sit awhile and think with me about something vexing?

All this time I have been going on about what’s “sincere,” and by extension what behavior ought to be done, if right behavior is sincere, that is. But maybe I’m going about it all wrong. Maybe what I ought to be looking for is what’s “just.” Because at the end of the day, Mister Andrew Rohman, all we’d really appreciate is if 1 and 1 added up to 2, and that everyone got their just deserts, no matter what their behavior.

Sir, math is not fair. Like a four-foot tall vindictive Jewish high school teacher from the deep South with a seven-pound beehive, 200-year-old bifocals, a shrill voice, and the Ten Commandments plastered over the chalkboard, math does not care how diligently you work or whether you’re capable of demonstrating your understanding of the problem. In math, there is a bottom line and a single, valid answer.

I ask: What is the worm of truth that bores a hole through the apple of forgiveness? Is it mercy, the instant lenience through which a guilty soul is granted restitution? Or is it fear that underlies forgiveness, fear of the finality of judgment, fear of sufficient punishment, fear of the longer road to justice?

And if forgiveness does not look sincerely into the dead, beady eyes of my math teacher and see evil for what it is, Mister Rohman, what does?