Standing for justice without mercy gets mean. Mercy without justice gets soft. God holds both.

Each on its own goes bad in a predictable direction. Justice without mercy hardens into a hunt for offenders, and it always finds them. Mercy without justice turns into excusing harm and quietly abandoning the people the harm was done to. Most of us lean naturally one way and mistake that lean for a principle.

Work out which way you tilt, which you can usually tell from how you react when someone messes up. If you go hard, ask what this person actually needs in order to change. If you go soft, ask who is carrying the cost of your leniency, and whether anyone has spoken for them.