In discussions about morality, law, or the evaluation of people and things, we often hear the phrase “merits and faults can offset each other,” as if a person’s great achievements can simply cancel out their wrongdoings. To illustrate the absurdity of this “addition and subtraction” mentality, I’d like to share a simple example.
Imagine a person who is attacked by robbers and stabbed twice, left critically injured and fighting for life. I step in to treat him, healing both knife wounds and helping him recover fully. But then, I personally stab him once more.
This example deliberately uses the exact same unit for both “merit” and “fault” — the unit of a “knife.”
According to pure arithmetic logic, this is a straightforward addition and subtraction that can be directly offset: the person received “two knives” worth of healing from me, and then endured “one knife” worth of harm. The final calculation is +2 - 1 = +1. On paper, he seems to have “net gained” one knife’s worth of medical benefit. I could even say to him, “I still helped you by one knife.”
However, even though the units are identical and the arithmetic result is positive, this person is still facing a new, bleeding wound that will kill him if left untreated. And I remain a criminal who has wounded him.
This “knife wound” arithmetic paradox plays out every day in many families. Many parents cling to this “bookkeeping” mindset throughout their lives. They believe that because they endured hardship to raise their children, this favor gives them the right to hurt, control, or dominate their children at will. But the truth is, the merit of raising a child does not automatically stop the bleeding from the wounds they inflict later. Those new injuries still require the child to spend a lifetime healing.
The reason this “merits offset faults” family arithmetic is absurd is that a child’s life has never belonged to the parents. Many people mistakenly believe parents create life, but in reality, countless people desperately want children yet cannot conceive despite exhausting every means, including years of IVF treatments. This clearly shows that the birth of life is not controlled by human will. Parents are merely the channel through which life is passed on — they are not its owners.
This is equally clear in secular society and modern law: if parents murder their own children, it is still considered murder under the law, and they will still go to prison. These ironclad facts prove that, whether in the origin of life or in social consensus, every life is a completely independent individual whose sovereignty does not belong to the parents.
Since the sovereignty of life belongs to the child, a child’s arrival in this world is, for the parents, merely a sacred entrustment. When parents fail in their duty and cause harm to their children — whether physical violence, emotional blackmail, or becoming obstacles in their children’s lives due to their own hypocrisy — these harms are real transgressions.
Raising children is simply fulfilling the basic duty of a steward. This responsibility must never be used as a bargaining chip to justify future harm to the child. Life cannot withstand arrogant addition and subtraction. Every new wound created must be independently acknowledged, taken responsibility for, and remedied — both in the eyes of the law and in reality.