Doubt

In order to be able to give people the benefit of the doubt, it is first necessary to cultivate the ability to doubt your own assumptions about the other's motivations.

SW on multiple readings:

Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different, from from what we read in him.
Every being cries out silently to be read differently.

In the case of evil, as in that of dreams, there are not multiple readings. Hence the simplicity of criminals.
Charity and injustice can only be defined by readings, and thus no definition fits them. The miracle of the good thief was not that he thought of God, but that he recognized God in his neighbour. Peter, before the cock crew, no longer recognized God in Christ.
Others are slain for the sake of false prophets in whom they mistakenly read God.
Who can flatter himself that he will read aright?

We can be unjust through the will to offend justice or through a wrong reading of justice—but the second is nearly always the case.

We read, but also we are read by, others.

Interferences in these readings: Forcing someone to read himself as we read him (slavery). Forcing others to read us as we read ourselves (con- quest). A mechanical process. More often than not a dialogue between deaf people.

Public opinion is a very strong cause. People read in the story of Joan of Arc what contemporary public opinion dictates. But it has been uncertain. And Christ . . .

In fictitious moral problems, calumny plays no part.

What hope is there for innocence if it is not recognized?