Laying down the law requires mercy and grace. Laying down the law without mercy and grace only does more injustice.
When a new rule, policy, law, standard, guideline, or other protocol gets implemented, people who have operated by previous guidelines get outdated. In society it’s called “gentrification” or “political oppression”. In software it’s called “depreciating” and “legacy versioning”. In legislation, America knows it as “prohibition” or “war profiteering”.
When a new rule doesn’t help people make necessary changes to adapt, those people are forced into an artificially created “criminal class”. What they do isn’t unethical, it’s only “illegal” because of a so-called “update” to the law. Papers got shuffled around; now old business owners are “outlaws” merely because of a change in syntax.
This is the method corptocrats and fascists use to fight against their business opponents: Simply promote a change to the law, make it look “wonderful”—such as helping the environment or being charitable—, and structure it so some small technicality “just so happens” to make life difficult for your business competition. It’s an actual tactic employed by dishonest companies in the dark world of “dirty pool business”.
Folk from religious “recruit numbers for the weekly meetings” clubs often allow rules to oppress other people, but without knowing it. Rules are good, but not merely for the sake of rules. Rules are designed by God to bring justice and rules are only good in as much as that they bring justice. Formal religions often teach rules as “shoulds” rather than rules as a practical benefit to promote life and justice. Don’t get caught in the trap of imposing injustice through an intrinsically motivated value on rules.
As long as you see rules for their practical outcome, you will appreciate God’s Word’s rules—assuming that you properly understand the actual “Biblical” rules, not some religious group’s reversioning of God’s Word’s rules. This will help you to give justice by applying rules through grace and mercy.
Give people time to adjust to new rules. Governments should offer to purchase any equipment people bought for doing business under old rules. If you are the business, reinvent; businesses that refuse fail. That’s how ketchup was made.