The Tribunal of Religious Affairs

On a sunny November day, Jacob’s wife Claire died after being struck by a near-silent electric car on a slippery street in Melbourne. When he phoned me, I rejected the call, and he sent a blunt message:

Claire died in a traffic accident today. Will send details of the funeral. I’m devastated.

I was relieved not to have spoken with him because I didn’t want my horrible emotional tumult to force me into an admission that I caused his wife’s death.

Aside from a weak 'I’m so sorry' at the funeral, we didn’t talk. We’d exchanged short messages, but I cancelled our planned video calls. We’d been friends for thirty-two years, but I couldn’t look him in the eye without feeling a selfish, crushing guilt.

After the funeral, I told his sister that I had to hurry back to Sydney. He’d understand, she said.

My youngest child, a joyful eight-year-old called Finn, had an exceedingly rare gene mutation that resulted in him developing clusters of brain tumours that were stealing his life, minute by painful minute.

Six months before Claire died, I called Jacob to share Finn’s diagnosis. Claire answered his phone, and I exploded into a mess of loud sobbing and scalding tears. She quietly consoled me, without the hollow words I’d heard from so many in the past days. Claire had always been special in that way.

It was Jacob who suggested I make a plea to The Tribunal of Religious Affairs for leniency. The Tribunal wasn’t known for compassion, despite being composed of Angels as God’s emissaries. The eternal decisions they handed down were based strictly on the concept of corporeal equilibrium – in practice, a soul for a soul.

I made the application to The Tribunal to spare Finn’s life, and was quickly rejected. No reason given. I tried again, submitting my own life in return, and was denied. It was not enough to balance the scales.

I prepared for my final appeal, my lawyer advising that I offer up a loved one’s life instead. The risk of doing this was that I couldn’t specify which loved one, except to ask that they weren’t from my immediate family. This type of petition was rarely granted.

There was silence for months until I received a curt email from the Registrar of The Tribunal on the ninth of October. It read:

The final decision has been handed down. Claire Smith will be taken and judged on the Ninth Day of November 2025, in consideration of the life of Finn Lawson. Disclosure of this determination to any party will render it unenforceable.

True to The Tribunal’s decision, I was faced with Claire’s funeral casket being rolled away into the inferno of the crematorium, and seeing Jacob in his own form of hell.

As for Finn, they say the miracles of The Tribunal aren’t instant, they can take weeks to come to pass, but they always manifest as promised. I sit in silence and pray this is true.