What is the most unfair thing that has happened to you, or someone else, and how did it make you feel? Everyone struggles with questions about fairness and justice. Those struggles are even more intense when we are the ones caught in the middle!
When I was in Miami, I was waiting at an intersection for the light to change from red to green. I was alone in my wife’s brand new car she had just bought when graduating from nursing school. The impact threw our car in the air and it landed across the intersection. The police said the other car was traveling at 40 miles an hour, but none of the occupants of the car admitted to being the driver. Our car was a complete loss, but I was not hurt. Surprisingly when the court date arrived, the judge let them off with a warning. Was it fair that we lost a new car and no one was punished? On the other hand I wasn’t hurt while others have been killed in lesser accidents. Life is like that more often than not.
Popular wisdom and even theology has always assumed that when something bad happens it is God’s judgment for something someone has done wrong. But how does that explain how wicked and evil people can prosper and appear to be surrounded with blessings? Some things just aren’t fair, don’t make sense, and we never have the answers we desire.
What is fair? Who gets to decide? And how does perspective change depending on which side of the fence someone lives? So many news items deal with fairness and who should be reimbursed to make things fair for them, while failing to deal with how that might penalize others who had nothing to do with the situation at hand. What is fair for one might create a resulting imbalance or loss in the life of someone else. We love to play God and decide what should be taken from those who don’t deserve and what should be given to those who do. It’s only fair, right?
So, what is fair and what isn’t? Why assume God should create the world as we think it should be, rather than helping us to live in the world that is? Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And how did fairness become the flavor of the day? When we begin to take on the role of God in our own ways, there are consequences and surprises.
If logic is the measuring stick, life is often unfair. Many realities are undeserved and unjust. But if we really think this through, what is more unfair than God’s rescue mission to earth? What is more unfair than Jesus’ willingness to trade heavenly glory and be trapped in an earthly body? For God to take on our flesh, as an infant, in a little mountain village, in a manger, away from the spotlight, with adoptive parents who were only a carpenter and a young girl was unfair.
But so were the conflicts with the religious leaders he came to support, or the confusion of his disciples he had gathered to carry on his mission. Even more unfair was the ridicule, the arrest, the mock trial, and the earthly death by crucifixion. Is his mission not the most unfair thing ever? Consider this question: Why would Jesus choose what is unfair rather than making everything fair? Why stoop to our level?
But we already know the answer, don’t we? For God so loved the world, he embraced what is unfair to change the eternal outcome. God’s love embraced all the injustice we endure, that in the midst of any suffering we would know that we are not alone. And with the ultimate injustice (which we call death) destroyed, all life has new look.
Our first child was a precious little girl who taught us how to become parents. Katie was a handful but such is life with an infant. We thought we knew all about love until we were gifted with parent love, and our little girl was loved more than we thought possible. When our second child was born we were blessed with a son. What was weird was I began to worry that sharing my parent love with two kids would mean Katie would lose some love and Mark would never experience as much love as she had. What was unfair to childless parents was that we had two healthy wonderful children, and all I could do was worry. In the end, I discovered I had even more than enough love to go around. What unfairness I worried about never was an issue.
The normal reaction in life is that if one loses a job or a marriage, or is injured in an accident or by someone else’s negligence, we have a right to be angry about what is patently unfair. We might seek revenge or demand to be compensated to make our unfairness fair. (As if that would change what had already happened.) The world says you have those rights and deserve to have unfair changed to fair. So much of our news and social media conversations are centered on what some feel is unfair.
For people of faith our perspective changes as we learn about the unfair, undeserved love which God blesses us with. We even learn the price he paid to share such a love. We say we believe in the love of Christmas and Easter and will let that change who we are no matter what we face. But all too often those words get lost in the dust stirred up in the unfair, undeserved, brokenness we call sin.
And yet faith leads me to learn that before I complain about my pain, maybe I should remember who carries that pain for me. Before I cry “unfair,” maybe I should reflect on the price of God’s love for me. Grace changes the perspective of an unfair and broken world, and my surrender to such a love is the new flavor of the day which colors my life with grace no matter how fair or unfair each day might be.
Faith is not about what is logical or rational, it is about what we cannot see or comprehend. Of course it makes sense that if suffering is deserved, patience is called for. If we goof up, we feel we deserve what we get. But how can God expect patience when afflicted with unfair suffering? Why is that the reward of faith?
My paraphrase of the words from 1st Peter is: “Slow down, take a deep breath, live by faith, and be patient.” The reality is that life is not fair. Heaven will never come to earth. But heaven can change how we walk through earth, and the unfair gifts of forgiveness, grace and peace can be mine forever. Next time you struggle with what is unfair, look at the cross — your guarantee of salvation! A Savior on a cross, then buried in a tomb, is the ultimate unfairness, yet look how that has become our greatest gift and strength!
Life isn’t always fair, but Christ is always the answer! And we have choices. We can curse the darkness or rejoice in the light that shines into our darkness. Can’t we scream and complain and cry out to God? Of course, that is what God’s love is willing to accept. But also accept the love that reaches out in return, a love that has already embraced you and keeps you safe for all time.
I have a close friend named Lavonne, who was my secretary years ago. She lost her husband at an early age and raised her children all by herself. She might be the most positive, faith-filled person I know. When my wife went through cancer treatments and died, Lavonne she was a powerful source of support for my faith and my fears. Years later she went through chemotherapy and incredibly painful surgeries. I was able to visit her just as I was facing my own health issues. We were two wounded people of faith, who had choices to make in terms of how we dealt with our brokenness in terms of faith.
The losses and struggles each of us had faced, by earthly standards, were unfair! Together we could have had a wonderful “pity party” and argued over who had to endure the most unfair things in life. But Lavonne would never have accepted that approach. Her faith led her (always) in a wonderful direction. I’ll never forget her words as we sat with each other for the first time in many years.
Her words to me were simply, “I believe God has brought us to know each other, just for moments in time such as this.” In faith, the language is never about “fair or unfair,” but about the healing presence and power of God’s love! Despite all that we could curse, the God of blessing works miracles and brings power through his presence and love.
We will always have unanswered questions. But more powerful is the answer that goes unquestioned — God’s powerful love that touches us in undeserved and unexpected ways. God continues to spend time with us, for times such as these, whatever they might be. Words such as fair and unfair are relative and have no meaning any more with lives blessed by grace.
God’s love is unfairly shared with all, so all might begin to drop the words fair and unfair from our vocabulary and instead be overwhelmed by the blessing of such undeserved love and the peace (beyond what the world can understand or explain) that changes the flavor and the feeling of lives that are lived in the warm embrace of God’s peace.