Just a “small” question! 🙂
I appreciate that the question could come from a number of places, and probably is a very personal question out of experience. So I recognise that I may not answer it according to what you had in mind from your personal experience, but let me give it a bash.
When we talk about what is fair, the Oxford dictionary says “treating people equally without favouritism or discrimination.” so why is life unfair? It’s a good question isn’t it – there is so much about life that seems so unfair. As I reflected on it, why do I live in comfort and luxury when so many others live in poverty?; it’s not fair. Why do we live in peace when others are in war-zones and refugee camps? That’s not fair. Why does a tsunami wipe out 250,000 people in 2004 while i was enjoying post-Christmas lunch with my family? Or why is my child born healthy and another friend’s not?
I think possibly the question behind the question “Why is life unfair?” is the God question, though the question does not use the word “God”. Perhaps the question behind it is “Is God fair – is God good?” That is perhaps the emotion we attach to that question and I think that is the guts of it.
- If there is a good, loving God, why is there so much suffering? So that is what I am assuming the question is. If I am wrong, please come and talk to me afterwards if I’ve got the wrong angle.
- Some have said that God is either good but not powerful, or else He would stop suffering,
- or God is powerful, but not good, or He would stop suffering.
- Or perhaps there’s no God at all, just a random mix of atoms and DNA.
Well I think for me the Bible helps me to make sense of my world because it tells this overarching love story between the Creator and His broken creation, that helps me understand when I suffer, and it helps me understand when I see suffering.
So very simply the overarching love story is that God is good, God has created our good world and we are the pinnacle of God’s good world, He has made us intentionally to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him, for relationship and to be caretakers of His beautiful world, but that’s not all in harmony now, and right from the beginning that precious relationship has got broken as we turn our backs on God and say “I don’t need you. We want to live our life without You”. We break the relationship and as we cut ourselves off from the Life-giver, so to speak, just like this flower is cut off from the roots where the life comes, we die, we wither, and as a result we destroy ourselves, we destroy our relationships, we destroy our world.
The evidence is all around us isn’t it, in our families, on our news, it’s on a global scale. History tells us that much of our suffering is the result of human evil. Of abuse and injustice, of poverty and greed, of war and every kind of act of oppression; so much of our suffering comes from that. The Bible also tells us that the creation itself also groans in its bondage to decay; there is a sense in which even the cells and atoms and the environment are linked to our rebellion and so, “why is life unfair?” Because we are not the way we ought to be, we are not in sync with our Creator first and foremost, so unless we are rescued, that trajectory goes on into eternity.
To be fair, then, if we are asking a holy God to be fair, He could fairly say “You’ve rebelled against Me, therefore I will wipe you out.” God is just, and will one day bring all evil to judgment, and we need to consider that when we ask for justice, for fairness; what will that look like?
- His justice is good news for those who have suffered at the hands of evil because there will be One Who will purely and incorruptibly judge; that is good news if you are in the Sudan and you have suffered unimaginable violence.
- But it is bad news for those of us who know we fall short, because I also will be accountable to the God Who sees all.
- But we also know from the Bible that God is patient, He is merciful, He is good, He is loving and compassionate, He hasn’t left us with this broken world in the mess we have made for ourselves.
- Rather He sends Jesus; He sends Jesus to come up close and personal, to get his hands dirty, to align himself as compassionate and merciful. We see this in the Gospels when we meet Jesus face to face, when we see God’s justice and compassion and mercy, God’s power, all in Jesus.
- There was a case where Jesus came across a woman who had lost her only son; this woman was a widow and he meets her as the funeral procession is going out the gate. He stops the procession, and He sees with compassion, and He speaks to the boy “Get up” and gives him back to his mother; such an incredible mix of compassion and power.
- So we see the God Who cares and the God Who can do something about it. We see God’s love and justice come together perfectly in the Cross, for here we see the God Who can’t say “sin does not matter” say “I’ll take it for you, I’ll take the punishment on your behalf, I’ll step in your place, I’ll deal with the rift. We don’t have a God Who stands at a distance; we have a God Who comes up close and personal, Who enters into suffering, Who takes on our suffering for us in order that we might be healed and restored in our relationship with God.
- Instead of giving us what’s fair He gives us mercy, He gives us love, He gives us amnesty and forgiveness. Perhaps that goes halfway to answering that big question.
0 Comments