It’s not fair.
I don’t know who first coined this phrase, but it certainly caught on. I hear it all the time, from adults and kids alike. I still find myself saying or thinking it on occasion, even though I know better. Do I ever.
Brad and I hadn’t been married very long when Sydney and Caroline approached me about Caroline getting her ears pierced. Caroline said, “Am I going to get my ears pierced when I’m seven?”
“I doubt it,” I told her.
Sydney jumped in with, “But I got my ears pierced when I was seven.”
I could see where this was going. “Yeah, well, Caroline will probably be a little older when she gets her ears pierced.”
They both looked at each other bewildered and Caroline started down the it’s-not-fair road. I held my hand up and decided to address this once and for all.
“Hey. You guys look at my face and listen to me. It will NEVER be fair, okay? Ever. Not for the rest of your lives. Nothing will be fair, I can promise you. Things will never be the same for you two because you have different mommies. Caroline, Sydney’s mom does not decide when you get YOUR ears pierced. Does that make sense?”
I saw the wheels turning in their little heads as it sank in. They considered themselves sisters from the very beginning and I loved that. But the reality is that they’ll always be playing by different rules because of their different situations.
Such is life. When I think about it that way, I have no idea why any of us ever thought life would be ‘fair,’ that the same rules, expectations and consequences would apply to everyone across the board.
I was at Sydney’s sixth-grade open house last year and was completely overwhelmed by her schedule. (To be sure, my own schedule is nothing to be scoffed at. But man, I’m glad I’m not a sixth grader anymore.) I was thankful to settle into the last classroom of the evening, which was her science class. The teacher explained what they would be doing throughout the year and mentioned a few experiments.
“We’ll do each experiment several times so the students will learn that even if you use the same amounts of the same substances to do the same experiment, you’ll get different results each time, based on the variables.”
The variables. Exactly.
We all have an infinite number of variables in our lives, which make comparing ourselves to each other absolutely ludicrous. Different personalities, different gifts, different bodies, different childhoods, different home lives, different jobs. Two people in the same ‘experiment’ will always yield different results because of the variables.
God has never been concerned with our perception of ‘fair.’ In Matthew 20, Jesus tells the parable of the landowner who went out early in the morning and hired some men to work in his vineyard for the day for an agreed-upon amount.
Several more times throughout the day, he went and hired more men to also go work in his vineyard. At the end of the day, he paid them all what he had agreed to pay the guys who started working first thing that morning. And it wasn’t fair. Those who worked the longest expressed their frustration.
“‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” (vv. 12-15).
The landowner didn’t cheat his workers. He gave them exactly what he told them he would. But their reasoning was that if he was going to give that same amount to someone who did less work, he should give the early-morning guys more. It’s only fair.
The prophet Jeremiah wrestled with this as well. “You are always righteous, Lord, when I bring a case before You. Yet I would speak with You about Your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (12:1).
Shouldn’t people who are at least TRYING to honor God with their lives have it easier, be more successful. Good people should get good things and bad people should get bad things, right? It’s only fair.
And don’t even get me started on poor Job. The guy was one of the most righteous men who ever lived. So much so that God was bragging about him to Satan. Satan said Job only loved God because God had blessed him. Then God allowed Satan to take away all his earthly blessings to prove Job’s faithfulness. So Job became the subject of a divine wager, suffering unspeakable losses (his wealth, his health, his CHILDREN, for heaven’s sake), all so God could prove a point.
I personally would have liked God to have said to Satan, “No, you got it backward. He doesn’t love me because he’s been blessed. I have blessed him because he loves Me. That’s what I do with my kids. Reward the ones who deserve it.” (See why God didn’t allow me to be one of the contributing authors to the Bible?)
Here’s our problem. As kids we were taught that if you do good things, you get rewarded. If you do bad things, you get punished. Very clear cut, black and white, makes perfect sense. Then as we move into adulthood, we experience variables, nuance, shades of gray, success of the wicked and the confusing nature of grace. Yet in our hearts, we just want things to be ‘fair.’ (Or we THINK we do.)
Even among Christians, we can find ourselves competing with each other, judging each other and whining about the differences in our lives, ministries, callings, blessings or lack thereof. Years ago I found this writing from G.D. Watson called ‘Others May’ that addresses this issue pretty well. (It’s kinda long, but it’s powerful. Hang with me):
If God has called you to be like Christ, He may draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.
Other Christians, who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.
Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their success, of their writing, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such things, and if you begin it He will lead you into some deep mortification, that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making money…but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and that is a helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.
The Lord will let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His coming glory.
He will let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him, and get the credit for it, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing.
The Holy Spirit will but a strict watch over you…rebuking you for little words and feelings, or for wasting time.
God is an Infinite Sovereign; He has the right to do as He pleases with His own.
Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Lord Jesus – that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways that He does not deal with others.
Then, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.
Others may. You cannot.
Well. There you have it. So note to self: God’s going to do what He wants. I won’t think it’s fair. Get over it and get on with it.
While we’re wrestling with the idea of fairness, let’s just remember the other side of this coin. God has been incredibly ‘unfair’ to our great benefit. Pause, take a deep breath, clear your head of all the other examples of unfairness swirling around in your thoughts and let this sink in.
Jesus, God in the flesh, left His throne in heaven to walk this broken earth. He left unceasing worship to be abused, misunderstood and suffer the difficulty of our sin-fraught world. NOT FAIR.
He lived a perfect life, never did anything outside of the will of His Father, never sinned in any way, shape or form, but He was tortured and executed for blasphemy though He was completely innocent. NOT FAIR.
We, on the other hand, sin a gazillion times a day. Our words, our actions, even our thoughts are fallen, twisted and stained. Yet God still loves us and calls us His own. NOT FAIR.
Because God knew how it was all going to go down, He designed a plan before the creation of the world that would bring his wayward children back to Himself.
This hit me hard last year during the Christmas Eve service at church. As I sang old familiar Christmas hymns pondering Christ coming into the world, I pictured God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit sitting around a table, mapping out the plan of redemption. They talk through the whole thing and settle on the only way: The blood sacrifice of God Himself to pay the death penalty for all our sins once and for all. The Father and the Spirit look at Jesus. He stares at the plan on the table, takes a deep breath and nods. He looks up at His Father, eyes clear and resolute. “I’m in.”
The tears ran down my cheeks and landed on the hymnal in my hands with soft patting sounds. Caroline, who was sharing the hymnal with me, saw the first tear land on the words ‘God and sinners reconciled,’ and looked up at me with wide eyes. I gave her a tiny smile through my tears and whispered. “It’s okay, babe. I’m okay.” She looked back down at the book, began to sing again and nestled a little closer to me.
Does my King understand the concept of ‘not fair’? Oh, yes, He does. He designed the ultimate unfairness to save those He loved, and He lived it to His last breath.
It’s not fair. And I’m so thankful.
