When kids are young, parents tell them, "Share your toys." "Be fair." "Play by the rules." Teachers tell kids, "Don't cut in line." Children are quick to complain and tattle if someone cheats in a game or doesn't wait their turn. It is ingrained in us that life should be fair.
At some point, maybe when we're a teenager, something doesn't go the way we think it should. Maybe we don't get what we think we deserve, and we complain that it's not fair. Our sense of fairness may be very subjective, but it's there nonetheless. Someone will inevitably respond, "Well, nobody ever said life was fair." But if life wasn't meant to be fair, why do we teach fairness to children? Why do we have such a deep desire for fairness in our own lives?
What happens when the sense of unfairness is about a deeper issue?
Why do some people have good health that they may take for granted, while other people have serious health problems for their entire life?
Why does one person get cancer and another person doesn't?
Why do some people question and struggle with their sexual identity and other people have always known their orientation and never give it a second thought?
Why do certain addictive behaviors enslave some people while they don't appeal to others?
Why does one person struggle with depression for years and is healed, while another person struggles and dies from suicide?
Why does God heal some people and not others?
Why do some people ask for help and get it, while other people are ignored or rejected?
I believe that God actually built into us this desire for fairness. He created a perfect world, but when people sinned at the Fall, everything got messed up. (Genesis 3)
The unfairness sucks and it hurts and I hate it. But the hope is that it won't last forever. Someday there will be a perfect world where everything is made right. But right now we're stuck in the in-between. Seeing how things should be, and they're so far from that. And so we wait and seek fairness and justice where we can. Things will never be perfect on this side of heaven, but maybe they can be a little bit better.
