As a little junior philosopher, I looked up at my parents and said, “I think maybe everyone suffers the same amount in life, but it comes at different times—but in the end, it all evens out.”
My parents were outraged. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” my dad said. “What about people born blind? Or children who have to use a wheelchair their whole lives? What about people who are mentally handicapped?” I looked at my mother. She agreed. “Life is not fair,” she said.
My mother would repeat that to me hundreds of times, because I could not accept it. I would come to her upset about my latest tragedy, and wail: “But it’s not fair!”
“Of course. I keep telling you, life is not fair!” She said that every day. Deep down, I believed her. How could I not? She had lost both her parents in childhood. I knew her young years were so much harder than mine. Life had not been fair to her.
Nevertheless, we try to make things as fair as possible. Parents, teachers, coaches, and managers try to be fair. We try to treat everyone equally and to provide justice to those who have a grievance. Our criminal and civil courts provide the complicated machinery of a formal justice system, balancing the scales for people in many ways.
The Bible teaches one thing the whole world believes in: the “fairness” of sowing and reaping: “You reap what you sow” Galatians 6:7. If you plant good seeds, you will harvest good plants. If a Texan plants winter rye and waters it in, he will be admiring his beautiful green fields all winter long. If you study more, your grades will improve. If you practice free throws for an hour a day, you will become a better free-throw shooter. If you lift weight, you will become stronger. By the same token, if you study less, you will do poorly. If you fail to practice, you will not play well. If you stop lifting weight, your muscles will not grow stronger.
Everyone understands the principle: life rewards effort and punishes laziness. Life is FAIR—in that way.
Until it isn’t.
What if you work out every day, then suffer an injury that ruins your athletic dreams? How is that fair? Every day unfair things happen—people are diagnosed with cancer. Spouses die. Hopeful parents suffer a miscarriage. Economic problems that began around the world in some other industry cause hard-working people to lose their jobs. These things and a thousand more are unfair.
As children, we are born with a passion for fairness and justice. And yet that passion is constantly frustrated. To make matters worse, the Bible actually seems to promise fairness. Not only is the principle of sowing and reaping repeated over and over. But God himself promises justice, both in dramatic Old Testament passages like Deuteronomy chapter 28, and again in the New Testament. Consider this:
“It is righteous for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to reward with rest you who are afflicted” 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7.
That sounds fair: God should punish those who persecute his children and reward those who bless his children. But does he? God-fearing martyrs have been dying for their faith for 2,000 years. FOXE’S BOOK OF MARTYRS is filled with their stories. God’s people have been burned at the stake, sawn in two, fed to lions, and more, as Hebrews 11:38 says, these are “men of whom the world was not worthy.” And the suffering continues. Even today, the Voice of the Martyrs has a website* documenting the stories of thousands of Christians being persecuted around the world every day simply because they believe in Jesus. How is that fair? Why doesn’t God “repay with affliction those who afflict them, and reward with rest those who are afflicted”? It is not fair.
But Paul has more to say:
“It is righteous for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to reward with rest you who are afflicted … This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, taking vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8.
By reading one additional verse, we discover that God is fair. Life is fair—or it is fair when you consider heaven. Things that seem unfair in this life will be balanced out in eternity. Those who are persecuted for their faith will be rewarded, but they will be rewarded in eternity. The persecutors will be punished, but they will be punished in eternity. So life is fair, but it is not fair at all times, in each individual moment. Life is not fair always.
What seems a cosmic injustice on earth will be made right in heaven. In fact, the Bible says your sufferings on earth will seem too minor to even be compared with the reward that you will receive in heaven.
“The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed in us” Romans 8:18.
God, thank you for your justice. Thank you that usually we reap what we sow and things are mostly fair. But when life on earth is unfair to us, remind us of the joys to come in heaven, where everything will be made right. We love you.
ΑΩ
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