Is God Fair?

Christianity teaches that God created everything.  God created humanity, angels, and all nature’s creatures.  So, if something went wrong—has gone bad, sour, or evil—simple logic seems to tell us that it must be God’s fault.  Hence, God is responsible for the Devil; that is, God is to blame for evil.  Therefore everything that we suffer, every hurt and pain and agony we endure must be God’s fault.  It goes along with believing in God’s providential control.  If God is ultimately in control, then God is ultimately responsible.  Thus says simple logic.

What about when a wife loses her husband to a heart attack.  She asks, “Why did God save that other woman’s husband who had a heart attack, but didn’t save my husband when I know that my husband was the better man between the two?”  We demand accountability of God: “why does God heal this person and that person, but doesn’t heal me or my loved one?”  We feel as if God isn’t treating us right, is not being fair.

Yet the Bible over and over again speaks of God’s goodness and justice.  Yes.  God is a good God and a just God, which means that we should be able to trust Him to treat us with fairness.  But what does it mean for God to be “fair, just, and good”?

Well, first there is the matter of our freewill.  If we are brutally honest, we’ll have to admit that most of the bad things that happen to us are the result of our own human willfulness.  We choose what we do, how we live, and must therefore face the consequences of our own actions.

There is a story of two boys who got into a fight.  Johnny pushed Billy backwards making Billy fall into a ditch.  On top of that, Johnny then threw dirt into Billy’s face.  Later that day Johnny’s Mother scolded the boy.  “Johnny,” she said, “just because Satan puts an idea into your head doesn’t mean you should do it.”  “Yes Mother,” Johnny replied, “Satan did tell me to push Billy into the ditch; but throwing dirt into his face, that was my own idea.”  We can blame Satan for much evil, but we make our own contribution as well.

In his book, Perfect Peace (from which the above story was taken), author Charles Allen writes: “Every so often, someone says to me, ‘I have lost faith in God.’”  He then says, “My reply is that the more important question we need to consider is, ‘Have we lived in such a way that God may have lost faith in us?’”

In short, we often blame God when it is our own doing, our own rebellion, our own bad decisions, and our own willful disobedience that gets us into trouble.  Our freedom, our freewill can be a great burden to us.  For we have to live with the consequences of our own making.

“But,” you say, “That doesn’t explain everything.  What about those of us who do live good lives and try to do what is right?  What then?  We still face undeserved pain; we still suffer and grieve, and have bad things happen to us.  Why?  It seems so unfair!”

Well, the truth is that there is a mixture of good and bad in all of us.  The problem that we have is that just about every good-deed that we do is tainted.  For example, we do good things with mixed motives, with impure elements, pride, selfishness, or arrogant-egotism may get mixed-in with the best of our intentions.  As we always say in self-defense when found wrong, “No one is perfect!”

Indeed: Take two sheets of paper.  On the one sheet of paper, write everything that you’ve ever done which was absolutely good and perfectly pure, totally without stain or blemish; meaning that it had no impurity of any kind mixed-in with your good deed.  On the other sheet of paper, write down everything you can remember that you have done that was wrong in any way.  It was less than perfect; it lacked complete purity; there was some flaw or error mixed-in with your good deed, despite your best of intentions.  Which list is bigger?

To this Rev. Allen says: If you were boldly courageous and truly honest about the two lists, you’d probably react by falling down on your knees and praying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”  Yes, we have all experienced hurts and injustice in our lives; but by the same token, God has also been merciful and gracious to us.

Jesus reminds us that God causes the rain to fall on the fields of the just and the unjust.  God is a merciful God.  This means that God could actually be harsher on us than he really is.  To those of us who think God is harsh and exacting, perhaps we need to give this point some serious consideration.

Trouble and disappointment, hurt, pain, and defeat come into our lives and we ask, “Why?”  Yet, we might also ask why we demand justice, why there is any goodness at all, given the state of humanity; human nature being what it is.

What is the evidence that God is good, that God is just, and that God is trustworthy and merciful?  The primary evidence we have is in the person of Jesus Christ himself.  He came; He lived, he healed and forgave.  He died to save us, and He rose again from the dead to guarantee Life anew.

In his book, Allen tells another story, about William Barclay, one of the most famous and greatest Bible teachers and preachers of his time.  The story is told that a few days before Barclay’s only daughter was to be married, she drowned.  Later in speaking about this tragic incident, Dr. Barclay had this to say: “I am not so concerned as to whether or not Jesus stilled the tempest on the sea.  What I do know is He stilled the tempest in my heart.”  Dr. William Barclay did not attempt to explain the drowning of his daughter.  What Dr. Barclay did do is testify to the healing mercy of God in that experience.

God is patient with humanity, not wanting any to perish (2 Peter 3:9).  In short, it is not God that is unjust or unfair or that is evil.  We are the unjust, unholy ones.  We are the ones who are guilty.  So, naturally we’re going to blame God and try to avoid our own responsibility for the wrong that is in this world and the mess that we’ve made of it.  After all, it is what unjust people tend to do—cast blame on anyone else but themselves.