Our society favours the fair. Where we used to judge a person’s moral standard by their goodness, honesty, grace, all those wonderful things, the qualifications for the status of “good person” have become much more shallow. Today the good person is the one who best follows our universal code of fairness. If we are waiting for help from a salesclerk, and someone who asked for aid after we did is approached by the clerk first, in our minds something says “Oh dear, that’s not right.” If two people order a bowl of soup and one seems more filled than the other, something clicks; “Hey, that’s not how it works.” Where we were once under the impression that everyone should strive to be good, and try to be a moral human being, we now have a cosmic sporting match, where everyone may do what they want to serve their own motives, as long as they play by the right rules, don’t bother anyone else in their own search for self satisfaction.
This, I believe, is a major reason why so many people have been getting mad at God lately. Because God just hasn’t been playing the right game of pool. If God was playing by the rules, we wouldn’t be suffering, their be no wars. The problem of evil sees a great deal of steam in the fact that we’re always so troubled at God for not playing fair. Such important aspects of God’s character, such as love and justice, become secondary and useless if this need for fairness is not satisfied.
I think we need to remember at times like these how unfairly God is actually playing. If things went according to fairness, we would all be sent to hell, which we have done more than enough (each of us) to merit. Christianity is a belief-system that requires a lot of submitting. While the sceptic proves the connected innate nature of all religions by holding up the golden rule saying “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” watering it down to “be nice to everyone” (which is also the only remaining definer for this new innate code of fairness) it is the Christian only who admits that they had no part in being good. We admit that we are nothing without God. We submit to His will and also to His Word, the Bible, even when that Word confuses us or angers us.
So I ask of you all, as I try to work within myself, to remember how unfair God has already been. When you approach scripture you do not understand, when life throws a curb that makes you want to scream to heaven and curse the one who blesses you, remember that we are beneath God. We can never understand how God works, and He’s not playing our game of pool. He’s playing a better one, which we will not yet be able to grasp, but one which will ultimately work for good. Thank God he hasn’t been fair, at least by our standards.