Why Our Ideas Of “Fairness” Lead to Bitterness & Grief

But it’s not fair!

How often do we hear this mantra in our lives?

Whether we express such an accusation verbally or leave it repressed and stirring at the bottom of our soul, if you are human, you’ve struggled with unfairness at some point.

Whether

a child to a parent

a student to a teacher

a worker to a boss

or a citizen to a politician

we live in a society where fairness, or at least our perception of it, is front and center to many issues we wrestle with today.

Grief & Anger

I’m not a professional counselor but in my teaching and pastoral capacity I have had a lot of people unpack their problems with me over a coffee and I’ve begun to see a pattern:

there is a whole lot of unhappiness generated from perceptions of unfairness.

It’s true.  I mean we all have seasons of grief, frustration, and anger for any of a number of reasons but show me a person who is chronically unhappy and frustrated and I will show you a person who deep down believes they have been dealt with unfairly!

Once perceived unfairness takes root in your heart it will affect how you see the world around and make it a much darker place to live in; and living in that darker place leads to a life filled with anger, frustration, and depression.

Jesus on “Fairness”

In Matthew Ch 5-7 Jesus is teaching the crowds about the attributes needed to perceive the Kingdom of God.  Among them are

* Empathy for the needy

* Not judging

* Not worrying

* Not using spirituality to boast

Notably absent in the rather extensive list was a teaching on fairness. Shouldn’t the Kingdom of God be fair?

Although it will offend many my answer would have to be no!

And the simple reason is because “fairness” prevents the free flow of Grace!

God’s grace, compassion, and desire to draw his people to himself would be inhibited if he was forced to be “fair”.

Jesus hits this notion head on with a number of different parables.  For example picture the story of the Prodigal Son but instead with an ending that is “fair”. The prodigal returns after seeing the error of his ways but instead of being lovingly embraced and restored to the position of son he is held at arms length by his father and given a position as a field worker.

“After all”, explains his father politely, “if I brought you back fully into the family, it wouldn’t be fair to your brother who never left.”

What a miserable story that would be…and God ALWAYS goes with the better story!  In fact in the story Jesus actually tells, the father has to gently chide the older brother because his generosity to the prodigal is causing that “fairness” issue to take root in his heart.  The older brother now has a choice

He can:

* let that (very real) unfairness cause him to grow more bitter and resentful

or

* celebrate the return of his brother knowing that the same grace and compassion shown by the father is always available to him as well.

Like so many issues in life we can choose to be happy or miserable!

More Like Jesus

Jesus himself demonstrates the ultimate response to how we should deal with unfairness.  I mean God himself enters his creation and spends a life sharing goodness, healing, and compassion.

And being the the people that we are, of course we had to kill him. And not just any execution…no…we had to nail him to a tree to make the pain and agony really last.

Could there be anything more unfair!

But Jesus, even at his most vulnerable is still revealing the heart and attitude of God to us.  Instead of looking up to the Father and yelling, “This isn’t fair!” …

… he instead cries out, “Father, forgive them.  They don’t understand what they are doing!”

Fairness in that moment would have choked off the free flow of grace, compassion, and mercy.

And when such a choice has to be made God will always side with Grace!

Every single time!

An Anecdote

As I was processing some of these thoughts with a friend at church he smiled and shared a story.  He works at a Christian ministry and he mentioned they recently were offered a generous donation to “do something nice for the team”. Different people had suggestions with how to use the donation.  Some suggested a nice coffee/espresso machine for the office but the non-coffee drinkers thought that was unfair.  Some suggested a trampoline for the kids to use but the staff without children noted they were not going to benefit from that.  My friend said that no matter what suggestion was made, it was going to be “unfair” to some.  In the end they ended up not using the donation because they couldn’t decide on something fair.

Fairness choked off generosity…

I’m not suggesting we should strive to be unfair…God forbid…but our perceptions of fairness should not be allowed to take an unhealthy root in our heart.

Something to think about

Peace,

Steve