Job had no reason to expect anything but good as his “just due” in life. The Bible calls Job a “blameless and upright man” who “feared God and shunned evil.” Yet Job’s life fell apart.
In rapid succession, Job lost his wealth, his servants, his many children who died on the same day, and finally, his health. I have known people overcome complete economic ruin with the support of the their loved ones; I known people survive the spirit-crushing loss of family members; I have known people battle back against disease and pain. I have never encountered anyone like Job who experienced utter desolation in every area of life.
If there were ever a poster boy for “life isn’t fair”, it was Job. Here is how he describes it in his own words:
“Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness. The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me. I go about blackened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls. My skin grows black and peels; my body burns with fever. My harp is tuned to mourning, and my flute to the sound of wailing.” (Job 30:26-31)
So often when we experience suffering our first reaction is “what have I done to deserve this?” The answer—often—is nothing. Yet actions do have consequences, and those consequences can include suffering: “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” (Gal. 6:7) If I abuse my body with drugs, I will reap the consequences. If I mistreat or emotionally abuse my wife or children, their coolness, anger, even hatred toward me is the consequences of my own sin. If I play fast and loose with my employer and am fired from my job, I have no one to blame but myself.
But it is also clear, is it not, that a good deal of suffering is also the result of other people’s sin or evil? The drunken driver who takes an innocent life; the child who suffers from sexual abuse or a dysfunctional family; the millions in the world who suffer hunger because of human greed or racism.
Then there are also natural disasters—earthquakes, hurricanes, incurable rampant disease—that continue to cause much suffering around the world. Could not God at least prevent them, if he really wanted to?
In the first chapters of Genesis, God saw what he made and declared it “good.” Suffering and evil were never part of God’s good creation. They entered the world because actions have consequences. The Bible says that the disobedience of Adam and Eve, who tried to set themselves up as rival gods to the God who created them, had this consequence: the original creation was warped into a world of “thorns and thistles.”
Evil and the suffering it generates is an alien intrusion into God’s good world. When Jesus returns to put everything right, as the Bible promises he surely will, the apostle Paul reminds us that creation itself will be renewed and restored as well.
The greek scientist Archimedes, who discovered the properties of levers whereby even the heaviest object can be raised, boasted, “give me a place to stand and I can move the world.” When we ask “where is the fairness?” we are assuming we stand on an objective vantage point by which we can judge what is fair and what is not. But we are not God. We are not outside the world.
In fact, even our ideas of “fairness” are tainted by our personal past experiences, mistakes, and sin that warps us in uniquely personal ways. I learned long ago that railing against God’s lack of fairness is a dangerous thing. If God treated us all with absolute fairness—according to what we actually deserve—would any of us survive it?
Life is not fair. Why some suffer more than others in this life will always remain a mystery.
One thing, however, is sure. Some imagine God relaxing in a heavenly deck chair looking over the side of the ship while we are drowning. But that is not true. To be incapable of suffering, God would have to be incapable of love, for love means that we suffer along with our beloved when they suffer.
If this is true of us, how much more so of God?
Question: How does God fit into your ideas of the fairness or unfairness of life? Share your thoughts in a comment.
