When my sister complains about something trivial, like how today’s dinner isn’t her favorite food or having to wake up earlier than usual for school, I almost always bring up the starving kids in some 3rd world country and tell her to appreciate the situation from that perspective. Probably not the best way to get her to be grateful of what she has, but it really has me wondering at times why life is just so unfair (advantageously) to us, or anyone living in America for that matter. Pastor Hong actually gave a sermon on the fairness/unfairness of life a while ago, which you can find here. He mentions the parable of the talents, and emphasizes that it’s not so much about what we have now, but what we do with it (the talents) for the next life, the one that really matters.
From the perspective of time, that couldn’t be any clearer. What’s a few decades to an eternity? Regardless, it can be so hard to keep this perspective in check! When I see celebrities exorbitantly spending money by partying and purchasing luxury cars on TV while 15 million children are dying of starvation every year, the ultimate question of whether life is fair is still the first thing that comes to my mind. This is perhaps best illustrated through what Job had to go through, a godly man who couldn’t help but cry “but when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me. ” (Job 30:26-27). This was when things weren’t just not going well for him, but were downright awful that could make anyone go mad.
While I’ve never gone through a point in life that was anywhere near as bad as what Job went through, I still find it very hard to keep my relationship with God strong when things just aren’t going my way in life, whether it’s doing bad on an exam or getting into an accident or what have you. But what needs to be distinguished (and kept that way) is the difference between God and life, and that it’s illogical to go from ‘life is unfair’ to ‘God is unfair’ because the two are not the same. And I think that’s what makes developing a relationship with God so difficult at times, because God and life can be blurred together and as a result we try to build a relationship with Him conditional to our life circumstances. Isn’t this why some people turn away from God when a great tragedy falls upon them?
Even though Job did go through quite a tough life in a long series of tragic events, it was ultimately what Jesus went through that really helped me strive to have a relationship with God that isn’t conditional to life’s troubles. Reading the Gospels helped me realize that G od Himself underwent the ultimate tragedy, and that life couldn’t have been any more unfair to Him than it could ever be for us as He died on the cross. As we strive to walk closer with God, let’s try and remember that…
- …there is no “injustice on God’s part” (Romans 9:14).
- …life was ultimately unfair for Jesus when He died on the cross.
- …we need only to ask ourselves “Who’s defining what’s ‘fair'”?
-Solomon
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