Life is unfair!

I have found myself throughout the last 6 years struggling with the fact that Life is unfair.  I face off against the desire to shout this at God  almost every night at work as I care for the 19 year old who is having her third baby that she says is an "accident".  I hold it in every time I take care of a patient who says to me that having a baby was the last thing she wanted.  I let it make me angry every time I deal with a situation where I know that the baby going home will not be feed, loved, or even safe.  I say it over and over again in my head- life isn't fair!  Dave just got a job and I am so proud of him. He is a middle school teacher who will change the lives of every student he comes in contact with, yet he makes less money than even I do.  To me paying our children's teachers so little is so unfair!  A good friend of mine is possibly saying goodbye to her mother today while she is pregnant with her first child, life is so unfair!

I say all of this because at some point in time we all shout this same phrase, but when it turns dangerous is when we allow that phrase to turn into- God is unfair!  I am recovering from this belief.   I allowed the pain of this world, and unfair circumstances to be my gateway into believing that God is unfair. 

Like I said in my last blog, I have been reading a book called Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey and I have been set free from so many false accusations I have made against God.  I wanted to share with you what he says about believing that God is unfair.
We all look to Job as the ultimate story of human suffering.  Job was one of the holiest men of his time, and life was unfair to him.  He loses his children, everything he owns, and his own personal health.  He has to deal with the fact that life is unfair.  Everyone deals with this reality differently. 

Here are the most common ways that people deal with it: (this is all from the book)

1.  Job's wife tells him "Curse God and die".  These people deal with the unfairness of life by simply saying that a loving God cannot allow life to be this unfair, so they chose to curse God and not believe.
2.  Others choose to believe that God agrees that life is unfair, is hurt by our suffering, but is powerless to change it.
3.The third group of people look to the future to fix the unfairness, like "karma", what goes around comes around, and it will all eventually right itself.
4. A fourth approach is to insist that the world is fair.  These people say things like "God is trying to teach you something. You should feel privileged, not bitter, about your opportunity to trust God.",
 " God is training you to exercise your faith", " Someone always has it worse than you", " Think about your blessings- at least you are still alive."

As a side note for those of us Christians who have lived in #4,  per Philip Yancey, " Such helpful advice does nothing to answer the questions of the person in pain.  It is the wrong medicine dispensed at the wrong time."

These are all the ways he lists that people attempt to reason out life's unfairness, but the truth comes from Job.  He summarizes his belief in one emotion- Life is unfair!  The rest of this blog will be a lot of quotes from the book because they are not my intelligent answers, but I hope that they impact you the way that they impacted me this morning. 

" I learned, not to confuse God with life.  I am as upset about what happened to me as anyone could be.  I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about it- grieved and angry.  I don't blame him for what happened. I have learned to see beyond the physical reality of this world to the spiritual reality of this world.  We tend to think life should be fair because God is fair.  But God is not physical life.  And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health, for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.  God's existence, even his love for me, does not depend on my good health.  Frankly, I have had more opportunity to work on my relationship with God during my impairment than before.  If we develop a relationship with God apart from life circumstances then we may be able to hang on when the physical breaks down.  I challenge you to go home and read again the story of Jesus. Was life fair to him? For me, the cross demolished for all time the basic assumption that life will be fair."

I don't know where I picked up the expectation that life should be fair, but with stunning clarity I now see that life was the most unfair when God himself allowed the sins of others to hang his son on a cross to die.  God dealt with the unfairness of life by sending His son to experience it first hand.  I can believe in a God like that.  Life is never going to be fair, but having a savior that understands how I am dealing with the unfairness of life is worth the faith it takes to hold on during those hard times.  My relationship with God and his love for me is too precious to be ruined by my circumstances.