Many people say that God isn’t fair because people die or don’t get saved. They say that a good God would not do that to them, since they are fairly good people. They repeat an old phrase that goes something like this, from C.S. Lewis in the Great Divorce:
I always done my best, and I never done nothing wrong. And what I don’t see is why I should be put below…you. … I only want my rights.
In reality though, this is proud thinking that doesn’t acknowledge God for who He is, and man for what we are.
We are sinners who have broken God’s Law that He laid down from the beginning of time. Since He created us, we are bound to obey His law, but we have rebelled against Him. Every person has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The penalty for this is everlasting condemnation and punishment in Hell, since God cannot stand anyone who is not as holy as He is. That’s a defining aspect of perfect holiness: you cannot stand any sin.
Therefore, we deserve to go to Hell for our sin. That punishment is fair. That punishment is just. The fact that God elects some of us to be saved and go to heaven is by His grace. It is not our right to be saved; it is our right to suffer forever for our disobedience to God.
Let’s think about this for a moment. The Milky Way Galaxy is hundreds of thousands of light years in diameter. The closest galaxy is Andromeda Galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away. There are millions of these galaxies in the universe, made up of millions of stars that are hundreds of times bigger than our sun, which itself is 1.3 million times as large as the earth. The earth is of course huger than we can even get a grip of ourselves. So why do we, these puny little creatures living on a tiny planet in a humongous universe, think that we can tell God what is and isn’t fair?
That’s something to think about.
February 3rd, 2007 at 8:47 pm
[…] Who are you to say that all those things are wrong (I’m not disagreeing that they are; it’s just a rhetorical question)? Who are you to define those things? It’s just your opinion that keeping a woman from being a pastor is sexism. Many other people don’t see it that way. It’s just your opinion that you don’t want to be stoned for “mere” disrespect. It’s just your opinion that it is only “mere” disrespect. Other people, knowing what an offense it was to the covenant of God, would have admitted that they deserved stoning. You can’t judge the judgment of God, and say that it isn’t fair. […]