Why We Really Don’t Want Fairness but This Instead

“It’s not fair!” said every person everywhere, at some point in their lives. Some of us live in that unhappy place of constantly striving for fairness and never seeing it. Some of us sink there when bad things happen. We see it all over our political system—the constant cry for fairness, for everyone to be treated the same. The truth is, that’s not what we really want.

What?!? Why would I not want fairness? You really don’t. Let me prove it to you. Have you ever, when you saw someone getting a speeding ticket, pulled over and said to the officer, “Please write me a speeding ticket also. It’s not fair for only that guy to get a ticket when I was speeding too. In fact, better make it reckless driving. I was going 15 mph over the limit.” Said no one ever. We only want fairness when it’s in our favor. Think about that. It isn’t really fairness then, is it?

God has opinions about fairness. This is very counter-intuitive, but, believe it or not, fairness is actually prohibited in the Bible. In fact, God feels so strongly about this, it made the 10 Commandments. God put it this way:

“You shall not envy your neighbor’s house. You shall not envy your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17

Envy. Often our cry of “it’s not fair!” is just a mask for envy. Someone else has something we want.

Fairness means everyone’s treated exactly the same. Although it sounds great on paper, it’s not really a good thing. Everyone’s different, so treating everyone the same is actually an injustice. We all have different backgrounds, different skills, different strengths, different weaknesses. Imposing artificial fairness would drown out our diversity. Diversity is the colorful beauty of life. Why would we want to drown it out with gray fairness? The Soviets tried that for 70 years. It was a dismal failure.

Fairness does not exist in the Kingdom of God. And that’s a good thing. Out of his goodness, God has something much better. It’s called justice. Often, when we cry out for fairness, we’re really crying out for justice. Justice totally exists in the kingdom of God, and it’s way better than fairness.

I know this is a pretty out-there post, so here’s an example to show how justice is better than fairness. When I was in high school, my parents built and owned a preschool and my mom was the director. The worst thing a child can do in a preschool is harm another child. But with 3 and 4-year-olds, it occasionally happens.

One day, one child bit another. This particular biter hated vegetables, especially carrots. So my mom went to the kitchen and got a big carrot. “If you want to bite something, bite this,” she said as the biter got his time-out in the corner. The biter was really wishing he’d chosen different behavior and did not bite again. Having to eat a carrot did the trick.

Meanwhile, across the room, another kid who loved carrots came to the false conclusion, “If I bite someone, I get a carrot!” So he turned and bit the kid next to him. My mom brought this second pair of children into the kitchen, the biter and the crying kid who got bit. The biter was smiling and eagerly awaiting his carrot. My mom took out a big carrot, and right in front of the biter, gave it to his crying victim. The child stopped crying, thrilled to be given something special. Meanwhile the biter had time to figure out what went wrong during his time-out in the corner. He also never bit another child.

My mom did not treat these children fairly. But in her wisdom, understanding the needs and hearts of each child, she treated them justly. My mom’s preschool justice was in the best interest of all the children, where strict fairness would not have been.

God is like that. As his people, we need to be like that, too. As the people of God, we should work for justice in the face of injustice. Righteous anger, and the action it inspires, is the correct response to injustice. That’s what anger is for.

But let’s not misuse our God-given anger crying out for fairness because we didn’t get what we wanted. That’s just a cry of envy from an entitled people.

Did this post resonate? How has God brought about justice in your life? What have you learned from it? Or are you still waiting for it? And please share if this would bless someone else.