Life is Unfair
Mark Buchanan, June 5, 2009

      Life is unfair. There`s no question about it. Sometimes the innocent are murdered, and the murderer is protected. Situations like these give rise to questions: What is right in a world where little children die and genocidal despots live in luxury? Where hard-working men go bankrupt and swindlers go on swindling? Where all the wrong people, it seems, suffer?
In Genesis 4, Abel experienced injustice when he was murdered. How could this happen? He, according to Hebrews 11, was the one who pleased God. He had faith; Cain didn’t. In fact, how is it that so many models of faith in Hebrews 11 were the victims of murder?
Surely the saints of Hebrews 11 carried within themselves a keen sense of life’s unfairness. “Some faced jeers and flogging… others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned. They were sawed in two. They were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated. …They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground” (Hebrews 11:36).
Abel did the right thing. God loved Abel. God accepted Abel. God showed favor to Abel. But that favor was expressed only in accepting Abel’s gift. It was not expressed in protection. In fact, God provides far more protection to Cain than he ever did to Abel. He marked Cain to keep at bay the avengers. Aren’t things supposed to go well for those who please the Lord?

      God’s definition of life going well is unique, distinct. His definition of wellness is not about health or finances. It’s not even about protection. It’s not at all about life being fair.
It’s about acceptance. It’s about God accepting us as his own. It’s not about being spared from untimely or difficult death. It’s about being spared the “second death”—the death of unbridgeable separation, the death that is oblivion and torment and unending aloneness.
Because of Jesus Christ, we have received God’s unmerited favor. God doesn’t make the injustices of life vanish. He redeems them—their unfairness, their brokenness, their disease and death—and he gives us back sevenfold all the years the locusts have eaten.
Ultimately, we are citizens of heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there. But meanwhile, we walk by faith and not by sight. Meanwhile those who walk by faith discover that life rarely gets easier. It often gets harder. Safe? Who said God was safe? Fair? Who said God was fair? The Bible doesn’t.