Life is not fair

By Klaus Döring

Life is a competition and those who are willing to make the supreme sacrifice often win. Some people get off to a difficult start and have incredible obstacles to overcome. Regardless, life isn’t fair.

Many times I have observed that children at a young age like to cry out: “It isn’t fair”, whenever they feel they are wronged. Just a couple of days ago, I heard one father, whose patient was already very thin, responding grimly: “The whole life is not fair!”

Plenty of people work hard but never get what they feel they deserve.

Plenty of people are incredibly decent but always seem to get the short end of the stick.

Plenty of people are smart but never seem to apply their academic excellence to entrepreneurial or professional achievement.

Plenty of people fall in love only to see their love squandered on someone who doesn’t reciprocate.

The conclusion most of us reach… life isn’t fair.

Or, is it that many of us just don’t understand the “protocol” and have a bad relationship with “fairness”?

Even we adults often have problems with the idea of fairness. the laborers in the vineyard certainly did. They received exactly what they had bargained for, yet they complained when others got the same pay for less work.

If this parable was a story about earned wages, the grumblers would have been quite right to complain. But this story is about the way God deals with us, and how can we say that God is not fair?

Fairness means clearness and being free from fault or stain. Fairness is the light-colored, hopeful and plausible part of our life – the span between life and death. Life is and cannot always be fair – of course not! But we could make it a little bit fairer, though many times our world is ruled by falseness.

Fairness requires people to be put into categories. Anyone who fulfills certain requirements will receive a certain reward, regardless of differences in the situation. But only God knows that categories only outline the sort of people we are. He knows that each one of us is unique and with individual needs.

In our everyday life, do we really practice the idea of fairness at our workplace and in our dealings with others? How? Let’s analyze ourselves. May we learn what it means to be fair to another person.

Fairness is when everyone is treated equally and no one is left out. People that are fair follow the rules in sports, games, activities, and in their community. They are honest and trustworthy. They follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote “It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.”

Proverbs, probably the most down-to-earth book in the bible, prepares us for our daily life. In its prologue (Purpose and Theme) it says in 1:3: “…for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just fair”. The Colossians added in the “Rules for Christian Householders” in 4:1, “Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair…”

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