20081204

it's not fair

Ok, the last post was started out of frustration with the idea of fairness and became something rather different. I'm still irritated by "fairness" though. So i'm trying again...

I just don't see fairness as a very biblical, God-like concept, at least not in most pleas for it. "It's not fair" feels like selfishness well-disguised. It is "i deserve better" dressed up in the false humility of tolerance and equality. "Fair" is a word more meaningful in this world's economy than in God's economy. It is the failed law of "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" that need never touch the heart of the problem, the heart of us. It speaks always of shallow thinking or selfishness deeply buried.

Fairness is wholly empty of the sacrificial love and extravagant grace of God.

When i was younger, my siblings and i would whine, "it's not fair". My father's usual reply was the typical, "life's not fair." I, in the infinite wisdom of the adolescent, would always think, "but shouldn't we strive to make it fair?!" Now i know better. Fair would be a terrible thing for life to be, for in all fairness, we deserve nothing of the grace of God. The living root of true Justice is Love. Fairness is justice cut free of its living root. Fairness is a cold and loveless calculation. When we cry "it's not fair", we paste that calculation atop false assumptions about what we deserve to argue for the outcome we desire. And what outcome is that? Justification for our selfishness, either to share less of the bounty God has graciously and undeservedly given us or to covet what was graciously and undeservedly given to others.

Life is not fair. I am very glad for that.

phony shortcuts and cheap substitutes

seem to be all the deceiver ever offers
in the garden, in the desert,
in my head.
to Adam, to Christ,
to me.
One of us three always saw through it.
fairness is Justice writ shallow;
tolerance is nothing like Love.
self-glorification is but vaguely like Glory;
believing in oneself has never taught Faith.
power is only in what you will give;
what you can get will never plug the holes.
there is only one true Hope;
only Freedom in the strong grip of Grace;
only Beauty in the straight highways of the King.
the shortcuts are cliffs and mires;
the substitutes polished by the tyrant's slaves.
still, only One of us three always sees through it.