Sweet Injustice

"It's not fair!" - Working with 3, 4, and 5-year-olds every week and living with a 6-year-old pretty much guarantees that I hear this phrase on a regular basis. When they don't get to finish a puzzle, when it's not their turn to be the line leader, when someone else is treated differently from them - "It's not fair!" It amazes me how early on this sense of injustice is bred into these little human beings. Often, their application of this perceived injustice is a little off, but they do understand it to some extent. They are seeking out a sense of equality.

When thinking about this topic, I marveled at the number of times that I hear these dear, little ones proclaim that "it's not fair!" But then, it hit me how often I utter something very similar. When someone else in my family uses all of the ink in the printer right before I need to turn in a paper, when a fellow student rips my coat and doesn't apologize, when I get two flat tires at once - "This is so not fair!" I am so incredibly guilty of overusing this phrase. And the sad thing is that most of the time, I'm using it to describe something that's miniscule, petty, or just not worth the drama.

There are many people who probably feel like they have legitimate reasons to claim that life's not fair. When they lose a job, when a friend betrays them, when a loved one passes away - "It's not fair!" These circumstances are heartbreaking and much more worthy of this statement than an unfinished puzzle or a ripped coat. I'm not trying to minimize these difficult trials in any way. But I'm going to be honest: Life's not fair. This is the truth. But I believe we should be thankful for this injustice.

Think about it. The world's justice system and God's justice system. Totally different. In the world's justice system, we are constantly trying to balance things. Equal rights. Equal opportunity. Equal, equal, equal. Now, I'm not trying to say these movements are right or wrong. That's not my point. My point is that we work so hard to make everything the same for everyone.

Think of it like a see-saw. The world's justice system "see-saw" is perfectly balanced. Everyone is positioned carefully on the see-saw, in a line covering all the way from one end to the other end. Each person's position on the see-saw is based on their number of good deeds compared to their number of bad deeds. Depending on the numbers, some people will end up closer to the good side, some people will end up closer to the bad side, and some people will end up somewhere in the middle. The weights on each side counteract each other, and the result is a steady, straight see-saw. Balanced. Uniform. Even.

Now, consider God's justice system. There are two places to sit on God's justice system "see-saw." There's the perfect seat and the imperfect seat. That's it. There's no sitting in the middle on God's see-saw. I can't be in between perfect and imperfect; I'm either one or the other. Period. With this being the case, God's see-saw is grossly unbalanced. Only one Person, Jesus Christ, can sit in the perfect seat, and the rest of the world is crammed into the imperfect seat. The imperfect seat holds so much weight that it rests at rock-bottom while the perfect seat and it's Inhabitant rise sky-high. Terribly disproportionate. Yet, in God's justice system, this is just. Fair. Right.

It is hard for us to grasp this. We want everything to fit our definition of "fair." If a murderer and a candy-store thief stood trial at the same time, we would want the murderer to receive a much harsher punishment, but to God, the sin is the same. It's still sin. On a similar note, a faithful servant of Christ who has been a Christian for 60 years would receive the same acceptance into Heaven as an avid atheist who then professed Christ's name within the last week of his life. Do we frown at this? Do we purse our lips and shake our heads? Why? Maybe because our engrained definition of fairness fed to us by the world dictates that this is not fair. Just. Right.

Here's where it gets good! Think about God's justice system "see-saw" again. Remember how unbalanced it was? Remember how many people were squished together on the imperfect seat? Remember the sole Occupant of the perfect seat? Well, if Christ is the only One who is perfect, and Heaven is reserved for only those who are sinless, how is it that there are people in Heaven today?

God looked at that see-saw. He saw how unbalanced, how disproportionate it was, and He said that it was just. Fair. Right. Jesus Christ, the only perfect Being, sat on the perfect seat, and everyone else sat where they belonged, the imperfect seat. This was right. But God did something. He decided to be "unfair." Mind you, this statement is made using the world's definition of fairness. God has always acted in line with His definition of fairness. He is always just. But if we look at it from the world's perspective, what happened next seems "unfair."

God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, away from that perfect seat down to earth where all the imperfect people lived. Christ lived among us and still remained without sin. But one day, Christ did something for us. He took all the imperfect people's sins, from past, present, and future, and laid them all upon Himself. He sat on that imperfect seat for us, so we might have the chance to accept Him as our Savior and spend eternal life in Heaven, that place of sinless perfection.

God allowed life to be "unfair." It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a back-up plan. It was life, and it was not fair, in a magnificent way. Because life is unfair, Christ died for me. Because life is unfair, the punishment for my sin has been erased. Because life is unfair, I get to go to Heaven, and that is the most beautiful gift anyone could have given me: sweet injustice.

Life's not fair. Thank goodness.