Friday, April 1, 2011

Fair?

Our church recently looked at the great flood as described in Genesis, and asked some tough questions. Perhaps one of the toughest questions that was asked is, “Was it fair?” was it fair for God to destroy humanity? It is a good and legitimate question, and to answer it we have to define “Fair”. The dictionary definition is: free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge. By that definition you could say it was “fair” because God killed everything, and only discriminated by showing grace to Noah and his family. OR you could argue that God was not fair because he only saved Noah (and family). So what is fair? I listened to an Andy Stanley sermon on the subject and came to the conclusion that we have no idea what fair is. There is no UNIVERSAL answer, some people will agree that it was fair, and others will disagree. The best example I can think of is in politics, some Liberal Democrats would say that it is ok to excessively tax the rich to give to the poor because it makes it more fair for the poor people. Some Conservative Republicans would say that it isn’t fair to take from the rich because they (or their parents) earned that money so it is their right to keep it, and they would say that that is fair. The country is pretty much split 50-50 on this idea alone. (other political examples include, abortion, death penalty, foreign wars, and environmental conservation ) Andy Stanley used the idea of getting all the people in your office in one room, and posting everyone’s salaries, then having the CEO stand up and say, “We are not leaving hear until everyone agrees that everyone else is being compensated fairly”, what would happen? It would be a long day I guarantee it. I think we can agree that nothing is “universally unequivocally fair”, so if there is no agreement on what is “fair” then can we really say that God isn’t “fair?”. How can we say “God, you are not fair!” when we don’t even know what “Fair” is?? I think others will take it further and say, “God you are not fair THEREFORE I do not believe you exist, because IF God existed he would line up with what MY idea of ‘Fair’ is!” Kind of sounds silly now doesn’t it? I think the REAL question that needs to be asked is, “is it True”, not “is it ‘fair’?”. Lata, Ryan