Concerning Spiritual Fairness
God is not fair. That is an obvious fact, and sound theology. It rains on the just and the unjust alike. One baby is born in a palace, another in the slums. The inherent unfairness of life is a cold reality with which God presents all of us, often before we are born.
This is not entirely bad. Unfairness gives birth to faith, character, charity, chivalry, hard work, wisdom, patience, and many other virtues. My current situation is not fair even compared to members of my own family, yet I have come to embrace it as a beautiful training ground, readying me for God's plan for my future.
However, there is one sense of unfairness often attributed to God which I will not accept. It has been driven into my head all my life on all sides from almost every Christian I have ever known, and I have rejected it, because it is intolerable.
When I was 22, and still a very new Christian, one of my dearest friends was killed in a car accident. She was a year younger than me. I was not spiritually in touch with her at that point, but I had never known her to be a believer.
This beautiful soul, who brought laughter and joy to everyone she met, was not given even 22 years to find her Saviour. And if she was cast from His sight in her next life, that is unfairness on a literally infinite scale.
Let me state my case plainly: a God that would give one person 93 years to avoid damnation and another person 21 years, and accept or reject them both by the same standard, would be an evil God.
As I have stated, unfairness in the material world must be accepted and can be used by God for good. But unfairness in the spiritual world is irreconcilable with goodness. We're talking about eternity here.
The idea that I will be told Well done, thou good and faithful servant, and my dear friend, who died younger than I was when I met Christ, was told I never knew you, depart from me…
No. God's ways are not ours, but that notion is altogether evil, and I do not follow an evil God.
Let's look at one of the most important and foundational verses in the Bible: Romans 10:9. This was one of the first verses I learned as an adult convert:
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
[Emphasis mine]
This verse tells us many wonderful things, and was described to me by my mentor as the bottom line of the Christian faith. But it in no way even implies its direct opposite: that if you reject Jesus and his resurrection, you will be damned.
Do I know that my friend is in heaven? No. Do I have any reason to cast a dark and miserable shroud over her memory by assuming she is in hell? No I don't.
We as Christians need to strike down our assumption that we can judge the spiritual condition of others. We are not worthy to do that by an infinitely long stretch.
Is this new theology? Let's ask C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, circa 1941:
God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.
I would like to flesh this concept out a bit by tackling a related subject.
It is a documented sociological fact that really hardcore atheists very often have daddy issues. A high proportion of these especially fierce unbelievers had abusive, absent or distant fathers.
I am not going to attempt to explain this phenomenon. I don't know why this happens and that is not my point. My point is that it is an established fact that a child with an abusive father is born into an upbringing which makes them statistically more likely to reject their Saviour.
Now how precisely is that their fault? And how dare you or I assume that even the most deranged and ravenous anti-theist even had a chance to develop a healthy and balanced view of God, his word, his world and themselves?
Once again: do I assume that all of these tragically lost souls will be saved? No. But I do assume that I am not fit to judge a single one of them to be worthy of hell.
We as Christians are meant to defend our faith. We are to obey the Great Commission with all our strength. And we are meant to condemn and fight evil where we see it.
But eternal judgement is God's job. Not ours. The salvation of every single soul ever created on this earth is between that soul and God. And God is good, just, merciful and all-knowing.
After all, if humans were in charge of eternal judgement, would we not all be in hell?
God is not fair. That is an obvious fact, and sound theology. It rains on the just and the unjust alike. One baby is born in a palace, another in the slums. The inherent unfairness of life is a cold reality with which God presents all of us, often before we are born.
This is not entirely bad. Unfairness gives birth to faith, character, charity, chivalry, hard work, wisdom, patience, and many other virtues. My current situation is not fair even compared to members of my own family, yet I have come to embrace it as a beautiful training ground, readying me for God's plan for my future.
However, there is one sense of unfairness often attributed to God which I will not accept. It has been driven into my head all my life on all sides from almost every Christian I have ever known, and I have rejected it, because it is intolerable.
When I was 22, and still a very new Christian, one of my dearest friends was killed in a car accident. She was a year younger than me. I was not spiritually in touch with her at that point, but I had never known her to be a believer.
This beautiful soul, who brought laughter and joy to everyone she met, was not given even 22 years to find her Saviour. And if she was cast from His sight in her next life, that is unfairness on a literally infinite scale.
Let me state my case plainly: a God that would give one person 93 years to avoid damnation and another person 21 years, and accept or reject them both by the same standard, would be an evil God.
As I have stated, unfairness in the material world must be accepted and can be used by God for good. But unfairness in the spiritual world is irreconcilable with goodness. We're talking about eternity here.
The idea that I will be told Well done, thou good and faithful servant, and my dear friend, who died younger than I was when I met Christ, was told I never knew you, depart from me…
No. God's ways are not ours, but that notion is altogether evil, and I do not follow an evil God.
Let's look at one of the most important and foundational verses in the Bible: Romans 10:9. This was one of the first verses I learned as an adult convert:
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
[Emphasis mine]
This verse tells us many wonderful things, and was described to me by my mentor as the bottom line of the Christian faith. But it in no way even implies its direct opposite: that if you reject Jesus and his resurrection, you will be damned.
Do I know that my friend is in heaven? No. Do I have any reason to cast a dark and miserable shroud over her memory by assuming she is in hell? No I don't.
We as Christians need to strike down our assumption that we can judge the spiritual condition of others. We are not worthy to do that by an infinitely long stretch.
Is this new theology? Let's ask C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, circa 1941:
God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.
I would like to flesh this concept out a bit by tackling a related subject.
It is a documented sociological fact that really hardcore atheists very often have daddy issues. A high proportion of these especially fierce unbelievers had abusive, absent or distant fathers.
I am not going to attempt to explain this phenomenon. I don't know why this happens and that is not my point. My point is that it is an established fact that a child with an abusive father is born into an upbringing which makes them statistically more likely to reject their Saviour.
Now how precisely is that their fault? And how dare you or I assume that even the most deranged and ravenous anti-theist even had a chance to develop a healthy and balanced view of God, his word, his world and themselves?
Once again: do I assume that all of these tragically lost souls will be saved? No. But I do assume that I am not fit to judge a single one of them to be worthy of hell.
We as Christians are meant to defend our faith. We are to obey the Great Commission with all our strength. And we are meant to condemn and fight evil where we see it.
But eternal judgement is God's job. Not ours. The salvation of every single soul ever created on this earth is between that soul and God. And God is good, just, merciful and all-knowing.
After all, if humans were in charge of eternal judgement, would we not all be in hell?
