Life is unfair

Ecclesiastes 8:14 (NIV)

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve.    

Ecclesiastes 9:11 (TEV)

I realized another thing, that in this world fast runners do not always win the races, and the brave do not always win the battles. The wise do not always earn a living, intelligent people do not always get rich, and capable people do not always rise to high positions.

Several passages in Ecclesiastes, such as the two here, support the observation that life can be very unfair.  Solomon wrote that life is very unfair when evil people prosper while good people suffer.  Life is totally unfair when the fastest runners and the bravest people don’t win.  How can it be that the wise and intelligent are poor and capable people don’t rise to top positions?  You see this in the business world all the time that dishonest and unscrupulous people seem to win, get the promotions and other recognition.  Does life seem fair when professional athletes and entertainers can earn millions and millions of dollars a year while the average American household only earns about $40,000 per year and today so many qualified people cannot even find a job?  Is life fair when God seems to show partiality towards contemptible individuals while letting the innocent suffer?  How can God let a precious child contract a devastating illness while allowing a criminal to live a long healthy life? Where is the God of balance and equity that we long for?  Why is God seemingly blind or deaf to our daily sufferings? 

Questions about the fairness of God, why God allows suffering to occur in the lives of good people and why He allows evil people to be prosperous are the top questions people, especially Christians, ask about God.  Theologians for centuries have written thousands of pages of books trying to come up with answers, none of which are completely understood and acceptable to the people asking these questions.  Solomon, perhaps the wisest man in all of creation, could not answer these questions.  Job and his friends could not find an answer.  Paul and Peter in the New Testament could not answer these questions fully and finally.  Who can ever explain why God would allow Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ, to be so cruelly tortured and killed by evil people?  Indeed if God allowed such suffering to Himself, how can anyone believe that he/she should not suffer?

The only answer I personally can accept to approach the inexplicable question of why God seems unfair, why so much suffering and inequality and lack of justice that exists in life throughout the earth is because we live in a fallen world that was cursed when Adam and Eve first sinned against God.  God exists, He loves and cares for His creation, and He periodically intervenes to help His people, to answer prayer in the way we hope, and to perform daily miracles.  However, the world is cursed and it always will be until the end of time comes when this present age ceases to exist and  “a new heaven and a new earth” will enter where “there shall no longer be any mourning or crying or pain or death” and “all things are new” (Revelation 21:1,4,5).