I just heard the usual litany, "It's so unfair!" the nth time today. For a reason or two, I might as well readily agree. I have had the same round of spewing a hundred times already. And maybe we could say the world is unfair. While others seem to savor the easy way in and out of mess, we see ourselves entangled in the web of so many proceedings and goings-on to see the day through. While others brave through the traffic rules by their so called wang-wangs, we wade through it all in the middle of the heat to get to offices or appointments. And how about facing a giant of a task as formidable as Goliath himself with your inexperienced bare little hands? Ah, the hassle of it all. And we mouth the usual, "It's all so unfair!"
But in the grander scheme of things, maybe things are not quite unfair really. Maybe someone up there who in his infinite and all-knowing self does see that everything goes well for him to rightly deserve the tag, "the God of order."
We can begin to ask, "Do we see the whole scenario to decide what one should or shouldn't get?" Maybe not entirely.
If I were Job for instance, I would cry out "foul." After living and maintaining a life above reproach (there is no record in the Scriptures of Job's wrongs concerning his character, hence, the description), of all breathing creatures,why should it be he losing practically everything except the loud-mouthed wife? At that moment, boils, sores, and all, Job must have asked the most valid question heaven's ears must have heard, "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" Hah, a classic cliched question this is. But of course, the poor guy (quite wretched, I must say, at this point in his life, what with losing family and possessions in a jiffy) was not privy to God and Satan's "friendly" negotiations. Well, in the end, after many itchy sore days, God returned everything in good order, even "doubly" better. You know the story. I just don't know how the wife and her mouth turned out though.
You can take Joseph the dreamer who, in the beginning,we might quip, "he must have dreamed too much to earn the ire of his siblings." My sister does not mince words when she sees irregularities in offices and dealings with people. What with a teacher who hammers on her students the code of ethics and the essence of freedom--quite the dedicated Civics teacher that she is. But Joseph took it all. And yes, like Job, he had no idea what was going on. He went from a deep bloody pit, to the prison cell, and on to the King's favored right-hand seat. That too and the rest of the story, I presume had been read and told a thousand times.
So is life unfair? For now yes, it would seem that way. Yet in our finite wisdom, we can never outclass God's wisdom. One broadcaster aptly said, "We do not have all the information." We don't know the attachments and the "finer prints" of things that we must have missed or misread. Thus, we can't truly say life is unfair. There may just be people who used illegal and unfair tricks to get what they had to get and "can" what they wanted to "can." Worst of all, they seemed to have gone unscathed and unpunished. But nothing is really unfair. Job and Joseph had dosages of those stuff. Chances are, at crucial points in our not so perfect life, loathsome rotten mess will gravitate to us. We will be tempted to spew the same litany. But we can think of the Job-or-Joseph episode and hope the predicament will soon pass.
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