God Is Just Not Fair: Finding Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense

INTRODUCTION

What I Didn’t Want You to Know

Let us step into the darkness and reach out for the hand of God. The path of faith and darkness is so much safer than the one we would choose by sight.

George MacDonald

Have you heard all the right answers when it comes to faith? If you have, do those answers always feel right? Does everything about your faith make sense to you? Or, like me, do you sometimes have questions about God and his ways?

There are hard things in our lives that don’t make sense and invite so many questions. Questions like these:

If God is good, why do we suffer?

Why are innocent children treated unjustly?

Why doesn’t God heal when he is capable?

When difficulty, tragedy, or crisis occurs, questions about God inevitably arise.

When you see injustice in the world, innocent children suffering . . . God, is this fair?

When tragedy strikes and nothing in your life seems to make sense . . . God, do you err?

When you ask God year after year to help you lose weight, be more patient, overcome your temper . . . God, do you hear my prayer?

When a spouse leaves . . . God, do you care?

When you get a pink slip instead of a paycheck . . . God, are you aware?

When you wonder if you will ever stop feeling lonely because you long for a baby, a spouse, a friend . . . God, are you there?

When rough things happen to us, it’s as if they rip holes in the fabric of our faith, or what I sometimes call our blanket of faith.

The Blanket of Faith

We all have a blanket of faith. It’s woven together from the strands of what we believe about God and what we have experienced in our relationship with him. We wrap ourselves in this blanket and it helps us to feel protected and comforted. Some of us have well-worn blankets of faith because we have walked with God for years and years. I do. My blanket of faith is over forty years old! Others of us may have a brand-new blanket of faith, and we’re still learning how to wrap ourselves in it. But no matter how long we’ve had our blanket of faith, we all feel more secure when we’re wrapped in it.

But then life happens.

Rip.

And it tears a big hole in our blanket of faith. We feel exposed and insecure. We wonder if our faith will really be enough to protect and comfort us. Every heartache we endure raises difficult questions, and each question has the potential to tear a new hole in our blanket of faith. The very faith we had hoped would shelter and comfort us suddenly feels inadequate and leaves us feeling even more vulnerable to the harsh winds of sorrow and fear.

Can you relate? I bet you can. Most of us will readily admit we’ve experienced some confusing circumstances, asked some tough questions, and wondered, Is God fair? We all have some holes in our faith blankets. I can guess you might have one you’re dealing with right now because you picked up this book. Well, my friend, I have lived the questions in this book, and you should have seen my blanket of faith not too long ago. It was a tattered mess. And, to be honest, I was terrified because the one thing I had depended on — my faith — had been reduced to rags, and I was needy, vulnerable, and afraid without it.

Torn Up

It was about five years ago, and I was in the midst of a rough year full of questions, discontent, and depression. I was still traveling the country, teaching the Bible, and speaking of God’s peace and goodness, but privately I was battling despair. My comforting blanket of faith was deteriorating, and my lifelong assumptions about God — the foundations of my faith — were being shaken and shattered.

During this difficult season, I kept a diary of my spiritual journey — a diary I certainly didn’t want you or anyone else to read! This snapshot of my life was private, and it definitely wasn’t what someone who read books by Jennifer Rothschild would expect to read. Here is a brief glimpse of what I couldn’t tell anyone at the time:

My faith is really being tested, and I am failing. I am questioning so much about God — who he is, where he is, even if he is.

I don’t know the answers. None of us really, really know. We just believe and hope. I have waded through this agony all week and wondered why I am feeling and thinking this way. Perhaps it’s just another affirmation that I am spiritually blind. I cannot see God unless he opens my eyes and allows me to see him. I have seen images of the God I thought I knew through Bible study, Christian platitudes, and Sunday school lessons. But the God I am learning about now is so beyond my comprehension that I have grappled with the notion that he isn’t even real. This confusion makes no sense.

God, please give me the peace I once had. I don’t want peace that comes from intentional ignorance. I want peace that comes from you. Peace that is unexplainable. Peace that can afford to question but exist without answers.

See what I mean? My blanket of faith was in tatters. It’s hard to even revisit those feelings and thoughts now because they were so painful. I was deeply afraid of how insecure the questions made me feel. I felt unmoored from what I thought I knew about God, and I was afraid to say it out loud to anyone because then it would feel even more real. But it was the real, raw, and radically honest truth about what I was going through — and I couldn’t have written the pages of this book without first living through those difficult questions.

Have you ever had such difficult feelings or tried to make sense of your faith, only to end up with more questions? Have you tried to wrap yourself in a blanket of faith and realized there were so many holes in it that it no longer protected or comforted you? Maybe you’re there right now, and that’s why you picked up this book.

If that’s the case, know you are not alone.

People of faith have been asking tough questions for millennia. The technical term for the problem of suffering is theodicy. The word itself has its roots in the Greek words for God (theos) and justice (dikē). It was coined in the seventeenth century by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment period, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Theodicy attempts to explain how and why there can be evil and suffering in the world if God is powerful and good.

Theodicy is a head term, but its implications are heart issues. So, rather than being an intellectual pursuit of theodicy, this book is a heart pursuit. The head pursues answers; our hearts need more than answers — we need comfort. We need to know that God cares and is aware of our suffering. We need to feel his empathy when we are entwined in a painful mystery of faith. We need to feel that our blanket of faith can protect us; that the holes can be filled with answers. That’s where I was in 2009. I desperately needed his reassurance — I needed to know that he was there, that he was good, and that he was just. And actually, I am still there! Even though I feel more comfortable with the questions, the answers aren’t what ultimately got me through. Answers are not what mend the holes in our blankets of faith. Answers are not what will get you through your tough times either. But, my friend, you should still ask the questions.

Mending the Blanket of Faith

Job is perhaps the best-known biblical figure to wrestle with the questions of faith that come from great suffering. Here are some of Job’s questions:

• Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? (Job 3:11)

• Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul? (Job 3:20)

• Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy? (Job 13:24)

• Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? (Job 21:7)

And these are only a few of the more than sixty questions recorded in the book of Job!

Interestingly, Job also wrote, Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him . . . I know that my redeemer lives (Job 13:15; 19:25). Standing in the rubble of his life, wrapped in a tattered blanket of faith, with far more questions than answers, Job said he knew that God lived? He said that no matter what God did, he would still hope in him? How could Job have that kind of peace? How could he hold on to that conviction in the face of so much unfairness and loss in his life? How could he feel secure in his relationship with God when God hadn’t fixed his situation or provided answers to fill in the missing pieces in his blanket of faith?

The answer to all those questions is, simply, God.

It was not what God did, what God didn’t do, what God said, or how God answered that gave Job such peace and contentment. It was because he encountered God in the ashes of his life. Job continued to wrap himself in his blanket of faith, no matter how torn and tattered it was. And Job was able to experience the comfort and strength he needed because God did fill in all the broken places; he filled in each and every hole with himself.

My friend, that’s what he does for you and me too. God doesn’t fill the holes in our blankets of faith with answers or solutions. He fills the holes in our blanket of faith with himself. Philosophy, intellectual answers, or religion alone will never be enough to repair the holes in your faith. Only God can fill the missing pieces.

And he fills them with himself.

Do you want that? I sure do.

As you travel with me through the pages of this book, my prayer is that you will experience an encounter with God as we wrestle with tough questions. When we are totally satisfied by a relationship with God, answers won’t seem as important to us.

I know you may not only ask questions; I know you probably have lived the questions. I understand. I have lived the tough questions too — as a teenager who lost her sight; as a middle-aged woman who fell into a debilitating depression, and as a woman who loved God and believed in him and yet struggled with unbelief. God became the one answer for me and gave me emotional stability, hope, and comfort. My blanket of faith was ultimately strengthened by my doubts; it became even more comforting and strong because of how God filled in my many missing pieces. I want you to experience the same comfort and hope.

Though this book will thoughtfully and honestly grapple with six big questions of faith, what matters most is not the questions but the heart of the questioner. By the end of this book, I pray you will realize that seeking to know answers is far less important than seeking to know God.

So wrap yourself in your blanket of faith — no matter how new or old it is, no matter how torn or strong it is. Feel it surround you and comfort you as you examine the holes that may be in it. Give yourself permission to ask questions to God. He will often reveal the answer. But far more importantly, invite him to reveal himself to you in the midst of your questions.

He will come to you. He will fill all the holes in your blanket of faith with peace, love, grace, and strength. For he is Peace, Love, Grace, and Strength.

Jennifer Rothschild

PART 1

God, Are You Fair?

It was an ordinary July day in a Tallahassee movie theater during the cheap movie series — at least that’s what I used to call it. Our local theater featured cartoon movies during the summer for just $2 — and that price included the popcorn. On a Wednesday morning, I got three-year-old Clayton dressed, packed the diaper bag, and slipped my Walkman cassette player (yes, this was before CDs) into my purse. This was the third movie in the series, and I had finally figured out how to entertain myself during the ninety minutes of cartoon silliness.

I grabbed a message tape someone had given me many years earlier. I had never listened to it because even though I was curious about it, I also dreaded it. I knew the woman’s story, and it was both similar to and different from my own. I was afraid to hear it, to feel it, and then to have to deal with it.

I have never enjoyed going into dark movie theaters because they are so difficult for me to get around in. But on this day it wasn’t so bad because I had my friend Becky as my guide. She brought along her son David, who was Clayton’s age, and helped us find our seats and settle in. As soon as the previews began, I inconspicuously pulled out the earbuds attached to the Walkman hidden discreetly in my bag. I could hear Becky and the boys giggling and I knew all six eyes were focused on the screen. So I pressed play and began to listen to the tape.

The speaker’s name was Marolyn Ford. She was a few years older than me, but her story was painfully familiar. She spoke of slowly losing her sight and described her emotions and challenges in a way I recognized all too well. She shared about her life as a wife and mother and about how tired she was of being blind. I knew how she felt. I, too, had slowly lost my sight. I, too, was a wife and mother. And I, too, was so, so tired. Blindness is draining. Even as I sunk into the theater seat, tiredness had washed over me. It wasn’t a physical tiredness but an emotional, mental, and spiritual fatigue that was zapping me. And just keeping my sadness and frustration in check is emotionally draining all by itself. Trying to remember phone numbers, appliance buttons, my schedule, my to-do list, where I am walking, and where I place things so I can find them again are all reasons blindness is mentally draining. And then there’s the spiritual fatigue. Loving God and hating blindness, and wanting to trust God while wondering why he hasn’t healed me, make me live in a perpetual state of spiritual weariness.

So there I sat, identifying completely with Marolyn Ford. But there was a point in her message when every part of me wanted to turn off the tape. I knew she was about to describe the one part of her story I would not be able to relate to — something that would feel like salt on my open wound. But for some reason I kept listening.

In the darkness of the theater, in the darkness of my blindness, I listened to her describe the night she cried out to God for healing. She shared how she and her husband had prayed. She then described how, after praying, she could see again. She could see not just a little bit but completely.

Tears welled up in my eyes. She continued to tell the story of how she went to the eye doctor after her healing, and the doctor gasped as he confirmed that she could see — even though she had no retina. Her healing was a full-blown, certifiable, unreasonable miracle!

Tears were now streaming down my cheeks. How could I reconcile God’s decision to heal the blindness of one of his children but not the other? How could I carry the joy I felt for what God could do in the same heart that breaks because of what God won’t do?

I was genuinely happy for Marolyn because I knew intimately what she had received and the burden she was now free of. I really was astonished and thanked God for her healing. But I also felt a piercing sorrow. Becky, Clayton, and David had no idea what was happening next to them in the theater that day, but I have never forgotten it.

I came face-to-face with one of the hardest questions of faith: Why one and not the other?

Deep down, I didn’t think it had anything to do with Marolyn’s faith versus my faith. Nobody deserves healing based on their degree of faith or lack of faith. The faith we have is a gift of God’s grace. Would God give her a bigger gift than he gave me just so she could please him more and therefore receive more from him? That didn’t make sense.

My sorrow wasn’t because I was jealous. Really, I wasn’t. With all I knew about how hard it is to be blind, I was genuinely happy for her. But my sorrow was because we loved the same God and had the same eye condition, but we had very different outcomes. She was healed; I was still blind.

Why?

As the movie was coming to a close, I wiped away my tears and asked God for composure. I just didn’t want to talk about it with anyone that day. In fact, I have never talked about it until now. It was such an intimate, raw, hard moment between me and God.

I had to confront the unfairness of the God I loved. I didn’t want to feel those emotions and question my faith. I just wanted to paste a mushy greeting card over that very broken place in my heart, which read, Let go and let God.

But I couldn’t — and I didn’t.

Instead, I had to face up to the question, God, are you fair?

CHAPTER 1

Just Desserts

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

As a little girl in church, I used to sing the beautiful hymn, Fairest Lord Jesus. I loved the melody, and even though I didn’t really grasp the words, I liked them too.

Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature,

O Thou of God and man the Son,

Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,

Thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown.

I had no idea what my soul’s glory, joy, and crown were, and I didn’t much care. All I cared about was that Jesus was the fairest! And since Jesus and I were tight, I expected things should work out pretty well for me. Fairness was really important to me, as it is to most children. I didn’t want my brothers to get more candy than I did or to stay up later than I got to. I just wanted everything to always be fair. So it was reassuring to think of Jesus as he was described in that hymn — the fairest.

I clearly didn’t understand that the hymn writer was using another definition of fair — beautiful, lovely, and pleasing. Bummer! But shouldn’t Jesus still be described as the fairest anyway? After all, he is God, and God is fair, right? Yet, bad things happen to people all the time. And bad things happen to Christians too — people who are tight with God. So is God fair?

In the summer of 2010, Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman I have long admired, was diagnosed with breast cancer. More than thirty years ago, her book about the diving accident that left her a quadriplegic was one of the last books I read before I was diagnosed with the degenerative eye disease that took the majority of my vision. Her story inspired me, and reading about how she struggled, questioned, and triumphed over her limitations was exactly what I needed tucked into my heart for my coming journey into darkness. I have loved her ever since, so I was saddened when I heard about her cancer. I thought, She doesn’t deserve that pain. She’s been in a wheelchair since she was seventeen. Isn’t that suffering enough? She has served God so faithfully, even with her disability. It just doesn’t seem fair that God would let her get cancer. Isn’t one hard thing in this life enough?

We tend to feel like a little suffering is expected, but once we’ve met the Christian quota for suffering, it just isn’t fair to have more piled on. Besides, don’t we as Christians deserve protection, blessings, and healing from fairest Lord Jesus? And not just us — there are plenty of people who may not be Christians, but they don’t deserve a bum rap either. You know, like how a dad loses his job at the same time his elderly mom has to be put in a nursing home, while his young son struggles with a new diagnosis of diabetes and his wife is so overwhelmed that she falls into a deep depression. And of course, with no job, there is no insurance. How is that fair? How can good people deserve such bad things in life? Especially when we believe God is good?

Many of us embrace the belief that we deserve good things from God because he is good and that seems only fair. But is it really true? Yes, God is good, but does this mean we deserve only good things in our lives?

What Do We Deserve from God?

I’ve never grappled with this issue of what we deserve from God as much as I did when I sat in the front of the auditorium in a civic center on a cold January night. I was the guest speaker at a women’s conference. I