We should include the concept of fairness with such ideas as Zeus, cheap gas, and Bigfoot: mythology. Fairness is a myth, it’s an idea that many have latched onto because it’s cheap hope, it’s a cheap story to cling onto, it’s speaks to our base desire of wanting an easy way out. Fairness is a grand myth that many of us have bought into…an it aint working so well for us.

I’ve had a few good friends grieve with me and make comments about how its not fair that I have cancer. The underlying premise is that it’s because I’m  young, have a couple of great kids, a great marriage, and am a part of good things emerging here in downtown Vancouver I shouldn’t have cancer. But is that really true? I mean, the part about my wonderful kids, being young, and all that is obviously true; but is it true that this it is somehow unfair that I’ve got cancer? Absolutely not! In reality it’s complete bs isn’t it? The implications of such a thought are that there are those who deserve to have cancer, that there are those who-if they die of some disease- it can be said that it was just and fair.* May it never be so! This ideology is void of hope in its entirety and it places us as humans as the judge of those who deserve life…quite a dangerous place to put ourselves!

Think about fairness for a moment. If something good happens to me I don’t whine about how its not fair do I? Rarely. If something good happens to you, you might find me whining about how its not fair and how it should have gone better for me, but rarely is fairness an issue when things are well. Instead the idea of life being fair is a tool that we wield when we’re upset about our circumstances. It gives us an easy out and justifies our grumbling.

In reality what is fair? While I’m no expert I think that the Hindu religious system (and the caste system that it seems to support) is supposed to be an exercise in fairness. You get what you deserve based on the past life you lived. If you’re in a bad place in life (a lower caste?) you’re there not because life’s a bitch but because you deserve that place because of your past choices in a previous life. Karma right?

Life’s not fair. If it were there’d be no hope for many of us. We don’t want life to be fair, we don’t really want karma to be true, what we want is for life to be full of grace. That’s the beauty of love, it’s the beauty of the way of life that Jesus invites us into–you give generously to people because they’re people not because they deserve it (fairness). We place our hope in the idea that we are loved…even in our worse moments…even when cancer is ravaging our bodies we have hope in love not in getting what (or what we don’t) deserve.

If you spend your lives running after the myth of fairness not only will you end up being sorely disappointed and jaded but you’ll also miss out on the beauty of love…and that just wouldn’t be fair now would it?!

* Maybe in certain instances we can agree that dying of a disease was a natural consequence for how their lives were lived…but does that still give us the freedom to claim it as fair and just?