Last Sunday in church we were talking about Job, and although the class did not get into the topic of justice, my mind did. Job is a great story for understanding justice and injustice.
We sometimes want to think that justice means equal outcome for equal effort and talent. We see from Job that this is not the case. God does not guarantee good things to good people. In fact, He says "...that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding,
nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them
all." Ecc. 9:11
Sometimes, people get lost in the idea that a person 'will not be tempted beyond that which they are able' to resist. This leads them to think that really bad things only happen to the strongest individuals. But here again, this does not appear to be the case. Sometimes, people break.
What are we left with then for God's judgement and justice? Is it just reward in heaven and recompense in the hereafter? In some ways, it is not even that.
The parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20: 1-16) appears to have been composed to illustrate that the reward for following God's commandments does not correlate with the effort in following them and further to express that this is just by definition. However, I think that by societies' standards, if the issue with the laborers were taken to a court of modern law the judge would side with the all-day laborers.
Further, it appears that opportunities in this life are not equal. A person whose family comes to God is surely blessed with more exposure to the gospel than a person related solely to atheists ... by no fault of their own.
Even further, if we allow the definition of salvation to mean eternal increase, we are given no guarantee that the rate of increase will in any way correlate to our talents and sacrifices.
Such is the injustice of God. However, I don't want to be misread as criticizing the Almighty. I am trying to point out the twisted views of justice that we have developed. The truth is that God blesses everybody beyond what we deserve. If it is not the same as the next guy or not quite the blessings we wanted ... tough. We miss the point when we worry about justice. What we really need to focus on is mercy and charity.
