Sunday, June 13th, 2010

Finding Justice

We saw last time, that God is in charge of everything. Every season of life, the good times and the bad, are under His providential rule. And like ingredients in a recipe, He knows what’s best for us, and is making something beautiful in His time.

Now that sounds good-at least in theory. But what about real life?

The problem is, Solomon says 29x in the book of Ecclesiastes that we live under the sun. We live on a fallen, cursed earth. And if you look around, you’ll see sin, oppression, wickedness, death. You’ll see injustice. And the longer you live, the more you’ll see.

And so sometimes it’s hard to believe that this world is in the hand of a wonderful loving God.

For a world that’s supposed to be under God’s control, it sure doesn’t look that way lots of the time, does it?

This is what we find the psalmists complaining about over and over. “God why are you allowing so many bad things to happen to good people. And even worse, why do so many good things happen to bad people.”

This is the problem of injustice. And we have a hard time with this.

We prefer happy endings to stories, to movies, to fairy tales. We want the good guy to get the princess and everyone to live happily ever after.

But this doesn’t always happen. Samson gets killed in the last chapter. Romeo and Juliet do too. Even Humpty Dumpty can’t be restored by all the king’s horses and men.

So even in our fairy tales, we can get used to less-than-happy endings. But what we really can’t handle are unjust endings.

What if the 3 little pigs couldn’t light their pot of water and the big bad wolf ended up having a pork roast? What if the Handsome Prince had fallen for one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. What if the Grinch never had a change of heart and kept all the presents?

But in real life, this is often what happens.

The nice guy finishes last. The bad guy takes his job and his girl.

The godly family is poor and has medical difficulties. The godless actor lives in luxury.

The oppressor gets richer. The oppressed gets poorer.

It’s the problem of injustice.