I don’t know about you, but most of the time I am glad life isn’t fair…

“It’s not fair!!!” your child screeches as he slams his bedroom door. As the house rattles, you sigh and mumble to yourself, “No… you’re right. Life is not fair.”

It is confusing alright. There are times when we insist to our children that we need to be fair. “You can have two minutes with the toy and then you need to share.” “You each get the same amount of cake.” “You disobeyed and now you must have your consequence.”

But it doesn’t take a child long to figure out that the world isn’t fair. Whether Tommy had five minutes more with the toy, or Suzie’s piece of cake had more icing, or sometimes Dad doesn’t always see when you break a rule, life is full of inconsistencies.

And when our children get older, they begin to grasp the grander scale of injustice. Children are abused, people starve, illness strikes and natural disasters devastate. Life is certainly not fair. It is enough to make a grown man slam his bedroom door and collapse onto his bed in a fit of tears.

So what are we to do? How do we cope with the injustices of life and teach our children to deal with it too?

I am reading a great book called, Pinocchio Parenting by Chuck Borsellino (I will do a full review of it one day soon on 5 Minutes for Mom) that deals with these misguided myths, such as “Life is fair,” which we pass on to our children. I particularly appreciated Dr. Borsellino’s thoughts on life being unfair.

After establishing the fact that to teach our children that life will be fair is dishonest and sets our children up for lifelong confusion and disappointment, Dr. Borsellino gives some invaluable insight on how to help our children (and us) to see the injustice from both sides.

“Life is not fair. It never has been, and it never will be. The bad news is, it will only be fair some of the time. The good news is…the same as the bad news.”

There are times when we must stand up and fight against the injustice in life. In many situations we cannot sit back and accept the status quo. We must fight for what is right and for those who cannot fight for themselves.

But there are other times when we must surrender to life’s injustices and accept them peacefully. And at those times it will serve us well to recognize what life would look like if everything were fair.

“If life were fair, every time we exceeded the speed limit, we’d get ticketed. Every time we made a mistake at work, we’d be reprimanded. Every time we underreported our income or overreported our deductions, the IRS would catch us and fine us or jail us. Every time we told our kids a lie (even a well-intentioned one), our noses would grow a little longer. Now let me ask you: Do you still want life to be fair? All the time? Every day? For everybody?

Every coin has two sides. If life’s not fair, then theoretically there will be times when you and I won’t get what we deserve; we’ll get what we desire. We deserve punishment; we’ll get pardon. We deserve failure; we’ll receive fortune…Life may not be fair, but sometimes it does go our way…”

I don’t know about you – but I don’t deserve a ton of what I have. I make mistakes that go unseen. I make traffic errors that could result in a terrible crash, but fortunately I am spared. I tell lies (most of them white) that are never discovered.

I sin - constantly and continually. I repent and then do it again and again. I am hopelessly flawed and broken.

But I am pardoned.

I do not deserve God’s forgiveness. I have done nothing to earn it. If life were fair, God would have tossed me to the side long ago. But He hasn’t. Because I believe in the forgiveness offered through Christ’s blood, because I have called on God in mercy and given my life to Him, He forgives me. He picks me up, again and again. He washes me clean. He loves me. And I don’t deserve any of it.

I wish that parts of life were fairer. We need to fight against poverty, child abuse, environmental disasters, etc. We need to help those who are hurting and helpless. We are mandated by God to do so.

But when we feel sorry for ourselves, when our children whine that life isn’t fair, we need to stop and appreciate the grace we are constantly offered. If we were given what we deserved – that would be a horrible fate.