Thanks for asking about Jane. I'm afraid she's not doing well at all. Why doesn't God heal Jane? Better yet, why didn't He keep her from getting cancer in the first place? I've asked myself the same questions. In fact, I've prayed for her and with her many times, and I always ask for healing. I agree with you that it doesn't seem fair that she's dying while healthy criminals continue their trade.

But when we keep insisting that life be fair, we set ourselves up for constant disappointment. Life is often not fair, and I can't recall a single verse in the Bible that says it ought to be. In fact, there are countless examples within its pages of life not being fair to people who are serious about loving God and serving Him.

Did you ever stop to think that the fact that life isn't fair works to our advantage? We don't reap the negative results from our wrong actions that we deserve, and sometimes we're the recipients of good things we don't deserve. For instance, we go through a red light and don't get stopped and ticketed by the police and don't have an accident. Or we get a warning ticket for speeding instead of a $75 fine. So at least part of the time we don't mind that life isn't fair. Sometimes we're glad that we don't get what we deserve, and sometimes we're glad that we get what we don't deserve.

Of course the kind of unfairness you and I are most concerned about is when things work unfairly to our disadvantage. Think with me, first of all, about people acting unfairly. If people couldn't act unfairly, acting fairly would have no meaning. Society would simply be a fine-tuned machine with each person mindlessly doing the right and fair thing, which would have no meaning because that's the way they'd have to act. We're back to free will again. The freedom that allows a man to go to a home and shoot the person who opens the door is the same freedom that allows a man to go to a home and give a bouquet of flowers to the person who opens the door.

OK, so it's one thing for humans not to act fairly, but why doesn't God treat people more fairly? I believe He eventually will; that's what's often called the final judgment, but that's another subject. I think there's a practical reason why God doesn't impose fairness in the world. The fair thing would be for God to reward those who love Him and who are essentially good people and punish those who don't love Him and who are essentially bad people.

The problem with this is that people would come to God and be good for a very selfish reason: to keep from being punished by having bad things happen to them. The church I pastor, and all the others, would be filled with people who have little interest in loving God and serving Him but who want a life without trouble. People would turn to God for blanket protection that would be better than any insurance policy could offer.

I believe there are many benefits in store for the person who turns to God. But God's careful not to make these benefits so obvious that someone who doesn't care at all about Him will notice and feel coerced to go to Him. To keep the choice of turning to Him from being no choice at all, God has the storms of life come upon the just and the unjust alike, and He gives both the just and unjust some sunshine.

Speaking of storms, we had an ice storm last night and our lawn is covered with a scattering of twigs and branches. I need to get out there and pick them up. I've noticed, though, that one of my neighbors who doesn't go to church seems to have fewer to pick up than I do!

A fellow seeker after truth,
Dave