life's not fair, is it?

We've all been there.  Sometimes, there are situations in which I feel hurt - angry, even - when something doesn't go the way that I planned.  Or, alternately, when someone doesn't come through the way they said they would.  Yes, that's life.  But yes, I'm not okay with that.  Some would call it a sense of justice.  Fairness.  It's only fair, right?  When things are unfair, it's okay to feel the way that I feel.

After all, it's only human to get up in arms when someone wrongs you.

This weekend, I helped to lead a youth retreat with our church called The Last XXIV.  Along with fun youth-groupy activities like board games, bowling and singing and playing really loud music, we led the youth through the "last twenty four" hours of Christ's life on earth, including a real Passover seder, clips from The Passion of the Christ, and passages from the Gospels.  I learned new things, which were powerful and numerous.

Among those powerful and numerous things I learned was the fact that I have absolutely no right to feel entitled.  To anything.  The phrases "sense of entitlement" and "Christian" should have nothing to do with one another.  They are diametrically opposed.  "It's only human to get up in arms when someone wrongs you."  Precisely.  It's human.  It's part of the part of us that isn't like Christ.

In our sessions, we discussed how Jesus was completely alone in His last hours.  His disciples abandoned Him:  one sold Him for a negligible amount of change, one denied he had ever met Him, and another merely observed the goings-on and said nothing - not to mention the other nine, who are not even mentioned!  He was falsely accused, tried illegally according to Jewish law, spat on, mocked, scourged to within an inch of His life, and beaten "beyond human likeness".  And, finally, crucified.   All without saying a word to defend Himself.  If anyone ought to have had a sense of entitlement, it should have been Him.  The one and only innocent Man to have ever lived.


Injustice in its truest sense.

And yet, He endured it all.  To bring us to... an unfair standing before God.  Think about it.  He died so that we wouldn't get what we deserved: a guilty sentence and all that entails.  Now, thanks to His sacrifice, we are able to stand before the Throne of Heaven completely unashamed, completely accepted.  In His last moments, instead of cursing the ones who had put Him on the cross, the ones who had completely shamed Him (you and me) He asked His Father to forgive us.

With this perspective, I think that I can stand a little unfairness in my own life.  I think that I can look at a situation that didn't go my way and say, "All right, that's tough... but I'm not going to dwell on this, let it mess me up, when Jesus went to hell and back for me."  Even more so, when people hurt me or let me down, it gives me the opportunity to be Christ in that circumstance.

I can demonstrate grace.
I can forgive and forget.
I can sacrifice my sense of justice or fairness or whatever you want to call it so that others will see in my life that Christ is King.
And I will choose to live like He did.

Without a sense of entitlement.
Without retaliation.
Even, without response.

I certainly hope that my students learned as much as I did.  If nothing else, I pray they learned how much Jesus sacrificed to save them.  Not just His life:  He gave up His relationships, His dignity, His sense of entitlement as the one true God, and His sense of justice.  For us.

"Life's not fair, is it?"
To that, I say, Thank God.