When Fair Does Not Mean The Same
We will always try to be fair, but it won’t always feel equal.
- unknown
All kids go through a phase when they are obsessed with everything being fair. Our kids, though, have taken this to an art form. When they each get a bag of fruit gummies, they open them, sort each bag, and redistribute gummies so they all have the same number (and secondarily, as close to the same proportion of flavors as possible). When they get gum, they put it into their mouths at the same time, and later do a countdown to begin chewing at the same moment as well (they’ve figured out that sucking gum like candy first prolongs enjoyment without decreasing the flavor later; delayed gratification is another art form of theirs).
When kids talk about things being fair, they usually mean “the same.” Are we getting the same volume of ice cream? The same bedtime? The same toys? Sometimes we explain that fairness is not always the same thing as sameness. It depends on your goal. If you want to be fair about how much of a resource everyone gets, then generally being fair does mean having the same quantity of something. That is the simplest way to think about fairness.
But sometimes you’re trying to be fair about something more complex. If you want to be fair about how loved everyone feels—well, then you need to take into account how each person feels loved. To make all of my children feel effectively loved, I may need to write a note to one child, give another child a hug, or take yet another one out on a date. If I want to be fair about how rested everyone feels—well, then I have to take into account how much sleep each person’s body needs. An eleven-year-old needs less sleep than a six-year-old. In both cases, being fair actually means having different kinds of experiences.
As you can imagine, this kind of exposition is minimally mollifying for a kid who is wondering why someone else got something different than them. In the end, I suppose I am simply saying that their belief in my fairness is an exercise in trust: they must trust that I am being fair in my aims, given that I have a wider and perhaps deeper understanding of the individual needs of everyone in the family.
And, I often point out, what my child really means when they say “that’s not fair” is “that’s not fair to me.” I’ve never heard one of them complain that it’s not fair that they got more of something; it’s always the other way around. Their interest in equity is always tainted by self-interest.
The same is true of how we trust God. It’s easy to think, “it’s not fair that someone else has this and I do not.” Underneath that statement can be legitimate pain and suffering. But I sometimes think: really, what we’re saying is, God, you’re not giving me what I want. You’re not giving me what I think is best for myself. And the fix is not to blame ourselves, or to grow in bitterness or resentment: it’s to listen to and examine our understanding of God. Because in the end, it’s an exercise in trust. It’s trusting that God’s aims are loving and just, and that he sees wider and deeper and longer than we can. It’s trusting that if we could know and see everything that he does, we would make the exact same choices for ourselves.
That’s not easy to do. It’s not easy for our kids to accept not all getting the same things, and it’s infinitely more difficult when it comes to deeper, unmet longings in life. Perhaps it’s easier in the context of a closely nurtured relationship (our kids with us, or us with God), or when we’ve made a habit of seeing the good things we do have. And there is always a place for lament—because ultimately, the world now is not how it should be. Our lives are not always how we hope for them to be, for reasons that are sometimes beyond our control. But in the end, our ability to be at peace with these things comes down to who we really believe God to be, and what we really believe His aims are. There’s a surrender there that, however hard to come by, must be worked out in our lives.
