Life is an amazing gift but life, if we’re all honest, is littered with moments of pain. Physical pain. Emotional pain. Mental pain. Relational pain. As long as we’re being honest here, life has more than its fair share of sorrow and suffering. At times, life honestly doesn’t seem fair. But what does it mean to be fair?

I believe that fairness is confused with freedom far too often. Freedom has inherent boundaries in order to preserve that freedom. I’ve used this analogy before, but it helps me understand why freedom must have boundaries. If I let my small children run free…free to go and do whatever they want to do, I expose them to the many dangers found in life. What if I just let them run around on a busy highway? Would that be true freedom or would that be foolishness? Of course that would be foolish and unloving of me. That its why I give them a rule concerning not playing near a busy highway. It may not seem like utter freedom to some and it may not seem fair to some, but freedom has boundaries and life is not fair.

I have jumped out of an airplane before because I wanted to feel the sensation of flying. What if I didn’t want to be constrained by the binding tightness of the parachute and decided I would be more free without it? That would be foolish of me. The boundaries - the parachute and all it’s binding straps - do not limit my freedom. They actually guarantee it.

Fairness is, in its simplest form, the understanding that we all live by the same rules in society. We have rules when we play board games that all must comply with to insure play is fair. We have rules of law that insure we all live in relative safety. Fairness means justice. It means impartiality. It means each person is equal in value. But it does not mean each is entitled to the same proportion of…anything.

Fairness in today’s culture means someone believes and thinks they deserve to have what another person has worked hard to attain regardless of what they themselves have or have not contributed to society. Honestly, fairness is a word that is used by people to make them feel better about themselves and it comes from the breeding ground of having a sense of entitlement.

I have Parkinson’s. That is simply reality. Is it fair that I, one who happens to think I’m a pretty good guy, had such a bad thing take place in my life? For me to say, “That’s not fair” is to actually say - whether I realize it or not - that “I wish everyone had to go through what I’m going through.” Me being diagnosed with Parkinson’s is fair in the grand scheme of things. For me to think otherwise is to think like an immature toddler or selfish teenager who is completely self-centered and feels entitled to whatever I want.

My attitude is simple. Me having Parkinson’s is fair because it could happen to anyone, regardless of who they are, regardless of their perceived social status in life, regardless of their wealth or lack thereof. Life is fair. It rains on the just and on the unjust alike.

God’s Word talks about fairness in the following manner:


Matthew 5:44-45 NASB says, 44 "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on [the] evil and [the] good, and sends rain on [the] righteous and [the] unrighteous.”


 Freedom comes in knowing God wastes nothing…whether I think my circumstances are fair or not. I could make myself crazy by constantly asking ‘why me?’ but the better question is ‘why NOT me?’ Freedom is knowing God will use even the harsh realities of life - fair or unfair in the eyes of men - to bring about good for me.

Fairness is simple. the bottom line reality is that society would be less divisive if we each paid our fair share…if we all played by the same rules in spite of what the current culture wants us to believe. To walk around with a sense of entitlement is to walk around with a ball and chain constantly dragging along behind us. It is self-imprisonment.

Freedom is living one’s life in relationship with the God Who loves us massively and Who uses even the worst life can throw our way for our good and for the good of others. Personally, I prefer freedom and choose not to waste my time worrying about whether life and its circumstances are fair or not. Is that fair to say? Pun intended…

The things I have had to endure in my life don’t feel fair, but that is not truth. Truth is what my Father says about me. When I changed the way I thought about my past, my feelings about it all changed as well. That’s what makes even the regretful hurtful times of life fair in the long run.

Isaiah 43:18-19 NASB says, 18 "Do not call to mind the former things, Or consider things of the past. 19 "Behold, I am going to do something new, Now it will spring up; Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert.”


 Life may seem unfair at times, but we cannot allow that feeling to steer us away from the truth and into the self-imprisonment of a sense of entitlement. I think its fair to say that the overriding, overwhelming truth is the fact that our God wastes nothing.


2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB says, 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, [this person is] a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.


 Let’s walk in truth and freedom today and rejoice in the fact that God erased our past. That truth and freedom are available to every single person. Life doesn’t get any more fair than that!

Dennis Jernigan

To hear The Dennis Jernigan Podcast version of this blog, go to http://podcast.dennisjernigan.com/e/all-i-used-to-be/

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