Fair? Fiddle-dee-dee...

I was once told by a very perceptive friend that my sense of justice was too strong.  "That's why you hate the Phantom and Scarlett O'Hara," she said.  "You can't get over the fact that these fallen people get things they don't deserve."

Yeah, that sounds about right.  You know those Myers-Briggs tests?  The ones where you are either thinking or feeling, sensing or intuitive, judging or perceiving, etc?  I have taken that test at least twice, and each time I have been hard core thinking and judging.  I don't seem to carry the sensing and perceiving chromosome, and it can get ugly.  It's not something I'm proud of, but this aspect of my character has a tendency to abandon compassion and bring down the gavel.  Scarlett O'Hara, there is no way you could ever deserve Ashley Wilkes.  Get real.  Grow up, go home, and start knowing your place.  And stop bossing everyone around.

(photo credit)

I'm beginning to realize what a highly dangerous position this can be.  Much of my internal struggles center around what I think I or others deserve.  I deserve this good because of x, y, and z.  I don't deserve that bad because I didn't do anything bad enough to earn it. But after processing our recent sermons at church and reading this post, I am beginning to see how this mentality completely undermines the inherent beauty of grace.  Fair does not take grace into account.  Fair looks at my life and dishes out consequences equal to the damage done.  Is that really what I want?

If life were fair, I would only have the things I deserve.  But I don't - I have so much more than that.  I don't deserve a husband who works his tail off at school, comes home and gives his whole self to me and our son until we go to bed, and then studies until the wee hours of the morning.  I don't deserve a beautiful, healthy boy who thinks the sun rises and sets with me.  I don't deserve parents who love me and do anything and everything I ask and thousands things I don't.  And I definitely don't deserve a God who sees the very worst of me and wants me anyway.  Who am I to hold the feet of others to the fire?  I am just as fallen and undeserving of grace as they.

So Scarlett, I am sorry.  You are no less deserving of grace than I, and henceforth I am making an effort to go easy on you and your sort, in the growing understanding that God and so many others are going easy on me and mine.