5 Reasons to Stop Expecting Life to Be Just and Fair

Having observed that transformational growth only occurs in us when one precondition is met with one response, I have learned not to expect life to be just or fair at all.

The precondition is 1) when life is tough, together with the response, 2) we submit in humility — a strength that can only be issued in weakness.

Life isn’t fair and it isn’t just.  Yet very often we’ve all been blessed with favour far beyond the fickleness that life has the potential to execute.  Not always, however, have we been thankful when things have rolled our way.

Gratitude ought to be our response at all times.  Especially when life is unfair and unjust.

Of course, it’s easy to say that; much harder to live it.  Thankfully grace forgives us for botching it so often.

Here are five reasons to expect less justice and fairness in life:

1.     It’s unsustainable: we cannot hope to live an emotionally balanced life with imperious expectations.  When we give up our expectations for justice and fairness, all of life suddenly becomes manageable.  Expecting life to be fair and just creates a lack of sustainability in life.

2.     It’s unrealistic: if all we had to do was expect justice and fairness to receive it, or to see it within the lives of the downtrodden, or within the lives of loved ones, we would all live fantasy lives.  Reality dictates that we win some and we lose some.  Expecting life to be fair and just is plain unrealistic.

3.     It’s irrational: courting virtuous disaster, all hope, joy and peace ekes out of us when we’ve had our expectations dashed.  We’re quickly found irrational when expectations run awry.  Expecting life to be fair and just makes us irrational.  Sometimes it’s our expectations that contribute to poor mental health.

4.     It’s unreliable: do you really think you can dictate any reliable percentage of the fairness and justice of life?  Expecting life to be fair and just banks on the shifting sands of fortune that bear alignment with reality just a fraction of the time.  We would never gamble on such odds.

5.     It’s irresponsible: people depend on us everywhere in life.  When we come to expect justice and fairness in life — ours, and for others we care about — we tend to let people down, and more often.  But responding in accepting the fact that we cannot control the fairness and justice in life builds empowerment in us as we speak it, and within others, too, as they endeavour to live in the same vein, because they see that if we can attempt it, surely they can too.

When life is tough,
even more important is it to submit in humility.

May God bless you as you press patiently into His graciousness in trials,

Steve Wickham.