God is Not Fair.

We do not like God. We do not like God because, ultimately, we are not like God. We are not like God because God is not fair. God is not fair but rather God is kind. God has no need for balanced scales—no need for equality. We espouse that all men are created equal, yet equality is merely an illusion, a human construct. God does not deal with all people equally. What God does is see all people as being of equal value. This is something we cannot accept. This is why we don’t like God.

We can accept all people being equal, but we are not capable of seeing all people as being of equal value. We may be able to accept two individuals of similar upbringing and equal educational achievements with similar vocations as being of similar value but ultimately we would not conclude that the homosexual, pacifist, atheist has the same worth as the heterosexual, evangelical, veteran. We assign value based on criteria such as: theological beliefs; moral standards; patriotic loyalty; ritualistic, religious, observances; sexual preferences; wardrobe choices; vernacular; and so on.

            But what if God told you that you were of no more or less value than anyone else. What if God said, “I don’t care who you are or what you accomplish, it will never alter your value”? Would you immediately respond with, “but that’s not fair”? Would you then begin to tell God what your value is? Would you begin to list all of the qualities that you believe contribute to your value? What would be on your list? Would you tell God who you vote for, where and how often you attend church, what version of the bible you read, what religious practices you observe and the MPAA rating of the movies you watch? This is exactly how the older brother thinks in a story that Jesus told to his followers.

            There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.” So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.”

So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. “Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.” The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

So which is of more value: the one who obeys the law or the one who doesn’t even accept that there is a law? Which son has more value to the father: the one who says, “I wish you were dead so that I could have what I deserve of your wealth now” or the one who says, “I will do all that you ask and never question your authority”? Which son has more value?

We that love equality have to wait until the sons are both in a certain state of being before we will assign them equal value. Because of this, some say it is the act of returning home that gives the rebellious younger son back his value. But is that the case? Is the son devalued the moment he leaves the father’s house and re-valued the moment he returns or does the son’s worth as ascribed by the father never change? Does not the father exude so much unsurpassable worth to all his children that their most horrific actions could never even begin to diminish their true value.

The older brother immediately devalued the younger as soon as he wished the father dead. The father did not do this. The rebellious son’s value did not increase in the slightest upon his return. What did increase was the father’s demonstration of the son’s value. The father did not seek to prove to the son how wrong his actions were, but rather the father sought to increase the son’s perceived self worth.

Both sons wanted equality. Both sons wanted fairness. But God is not fair nor does he care about equality. The rebellious son determined his value as being half of all that the father had and that he deserved to have it immediately. The older son thought that he was entitled to half of all that the father had because of what he did—his righteous actions. Both sons were wrong. The younger son was not entitled to half of all the father had before the father died or after the father died. He was entitled to all that the father had—100% of the father’s wealth—at any time and forever. The older son was not entitled to half of everything because he obeyed the father and served in his house and made no mistakes. No. He was entitled to 100% of the father’s wealth and resources at any time and forever.

This is not human math. How can this be possible? How can the father give everything to everyone? God’s math is very different than ours because it is not based on the finite: it is based on the infinite. Consider Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel. It goes something like this:

Suppose there is a hotel and this particular hotel happens to have an infinite number of rooms. Now let us suppose that somehow every room in this unlimited space became occupied. Now suppose that some time later the lobby door opened and an infinite number of guests arrived and requested rooms in the hotel. The question is, how do you accommodate this infinite number of guests if the infinite number of rooms are already occupied? The answer to this is the key to understanding God’s math and every attribute of God: love, grace, forgiveness, mercy, creativity, all of it. The solution is for the hotel manager to ask all of the guests occupying rooms to move out of their current room and into the room that has a room number that is double the room number of their current room. For example: the guest in room #1 would move to room #2, because 2 is double 1. The guest in room #2 would move into room #4 because 4 is double 2. The guest in #3 would move to #6 and the guest in #6 would move to #12 and so on and so on. If every current guest does this (inconvenient as it may be) then every odd numbered room would become vacant making room for the infinite number of guests waiting in the very large lobby.

How can the father divide his wealth between both sons and still give each son everything? He can because the father’s wealth is infinite.  This is God’s math. Because the value of both sons is infinite and incomprehensible and has nothing to do with what they’ve earned; both sons are entitled to all that the father has, and all that the father has is good. So what then of our eternal existence? Is your concept of an afterlife based on a value system? Is it based on a system of earned rewards and justified punishment?

No matter how wonderful you think that someone is, you are infinitely undervaluing her or him. What did the righteous son believe was the younger son’s value—probably not much at all—certainly less than half. If the younger son had turned around and come home and worked for decades in the father’s house he may have earned back some value in the elder brother’s eyes but he would never have been valued any more than deserving of half. The older brother had no concept of his own infinite value (if he had he would have at least claimed a goat) much less that of his sinful brother; yet the father sees them both as being equally invaluable.

It is important to notice that the father did not send the older son out to tell the younger son what he had done wrong. He was not deployed to preach to the younger or scare him with damnation, both of which he probably believed and would have readily proclaimed. Instead, the father just waited and watched. The father knew that the only reason the son left at all was because he didn’t know his own value and that the futility of the young son’s actions would inevitably lead him home. He did not charge the older son with being the arbitrator of morality. The father did not tell the younger son what to do with the money and did not make the faithful older son the trustee of the younger’s money. The father gave it because it already belonged to the younger son: he was entitled to it.

The mistake that the younger son made was not the act of demanding his inheritance but that he desired so little and settled for so much less: this is sin. Sin is the insistence on so much less than what we already have. The only reason that the city was not offered was because it was so far beneath what the father wanted for his son. The father wanted the younger son to have more than what the son even wanted—more than the half that the son thought he was so wise to demand. Sin is not an increment of imposed limitation. It is not a measure at all. It is a lack of perfection.

So what then of morality? How do we judge it? We do not. We must not. We were never asked to. But the younger sons and daughters are ignoring the law, getting away with murder, they hate the father, wishing the father dead, they’re saying the father is dead, they’re saying there never was a father. They hate, they defame, they cheat, they rape, they steal, they devalue righteousness, they…  They are entitled to more than you even realize that you are entitled to. And they don’t have to do anything. Their value is unlimited. We can never love anyone as much as God loves the person that you hate the most. No, you’re right. This is not fair. No, not at all.