the Good Question

Fairness is the line between to opposite horizons: darkness and light. It is the twilight that is itself not yet darkness, but that cannot quite be called very light, except by comparison to heavy darkness. It is the point one foot past which, in one direction, a traveler can be confidently declared to be in the light, and in the other direction, just as equally in the darkness. It is the first point that really seems light to a man who stands deep in the darkness. But many things stand in the darkness, in evil, with toes hung over the line, seeming good to themselves merely by proximity to the line. Indeed, they can make out vague shapes in the darkness, and they are quite proud. But the further you walk away from the line, up the path of love, toward the gilded, broadening light, the dimmer the line appears to you when you turn around to give it a look, the drearier its surrounding environment, and the closer the line looks to the dark horizon on the other side—because the farther you are from a place, the closer it looks to everything else in that direction you are far from until the whole collection of distant things in the same direction becomes a single thing you can point at and call "over there." Fairness is a great distance from the horizon on love's side—like the trickling light of the very early dawn is very far from the white-hot passion of the high noon sun.

Fairness is a good thing to begin upon, if you must, because it is, after all, not itself darkness; it even seems to have been created for this reason: if one cannot love, one can at least be fair. But it is not—oh, do not be tempted to think—even bright enough in that spot to tell where a stone landed if you tossed one casually from you. It isn't that bright. But you will make out your hand, so that you may see what it does. And that is a start.

But how is Good satisfied in that? Fairness demands its own rights; it is not selfless. It allows; it does not give. It begrudges; it does not delight. It is exacting; it is not generous. It is harsh; it is not merciful. It is mechanical; not gracious. It is mathematical; not beautiful. It is just; it is not love. Fairness measures all things in equal proportion; love gives all things without reserve.

Fairness cannot even be a virtue! The thing that calls you to meet the minimum requirements of the law, or of the ethics of personal relationships, is not a virtue. The thing that calls you to exceed the requirements of the law, or the demands of civil relation, is a virtue. The Decalogue, all morality, most personal grievances, and many of the world's commonest pet-peeves call for the fair, the right, the just from people. And that is good. Let it be.

But if all God wanted was for everything to be just just, then biological robots would have been the sure-bet inhabits of this Earth. Something is given, something of exact value is paid back; a deed done for another, and a deed precisely it's twin in return; an action, and a directly proportional reaction—these are the ways of gears and levers and physics, dull grays and metallic clanks, not lovers.

Above all things, be a lover. Give freely. Be unscrupulously merciful. Allow the beauty of people loving each other without claiming rights, without holding expectations, without demands, agendas, and manipulations—loving and moving and giving and deferring—remind you of dance. Let it remind you of art and other things robots cannot do. Let it remind you that there are greater things than to be merely lawful, to have merely your rights, to pursue merely wages.

If you see even the Bible tell you "Do what is right," remember that it goes on to say, "Above all, love." John said, "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Those who do not do what is right are not God’s children; nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters." Yes, do what is right, but do not stop there. God's children are found doing right, certainly. But they are found doing much more than that! Love always does what is better than merely right. It is at least right. If love is "not against the Law," and it "fulfills the Law," and it is "the greatest," then there can never be a time in which it is a wrong decision to do what is loving and gracious over what is fair and just.

But remember, when you are trying to love, to expect to find yourself attempting to make an alloy of love and fairness. It's easy to reason yourself into loving only those who love you in return. But that's a tepid, weak love, not in the pattern of God's unconditional love, which is a wild, fiery, potent thing. So Jesus said, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them."

But then, there are also times so momentous that to choose to do what is fair, rather than to do what is love, is to keep your friend, or enemy, or husband, or daughter, back on the line in the twilight beside yourself—a critical opportunity missed to pierce through the haze with the light and step forward with them into a new day. You think your nagging someone to do what is right—to do what is their just portion—or your demands for fair treatment and equal work will accomplish your goals? You are sadly mistaken. Fairness may be moral, but it doesn't inspire anyone to do anything. Oh, maybe on this occasion or that, something may get done out of resentment, guilt, or shame...

But is that what you want? Just what is fair and no more? Love fulfills the Law. The Law can't even do that. When voices shouting for fairness, justice, and rights only get enough to fill shallow pockets, love produces what is better than fair, better than just, and better than right! Tell me which is the "more excellent way"!

In order to fulfill the commonest law... we must rise into a loftier region altogether, a region that is above law, because it is spirit and life and makes the law.... The law comes to make us long for the needful grace—that is, for the divine condition, in which love is all, for God is Love.

(George MacDonald)

There is no fair in love.

"Love is a better 'standard of conduct,' because it is more comprehensive than the Law. Love will tell you what shouldn't be done, but even more so, it will tell you what should. It analyzes your motives and requires actual transformation, and it reflects the character and nature of God. It is at once both simple and deep: being one thing easily identifiable once you know it, and the one answer universally applicable to every question of action. There is nothing that is more practical, yet it is at the same time inexhaustibly rich, abstract, and profound. Every theologian, poet, and philosopher to ever live could waste themselves on fishing out its truths without successfully plumbing its depths, and every pragmatic man of simple action could find in it his final, universal principle of living and the ultimate how-to to every human interaction and question of morality.

"All the Law is summed up in this one thing: Love. Now that you are free from the Law and have the Spirit of God in you, it isn't important to spend your time analyzing your conduct for its compliance with a list of rules. It's not all about that. What is important is accepting the full weight of truth of God's love and letting it overflow out of yourself in every way that you relate to God, Humanity, and Creation."

Thanks Ron for the comment! I appreciate your bringing up the definition issue within the rather broad subject of morality—i.e. that God's "good" is very different from our own. I assure you I didn't forget it. ;)

I wasn't trying to make that differentiation here, though that is a very important issue, because I thought it to be implicit (and to keep the essay as brief as possible). In light of the conscience that we all bear (though with increasingly less motivating influence the more twisted an individual becomes), everyone has a sense of what "good" is—our vision is blurrier than God's, but we generally "get the picture." I am here contrasting the "evil" kind of man in the worst sense (whom I think all sane humanity would recognize given a decent showing, even if some may side with him) and the "good" kind of man in the best sense (whom all sane humanity would also recognize, even if some people might pervert or ignore it's interpretation). Implicit in that contrast is that the "good" kind of man of which I am speaking in the first paragraph—the "ideal" you might say—is the man who is made good by God (in the sense of justification) and is continuing to develop in good by God's definition (in the sense of sanctification). There can be no other kind of "best" man.

In the second paragraph, I discuss "the crowded middle," in which I purposely focus on simple morality. Obviously, I'm not saying there isn't a difference between "good" and "bad." Instead, without clarifying what definition I'm using for "good," I intended the reader to interpret it for themselves, because this paragraph applies to all definitions of "good." This is because it only addresses the general categories of people's actions, without attempting to be specific. So, generally, I expected the common meaning of "good" and "evil" to come to people's minds.

If the common criminal (or the more-or-less average person who commonly crosses the morally-questionable line) really cares about the way people perceive him, then he will to some degree "listen" to his conscience, if for no other reason than the preservation of his reputation, because he knows his conscience is similar to theirs—it tells him "This is too wrong, even for you" and that is precisely what others would think. So, he is kept from evil even worse still and its condemnation and we are kept from its presence and effect.

If the "decent" guy really cares about people's judgments of him, he won't want to do anything that jeopardizes his social standing. So, he wouldn't be likely to do any of the radical acts of goodness that goodness might compel him to do (because, let's face it: extreme goodness is usually radical even to people we consider "good folks"). His mother and father would think it's crazy. His co-workers would laugh at him and "talk." Many would question his motives or sanity. He wants to be like everyone else, and thereby win their approval. (Who didn't learned this in high school? It doesn't stop when you graduate.) Some of these people are Christians and some are not, but it doesn't seem to matter much to those who are, and it won't matter practically until they are willing to, as you said, "lay their lives down" and begin to develop in the way of Christ which is infinitely better morally (and in every other way).

So, both groups of people maintain a fairly close resemblance to one another (so much so that, compared to men of great evil, they are all considered rather normal). They stick pretty tight to the middle line—the "bleh." This is the pull of peer pressure in all society. In regard to Evil, society's pull is beneficial: we don't live in the presence of wickedness nearly as gross and prevalent as we would otherwise and the people who would do those unspeakable acts of wickedness don't, which, of course, is better for them as well. In regard to Good, society's pull is degenerative: hardly a soul pushes the frontlines of virtue, nearly everyone is content merely eating, drinking, and being merry, and scarcely can we find even a Christian who reminds us of Jesus. Furthermore, history has shown that morality within societies inevitably decays, which means that the baseline—the "normal" around which both the (subjectively) "slightly" bad and "slightly" good orbit—slinks gradually closer to the Evil side of the spectrum until the society's eventual collapse. This should all the more urge us to know God, to live loved and love in kind, to embody His goodness, His grace, and His liberty in increasingly radical, abnormal ways.

....I always appreciate a swift reply prompting me to clarify! Thank you!

[If you haven't already, read the original article, if you like.]