You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Matthew 5:43-44 (NIV)
When my children were younger, they would often reply to a parental request with, “that’s not fair!” My wife and I would typically respond with the words, “life is not always fair.” Our goal was not to jade their opinion of the world or to cast a cloud over life itself; rather we wanted them to understand that there are things beyond our control that seem very unfair.
Today many of us might feel a sense of unfairness in life. We are dealing with Covid-19, isolation, quarantine, social distancing, politics, and limited in-person football games.
Unfairness is part of the human condition. You can’t live on this earth for long without feeling like someone has treated you unfairly. Maybe it’s losing a job due to Covid-19. Perhaps it’s having to be isolated and quarantined. Maybe it’s not being able to participate as you would like in worship. Maybe it’s not being able to entertain friends and family at home. Maybe it is just frustration over those making the rules for us.
Many times unfairness can seem like a personal attack on us. You can choose to respond to the people who are making the rules by fighting against them and causing mayhem. That’s the easiest choice to make, no doubt about it.
But God gives us another option in his Word: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44 NIV).
God wants you to respond in love. If you respond to mistreatment with love, you’ll keep the other person from controlling you. You can’t control the virus or the rules imposed regarding the epidemic, but you can control your response.
We must work for justice in the world without retaliating. The Bible commands us to “be fair-minded and just. Do what is right!” (Jeremiah 22:3 NLT).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great example of this by overcoming evil through the power of following Jesus’ example of love.
That’s our calling as followers of Jesus. Unfairness and injustice may be part of the human condition, but we must not feed into it. Instead, God calls us to respond in love.
Written By: Jim Love