The Myths of Fairness and Equality

Fairness and equality are hot topics. People are very worried about things being fair and things being equal. After all, we were all created equal before God. If you don't believe in God, well, it says so right in the constitution! Or if you don't believe in the constitution, maybe you just believe we are all created equal because it sounds nice. Whatever your reason, it seems very difficult to argue against the concepts of making things fair and equal. Yet, I will do just that!

Unfortunately, there are distinct and prevailing misconceptions about fairness and equality. The most striking of these misconceptions being that the world, whether it is or not, should be fair and equal. We should do everything we can to ensure that we are fair, that we treat everyone equally, and that anything that isn't fair or equal about the world should be changed until it is.

This is actually entirely wrong. It is wrong from its conception and any attempts at creating this fair and equal perfect world are doomed from their beginnings.

The reality of it is that the world itself is unfair and unequal from its very foundation. Attempts at forcing the world to become fair and equal will inevitably end up with a situation in which things are still unfair and unequal, but just even worse. You cannot force equality into an unequal world without destroying some part of it as you cannot force a square peg into a circular hole without doing damage to one part of the other.

Fairness 

We'll start with fairness. Why is the world unfair?

Whether you have a Christian worldview or materialist/naturalist worldview, the innate unfairness of the world should be clearly obvious. Christians should be more embarrassed than materialists at thinking that the world should be fair.

If the world were fair, we should all go to hell.

What, exactly, is fair about the only perfect and sinless person to ever walk the face of the earth being humiliated, tortured, and executed for our sins? What exactly is fair about that person who was executed in our place literally being God Himself? When someone is convicted of a crime, we cannot offer ourselves up to go to prison in their place. When an individual is guilty, the fair consequence is that the individual in question is the one who is punished. That John 3:16 is even a verse in the bible is in its very nature unfair. Nothing about grace is fair, God's love is not fair. The basis of our beliefs are not rooted in fairness, they're rooted in love. Love, if you'll recall from the Bible, does not keep score. Love is unfair.

Unfairness is not "bad". It simply is the state of the results of various actions being different than we would expect them to be, for whatever reasons we expect such different results. It is often bad and is used almost exclusively to illustrate things that are bad, but unfairness itself is simply a descriptive term. If I am assaulted, but I forgive that person and do not press charges, that is actually unfair. He should properly face judgement and ultimately justice for his initial unfair treatment of me, but I choose to forgo seeking justice and let this man go free. This is unfairness. People, in fact, often see situations like this and get upset at this, due to its unfairness. I surely should have pressed charges, as I have done nothing wrong, and he has! The unfairness here affects only me, but I have allowed it to intentionally, for whatever reasons. Perhaps mercy, perhaps we settled things civilly following the assault, but for whatever my reasons, I have created and accept a situation that unfairly benefits the man who assaulted me.

A Christian perspective should understand that the world is not fair and cannot be. Christians aren't called to spread fairness, they're called to spread the word of God's love - which, you'll recall, is innately unfair. If the very basis of your beliefs are rooted in something that is distinctly and unarguably the opposite of fair, it should be obvious that attempting to change the world to make it fair would be counter-intuitive - and also not possible.

It's a little more complicated for the naturalist or humanist, but it is still clear.

You believe that we are all here more or less due to random natural forces, our existence merely a cosmic accident. This would not necessarily imply fairness or unfairness from its basis, but let's consider a couple of things.

Impersonal natural forces cannot be fair or unfair, they simply are. They do not pass judgements or intentionally create situations. Ignoring that we would have no concept of unfairness if there wasn't some sort of basis for the understanding of fairness, we simply need to look at nature and the natural order of things and compare them to what would be considered fair and ask ourselves if these things that happen naturally are fair.

Children dying of cancer? A flood destroying thousands of people's homes? Your cat sneezed in your face?

A quick glance around should reveal that, naturally, life is unfair. You might argue then that you're fighting to attempt to make it fair, because you believe it should be, for whatever your reasons. Well, I went over this: if the world is unfair from its very foundation, we cannot force it to be fair. We fight child cancer, we work to prevent as much damage from natural disasters as we can, we research medicine, we donate time, money, effort, and resources to giving aid to those who are in less favorable positions in life as we are, but does this make the world fair?

It should be clear that we cannot change the natural state of the world from unfairness into fairness. We cannot make the world fair. We can work towards attempting to alleviate the suffering of the ones to whom life has been particularly unfair, but an actualized goal of absolute fairness is innately impossible. If the standard of the operation of the world is unfairness, we as mere humans cannot combat this. We can barely ensure that our own lives are fair, let alone the entire world.

Am I saying it's wrong or futile to fight cancer and provide aid to people in peril? Obviously not, since these are the things God has called us to do. It's just that I understand the end goal is not fairness, but the unfairness of God's love and forgiveness through Jesus' sacrifice for us. We are called to help those who are in pretty unfair situations not to try and make it fair, but to spread the good news - that there is a free gift of salvation for those who would accept it. Nothing about alleviating homelessness is going to make the world fair, but without God as an unchanging standard of what is right and what is wrong, naturalists are without an actual understanding for the reasons they feel compelled to help others. They tend to then believe that they are doing so in the name of making the world more fair.

Which is, I'll repeat, impossible.

You must ask yourself: why do you really believe you're working toward making the world more fair? Because you believe it's actually something that's possible to achieve? Or because there is something inside of you - you might be compelled to call it your conscious - calling you to help the least of these - the homeless, sick, and hungry?

An understanding that the world is naturally unfair is easy to accept. That making it fair is impossible, is a much harder truth to swallow. We are taught to believe that the world should be fair, and therefore that it is somehow a workable goal. The reality is that the world isn't fair, and it shouldn't be fair. We learn from hardships, we build relationships through trials, and hopefully those who are lost would find God in their sorrow. The unfairness of the world is perfectly explained through the Christian truth - that this world is broken, we are fallen because of sin, and through our suffering we learn the truth. A naturalist worldview paints the unfairness of this life as merely chaos - unexplainable suffering that happens for no particular reason. Naturalists believe they can fight this lack of fairness without realizing that it's futile - the very basic foundation of the world is rooted in unfairness.

Equality

So what about equality? Isn't equality basically fairness?

No. Not really. This is another problem, another misconception - fairness and equality are conflated as being synonyms, but they are different words with different meanings.

Fairness, as we've gone into, would be that innocent children with their whole lives ahead of them wouldn't get cancer, that we could work towards getting a good job and starting our family without having to worry about it all being taken away from us in 30 seconds by a tornado, that everyone would have enough food and have a place to sleep when it's raining. Fairness basically is that we are rewarded for our work and punished for our crimes without uncontrollable variables - be them someone else's bad behavior or something natural and entirely unavoidable. Fairness is that someone who really didn't do anything wrong to deserve to starve to death wouldn't.

Equality is the concept that we are all equal, or that we should be equal, and that we should therefore be treated equally and all be held to the same standards. It is by these reasons that pure equality can actually be unfair in itself, which makes it odd that people would so confuse the two as the same.

The world is also innately unequal. Inequality is the natural state of the world and attempting to change that is impossible and futile.

While certain kinds of equality are present in the Christian worldview - for example, the punishment for sinning against a perfect being is the same for every sin - in the same breath, we see inequality. The earthly consequences of different sins are different. We incorrectly believe that "all sin is equal," due to the former reason - all sin is punished the same way. But all sin is not equal - the bible explicitly states that certain sins have different consequences on this earth. This should be obvious - we often see arguments about how it could possibly be "fair" (there it is again) that murdering 50 children is somehow just as bad as lying about your friend looking good in that awful outfit. Well, it's not. Lying about whether or not your friend looks like a sideshow in a circus isn't equal to murdering fifty children - they have different consequences on this earth. This should be obvious. Do we go to prison for white lies? Do we go to prison for murder? Hopefully you know the answer to this one.

In the same way, our souls will be hurt more by the obviously worse transgression of stealing the lives of innocent children in an act of pure sadistic violence than by a small lie you told because you didn't want to hurt your friend's feelings. We suffer greater guilt for particularly nasty sins specifically because some sins are greater than others. Excruciatingly nasty sins have the added consequence of possibly hardening our hearts against God for the rest of our lives - if you are the kind of person who could murder someone let alone 50 children, you have a much harder road to travel to find your humanity within yourself than if you just took some of your friend's french fries while he wasn't looking.

This is of course not the only inequality found in the bible. As much as we are taught otherwise, men and women are not equal. The roles of a husband and wife are not equal. However, contrary to worldly belief, the roles of the husband are arguably more difficult than the wife's. We all know that "wives are to submit to their husbands," but they are curiously not called to literally die for them, as husbands are to their wives. Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Well, He died for the church.

And, just like before, we still see equality and inequality in the same breath - Christ died for everyone. All people are able to accept the free gift of salvation through Jesus' sacrifice. Just as before, that doesn't mean that all people are actually equal. However, this follows the same pattern - as we can see, the eternal reality is equal while the worldly reality is unequal. Christian truth explicitly and specifically clarifies multiple times that this world is unequal.

So what about the naturalist? Does a naturalist worldview produce an equal society, or does it, like fairness, simply attempt to legislate the unrealistic and futile goal of equality in a naturally unequal world?

As before, without a standard of what equal means, there is no argument to truly be made about whether or not the world is equal. Natural, impersonal forces cannot be equal or unequal. We can only look at the state of the nature world and compare it to our basis of what equal would be.

This is particularly a hot button issue right now - as we see demonstrably, different demographics of people produce different results on the same kinds of variables. We see that women on average are not as physically strong as men and we see that Asians outperform every other race in test scores and education. On individual levels, we see that some people are better at some things than others - some people are adept artists, some people can't cook worth a squat. If the world were equal - if we were all equal, wouldn't all of these different people and different types of people produce the same results?

We can see, demonstrably, that they do not. Therefore, we are not all equal.

A particular problem this statement creates is the incorrect assumption that this therefore means some people are better than others. Inequality is seen as synonymous with "one is better than another." This is another false definition - there is nothing about two things being unequal that makes one better than another. Things being unequal merely means that they have different attributes - there is nothing to be said about the quality of these differences. Four is not equal to five. Is five better than four? Depends on if we're talking about number of delicious candies or number of times you were stabbed in the face. Apples are not equal to oranges - this doesn't mean one is better than another. In the same way, saying that men and women are not equal does not mean one is better than another. In the same way that fairness is simply a description, equality is a description. What has happened is this false parallel has been taught, through some means or another, that inequality is in its nature wrong - it is a problem that must be fixed. There are some inequalities that are bad, but the basic concept of something being unequal is not automatically bad.

The reality is that man-made inequality can be bad, while natural inequality is not. Natural inequality cannot "be bad," it simply is. It also cannot be changed - it is futile to attempt to legislate a world in which men and women are equal, because they are observably and demonstrably not equal. This naturally occurring inequality has been conflated as a wrong that must be righted, due to our understanding of man-made inequality, which can sometimes be bad.

It is in this very understanding that we see where attempting to force unequal things to be treated equally actually creates an unfair situation. If on average men are statistically stronger than on average women, then legislating a situation in which women and men were both expected to perform equally in categories relating to strength, what you are actually doing is forcing women who are naturally not equipped to perform these same functions into an explicitly worse position than the men. While some women may be strong enough to perform this function - and maybe some men may not be strong enough and be as disadvantaged as the women - the reality is that you have created an unfair situation for the women in this situation due to a forced declaration of an idea of "equality" that does not exist.

This applies fully down to the very basic individual reality. If you have two people who have different abilities, it would not only be unfair to expect both of them to perform the same functions equally well, but it would be, bluntly, stupid. It is stupid to take two unique individual people and expect that they will both produce the same results in all categories. Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses - and treating these people unequally is the most reasonable approach.

When we learn how to teach, we learn that different people have different learning styles. Some people learn better through seeing, some learn better through doing. We recognized this within the school systems and realized that people were appearing to do poorly were actually just struggling with learning in ways that they as individuals were not attuned for. When we teach people in different ways, we try to reach as many different people and their different learning styles.

This is an example of inequality actually producing fairer results. Why is it that we can recognize situations in which inequality is actually better than attempting to treat unique people all the same, and yet turn around and declare that inequality is naturally bad?

If I have twenty kids and twenty bags of peanuts, but one kid is allergic to peanuts, it's is an example of unequal treatment for me to get this kid something he won't die from eating. However, it would be unfair - and wildly irresponsible - to attempt to legislate equality and give him peanuts because I gave everyone else peanuts.

Sure, some equality is good. For example, all people everywhere being able to accept the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ is good. If you and your coworker both work 8 hours at the same job and produce the same results, you should get paid the same. If you and your coworker both work 8 hours but he keeps leaving the room and does half the work as you, it is equal for you both to be paid the same, but it is unfair. See the difference?

This false understanding of equality being naturally good is actually hazardous to our society. The natural state of the world is that it is unequal, and there is nothing wrong about that - legislating equality actually creates a worse situation for society. Some people may find an advantage from it - like your lazy coworker, but equal treatment for all people in all aspects ignores the incredibly obvious reality that we are not equal and should not be treated equally all the time.

Equality is not naturally good and treating people unequally actually tends to produce better results. "Inequality" has been misidentified as an innately negative thing, but as we can see, it is illogical and unreasonable to treat unique and individual people as if they are all the same. While man-made inequality can be bad, this is actually a misnomer - it is not that we are treating different people unequally, it is that we are treating some people as better or more important than other people. Yes, this is something that can fall under the category of "unequal," but it is not the unequal attributes of those people themselves that are causing the problem. The problem stems from a "x is better than y" attitude, not the naturally existing inequality of the people involved.

I'm not attempting to argue that treating some people worse than others is okay. This again is a conflation of the realities of equality with "goodness" or "badness." We should not refer to poorer treatment of people who are different than others as "inequality" as this creates the false idea that inequality is bad. What happened is we took "treating people badly based on their attributes" and called it "unequal treatment." Again, it is "unequal" from a very basic understanding, but it is not bad due to it being unequal. It's bad because you are treating people poorly based on arbitrary factors, or we can narrow it down even more and say it's bad because you are treating people poorly. The inequality part is simply part of the equation, but it doesn't become bad until you add in the "poor treatment" part.

It is unequal to punch someone because of their skin color and not punch someone else because of their skin color. The problem is that you don't find any goodness or badness within the "unequal" aspect of this situation. The problem lies explicitly in the kind of treatment, i.e., the punching, and the fact that the punching is bad paired with the fact that you're only doing it to people of a certain attribute. This is obviously wrong. It is unequal treatment, but it being unequal treatment isn't what makes it wrong - the fact that it is explicitly worse treatment due to arbitrary judgements is what is bad.

If someone expects their 16 year old son to clean up his room, but don't expect their infant child to clean up his own room, this is also unequal treatment. What is distinctly missing is that there is no goodness or badness involved. Besides, wouldn't it be wrong - or at least stupid - to expect someone who poops their pants to clean their own room?

The intent behind the unequal treatment is important, as well at the type of treatment. Nothing is so straightforward that we could really take "inequality" and classify it all as badness. This is a childish and simplistic view of the world. Whether or not something is equal should not be the qualifier that we are using. We should be looking at the morality behind the inequality, and the reality of existing inequality. Is it wrong to treat a person worse than another person for no reason other than their physical attributes? Yes, obviously so. Is it wrong to treat a distinctly and demonstrably unique person differently than another based on the realities of their differences in constructive and beneficial ways? No, obviously not. Both of these things are examples of "inequality," and it is for this reason that we must understand the reality of the concept of "equal" is not synonymous with "bad".

To Conclude:

The world is innately unfair and unequal. It is so through a Christian worldview and it is so demonstrably by observing the world around us. To deny this is folly. To attempt to alter the very foundation of this is also folly. To work around it and with it is not simply the best choice, but our only choice, as any attempts to do otherwise will ultimately fail due to the unchangeable reality that these factors exist as they do. It is possible to accept that things are unfair and work to help those treated unfairly without adhering to a utopian feverdream of a world that operates in complete fairness. It's unworkable, the very laws of existence itself will not allow it. Similarly, natural inequality is simply part of life and understanding and respecting it is the only way forward. Humanity-induced inequality is not natural inequality, and is typically morally wrong, but not always. Equality and fairness interact on certain levels, but not all. The layman's understanding of these terms has been misunderstood and we would all do well to recognize where we have incorrectly identified these phenomenons.