If The World Seems Unfair, Then Make It Fairer

The world is unjust and unfair. It can be indifferent and uncaring and even cruel. I’m sure we have all asked at one point or another how an All Loving and All Powerful God can witness all of this evil and suffering and seemingly do nothing about it. Without minimizing the suffering of others or attempting to appear glib or flippant, I submit that God is doing something about it. First, the Atonement of Jesus Christ will heal all wounds, rectify all misunderstandings, ameliorate every injustice, sustain each and every one of us through every hardship. And while this marvelous power is eminently practical in helping us day by day and hour by hour, it often goes overlooked or underappreciated and in general it can be difficult to quantify or point out. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is the most important and most effective thing God has done to combat evil and injustice in the world, but there is more that God has done. He has sent us. He has blessed each of us with a divine spark that can discern between good and evil, right and wrong. He sent each of us to come to this Earth to learn to become like Him, and He empowered each of us with the intelligence and the drive to seek out justice and fairness in all that we do. It would not bother us so much to see injustice in the world if we did not believe deep in our core that there should be a better, a more just way for the world to be. The fact that it is not as just as we would like it to be may ultimately depend to a large degree on God’s action or inaction, but the degree to which it depends on our own action or inaction is not negligible. If we have the wisdom to recognize injustice and evil in the world, then we also have the responsibility to do what we can to correct that injustice and to root out that evil. We can argue that others have been given five talents and we’ve been given only one. We can argue that we’ll do our part when the billionaires and the CEOs and the Presidents and Kings start doing their part. We can say that God is a hard man, reaping where He has not sown, and gathering where He has not strawed. Or we can take our one talent, small and ineffectual though it may seem, and we can do what we can to make the world a better place. Our efforts may seem small and insignificant, but the Lord has a way of amplifying and magnifying our efforts in ways that we can’t begin to recognize. There’s a common saying that the easiest way for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. If the world seems unfair, then make it fairer. If the world seems evil, then make it better. God is not blind to the suffering. He is the one pointing it out to us, and not just to make us feel miserable but so that we’ll be motivated to get out there and help take away the pain. When we are afraid to use our small talent to help make the world less unjust, then we can’t complain also that God is sitting by and doing nothing. He has chosen us as His representatives, as His hands and his feet and His voice and every effort we make to improve the world and make it fairer and more just and more peaceful will ripple out and come back to us a hundredfold. For, when we have the courage to fight evil with goodness, cruelty with kindness, suffering with patience and compassion, then others will see our good works and maybe shake off some of the fear and lethargy that’s been holding them back.