Is God unjust? Many people feel that God fails to live up to basic standards of justice and fairness. This, they argue, is evident from the fact that bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Why they ask, would a perfectly good God permit such things?
In response, Christian scholars point out that this world is not all there is. The Bible states that in the life after death, every injustice will be rectified and everyone will be rewarded according to their deeds. (Revelations 22:12, Romans 2:6, Psalm 37:7) In addition, our sense of justice is flawed. We have been influenced by our upbringing, culture, and limited knowledge so that we all have different ideas of what is just or unjust.
Lastly, we often don't realize all the different consequences that a single act may produce in the future. It's entirely possible that one unjust act could produce far more good at a later point in time. The Christian scientist and philosopher Dr. Kirk Durston makes this point.
...we see that the complexity of billions of interacting causal chains stretching to the end of time, each including millions of individual events, makes it impossible for us to be in a position to judge God on what He permits in this world. All we can do is act on the basis of what we could reasonably be expected to know, taking moral responsibility for our own decisions.
Learn More
Short Blog: "There Is No Absolute Truth!"
Reference
Kirk Durston, “Why We Have No Idea What God Should Allow,” Quest, July 30, 2019, https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/ignorance.
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