It's not fair.

Once when I was about seven years old I was upset about something, who knows what now, but I believed that I had been treated unfairly by my family. I decided to run away to teach them a lesson. I went into a cellar at the side of our house that could only be reached from outside and I waited. I cried and felt sorry for myself. I imagined that I would have my revenge when my family discovered I was gone and that it was all their fault. I cried some more and no one came or noticed that I was gone. Some time passed that felt like a long time to a child. I realized that I was bored and would have to come out of hiding. I stopped crying and waited until my eyes stopped being puffy, at this point if anyone noticed I had been crying it would be embarrassing. I came out and found nothing changed around me, no one knew I was ever missing.

I told this story to Pedro in a one-on-one conversation one Sunday. I started it with laughter and disclaimers about how insignificant my experience of “unfairness” is. Pedro listened. He didn’t roll his eyes or belittle my story as I feared I might deserve. He just said that he saw how sensitive I was and that I should be glad and proud to have these feelings because they are what make us human.

It turns out it’s not only humans that react to situations they believe to be unfair. Researchers have found that dogs and monkeys will stop doing tricks if they witness that other animals are getting better treats for the same actions. That’s how basic the concept of fairness is.

Children first learning about fairness often misuse the expression, “it’s not fair!” They learn early on that fairness is an important principle that adults take seriously. Children will say it’s not fair when they really mean that they don’t like what is going on. Unfairness might be a good argument to employ to get a reversal of a decision that goes against their preferences, so they use it liberally and hope it will work.

As we become older and wiser we learn to evaluate situations with a little distance. We see that there is a difference between what we would most like to have happen and what is fair. We become objective, or do a little better at it, at least.

So how do we, as a faith community committed to promoting justice in the world, evaluate what is just and fair? The world is complicated and there are many conflicting opinions about what is fair.

For myself I will try to hear the humanity in other’s stories, as Pedro did for me. I will ask if the same rewards are given for similar jobs, even animals know that this is fair. And I will consider if a plea for fairness is about greed or about dignity, we are no longer children and we can tell the difference.