Australian Values I: A 'Fair Go' - Does God give us a 'fair go'?

Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.
Chief Seattle, Treaty Oration, 1854 ¹

There are many reasons why the majority of Australia rejects Christianity, but I wonder if one of those reasons might be Australia's 'fair go' ethic. The concept of a 'fair go' is one of the most important cultural values in Australia - it's effectively our unofficial national religion (aside from sport). Kevin Rudd made a big thing of it in his recent speeches and as a plank of Labor policy for his 'Alternate Vision for Australia, John Howard included fairness in his proposed preamble to the Constitution in 1999 ², it's a big reason why people object to the treatment of David Hicks and a survey of Australian values taken last year showed a "fair go" as one of our top national values, well ahead of mateship. ³

But does God give a fair go?

I wonder if some indigenous Australians might read that speech by a native American chief and wonder the same thing he did - if God is real, does he hate us? Why didn't he reveal himself to us and why has he allowed others to conquer us? Or perhaps, like many people, they might think that the fact that he did not reveal himself to them personally shows that he does not exist. But the issue is far bigger than that - the doctrine of predestination - God's choice about who will be his people and in his kingdom - seems completely contrary to the Australian notion of a fair go.

Predestination is not a 'fair go'

As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
...
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to its moulder, “Why have you made me like this?”
(Rom. 9:13-15, 19-20, ESV)

God chooses his people. To us, the act of becoming a Christian looks as though we are choosing God, but the Biblical picture is that God is in control of the whole process and it is only those who God chooses who can be his people ⁴. This is true throughout the Bible:

• God chooses Abram and makes a covenant with him, that Abraham (as God calls him) will be the father of a great nation


• The promise is reiterated with Jacob (Israel);


• and with the nation of Israel under Moses


• and with David, when he is king over Israel;


• even after Israel is conquered and effectively destroyed by the Assyrian and Babylonian empire, God announces through the prophets his intention to keep this promise into the future.

Under Jesus, the concept of a nation for God continues - while God's people was a physical nation/bloodline in the Old Testament (the nation of Israel), the concept of Israel is redefined in the New Testament as a spiritual kingdom. God still keeps his promises to his people, but the nature of 'his people' is changed: gentiles (non-Jews) are 'grafted in' and God's people - Israel - means those who follow him, not those who are merely part of a particular bloodline. This is the crux of the apostle Paul's argument in Romans 9-11, stemming from his statement, quoted above, that it is all about God's choice.

To our society, this statement looks like the ultimate unfairness: in a question of eternal life and death, it all comes down to God's choice about who lives and who doesn't. A 'fair go' is all about being treated equally and given a chance, regardless of who we are; it's about being treated appropriately based on our actions, not just because of who we are or where we've come from.

Seeing predestination as unfair is not just an Australian thing - the passage above pre-empts the question and deals with it : But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to its moulder, “Why have you made me like this?”. In this passage, complaining about God's unfairness is a category mistake - God is God and we are not, and part of being God means that he can make these decision and that's that; it's his right, his prerogative - it's part of the nature of being God to be able to do it.

This answer isn't really very satisfying - even as Christians we can recognise that it is true, but it still leaves us wondering about the way that God works.

God's 'fair go'

The notion of a 'fair go' has two elements:

1. We want people to do right by us and give us a chance


2. We want consequences appropriate to actions: hard work should be rewarded and evil should be punished

God wants a fair go too

...but the world has not treated him as he deserves:

"None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one."
Romans 9:10-11 (ESV)

No-one gives God a 'fair go'. Everyone, in some way, desires to reject God and do their own thing. This is the nature of individualism, but the Bible depicts it as sin - disobedience to God and the desire to make ourselves God over our own lives. Because God is God he sets the rules and the standards - it's not our right to simply ignore them or to claim that they are unfair. This in itself seems unfair to the Australian ethos, but that is the nature of God. In fact, the very attitude that sees God as an unfair, despotic ruler is itself born of sin - the desire to be rid of God.

God loves justice

There is plenty of evil in this world. We all see it every day: atrocities committed in war, destruction of the environment, terrorism, unfair dealings at work, rip-off scams - the denial of a 'fair go'. Australians want a fair go and we want justice - we want people to treat us fairly, and we want them to get their just desserts when they don't treat us fairly.

God, too, loves justice. He has a plan to deal with all the injustice in the world. All are destined to die and then face judgement, unless God brings an end to this world and his justice along with it before then. The problem is, because of point 1, we actually require mercy. We desire justice in our dealings with other people, but we forget that God demands justice in our unfair dealings against him.

God gives a fair go

This is the message of Christianity: we have done wrong by God and should be on the receiving end of his judgement, meaning death. But God in his great mercy sent Christ to take the punishment in our place. God still deals justly - our harsh treatment of Him is still punished, but the punishment doesn't have to be on us - Christ has taken the punishment for us, we only have to accept that. God will forgive all the wrong that has been done against him, but it requires a decision to stop denying God his fair go and to start doing right by him, in other words it takes whole-hearted devotion to Him to secure it. This is what it means to believe in or have faith in God.

And God does give everyone a 'fair go' in salvation:

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 (ESV)

Basically, God could bring an end to history and judge the world at any time, but waits: he is patient and waits to give all a chance to repent and be forgiven. And that's a 'fair go' in anyone's language - everyone gets a chance.

Incidentally, the 'fair go' notion that hard work should be rewarded is ruled out:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)

Because God initiates the action to forgive us and deal with our rebellion against him, our hard work doesn't get rewarded, at least not in terms of salvation - there may be other rewards for hard work, but it's not what reconciles you to God. But then, Australians loves a free lunch.

Is God arbitrary?

"As one judge said to another: 'Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.' "
William Burroughs, The Naked Lunch

God is just, but the Bible never gives an answer about how God chooses some for salvation - even in the Romans passage above the question is left hanging - it happens that way because God says it does. This sounds awfully like God choosing arbitrarily between people. We don't have an answer for this - we are never exposed to the inner workings of God's mind on this issue.

Conclusion

I started this post thinking about God's seeming arbitrariness and how that might be a barrier to Christianity for Australians, but working through what a 'fair go' means, there is much in God's nature that should be attractive to Australians.

• God's decision to choose some and not others for salvation is totally alien to the Australian notion of fairness. This will really grate in a society that values a 'fair go' so highly.


• There is good news in the Bible for our society - news that is totally in line with a 'fair go'. God loves a fair go; God loves justice and he will make sure that people get their just desserts. But everyone needs to rely on God's mercy to overcome that justice.
  Fortunately, this is not hard to do.
  
  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
  John 3:36


• While God chooses some but not others, this is not an excuse to not be a Christian. We have no way of knowing for sure (this side of eternity, anyway) what God's choice is, so no-one can say: "Well, I won't become a Christian because God didn't choose me". Although such a statement seems likely to be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

---

This was the first in a series on Australian values. Next up in this series: Christian living and a 'fair go'.

---

Notes:

1. Chief Seattle apparently converted to Christianity (Roman Catholicism) in 1848, about six years before that speech was given. However, I find the view expressed in the speech quite odd for a Christian.


2. A quick search of the official www.pm.gov.au website shows that he talks about fairness and a fair go more than mateship, but that none of them have been as prominent in his speech in recent years as they were around 1999-2000.


3. I found valuesaustralia.com an amusing, alternate take on Australian values.


4. Predestination is a hotly debated doctrine in Christianity. I'm only dealing with it here according to the way it is presented in the Bible, particularly in Romans. As for how God chooses but we accept or suddenly believe in God (or whatever other verb you like here) - I think it works that from a spiritual perspective God chooses, but from an earhly perspective we choose/believe. They are two views or persepectives on the same act and they are both true ways of describing the process of becoming a Christian, but that you wouldn't be going through that process if God didn't choose you. This shouldn't be a reason to choose not to be a Christian or a cause for worry ("what if I'm not chosen?"). We can't know God's mind on who is or isn't chosen, so it shouldn't be a factor in our actions.