Sweet justice

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.  Jonah 1:1-3

10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.  Jonah 3:10

1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?” 5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 6 Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 10 And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” Jonah 4:1-10

Jonah and God had different understandings of what justice was.  When God told Jonah to warn Ninevah, Jonah ran away.  It's not until we read chapter 4 that we understand why Jonah ran.  The reason was he felt Ninevah deserved destruction and knew if they repented God would not destroy them.  So Jonah wanted to prevent Ninevah from receiving any warning.  To Jonah, Ninevah's destruction would be justice.  God clearly disagreed or He would have leveled the city despite their repentance.

What is justice?  If you think you know what it is how did you come to that conclusion?

I am going to make one definitive absolute statement.  God is just.  There is nothing that can take away from his "justness" nor is there anything that can add to it.  Consider what God tells Moses in Exodus 33:18-19.  Moses asks God, "Please show me your glory." (vs 18)  God's response is "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." (vs 19)  What this means is that God can do whatever He wants to do.  He does not answer to anyone and there is no one He is accountable to.  He will be gracious to whomever He wants to and He will show mercy to whomever He wants to.  This means He will also decline mercy to whomever He wants to.  And in all of this God is just.  For Him there is no gradient of justice.  There is no sort-of just or injustice.  Anything He does or decrees is just.

So often people tell me, "If God does that then He's not just."  That's a false statement regardless of what the person was referring to.  If God does that then He's absolutely just regardless of what that is.  This is because God is just.  It is only because of Him that we have any understanding of what justice is.

It was this very concept that lead C.S. Lewis to become a Christian.  Here is what Lewis says in his book Mere Christianity:

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

What Lewis is saying is that if you have any sense of injustice in the world it is because there is a God who is just.  We only understand injustice because we have justice to compare it to.  So you can rightly say the world is an unjust place but one thing you cannot do is say God is not just for He is the only one who actually is just.