There is a lot of talk nowadays about working to balance the scales to create equality for people for whom the benefits of this life are unfairly skewed. This is a laudable goal yet impossible to achieve. Here’s why.
Inequality is evident everywhere. We grow to different heights and weights. We have different color eyes and hair. We have different levels of the many different types of intelligences. We have varying levels of the different personality traits and character traits. I could go on forever.
Our abilities are dramatically unequal. Some of us are naturally gifted in physical ability, for example. While others of us are awkward and clumsy, but gifted at something entirely different like logistics or communication. Some of us were blessed to be born into families that adored us while others of us suffered at the hands of people who were abusive when we were too little and too vulnerable to prevent it. Families are unequal. The love that we’ve been given is unequal. The amount of happiness we’ve each had is unequal. We’ve all had unequal and unfair experiences, all of which are on different places on the grand scale of fairness.
Trying to create equality is a losing battle. So what’s the answer?
We are not equal because we were not created to be equal. Our lives are intentionally and purposefully unique. This is true about our DNA, our fingerprints, the experiences of our lives, the combination of our natural talents, personality, character traits, and every other aspect of our being. Inequality is inherent in our journey through this life.
The one place where we can find equality is in our value and worth in the eyes of our Creator, the one true God. When we know our true value, really absorb that, and embrace that reality, we experience the only equality that matters. Trying to force equality in any other area is to interfere with God’s individual, special purpose that was perfectly matched to us. Let’s joyfully embrace our unique (and unequal) selves and celebrate one another and our unequal differences.
I spent a lot of years trying to level the playing field because I thought that life had dealt me a bad hand. Both of my parents left when I was a little girl. I was raised by people who were abusive and dysfunctional. But what I know now is that I learned things as a result of those disadvantages that prepared me for my purpose and the life assignments involved in it. What I used to think was terribly unfair, I now embrace with gratitude. I hope to encourage you to embrace your disadvantages and mine the lessons from them and use them to your advantage.
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