Is God Fair?

In a conversation with Amy on March 31, 2026, I learned about a situation that occurred with friends of ours from church. Jehovah's Witnesses had visited them, sparking a discussion with their nine-year-old daughter about people of different faiths. While discussing the differences in beliefs, it was clear that she had begun to process what it means to die without knowing Jesus. A major objection she raised related to her perception of how “unfair it was that God gave Adam and Eve free will, knowing they would sin and cause people to not be with Him for eternity.” This question consumed her thoughts for many days after.

What do we do when a child asks us a theological question too deep for the childhood VBS felt-board answers we were given in the late 1900s?

The responses to her questions and concerns betrayed something true for many Christians: we understand God minimally because we spend minimal time and effort searching for Him (Jer 29:13 NIV).

In Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel, the authors point out that “there is a prior question to our questions, one percolating beneath the surface… The prior question has to do with the nature of happiness.”^[1] Looking at the problem of evil—which is at the core of this little girl’s questions—I would offer that the root of her concern wasn’t actually questioning the character or intelligence of God, but of why spending eternity in heaven apart from her loved ones was even allowed to be an option. This brought her immense sadness, which she experienced as pain and fear. Similarly, the adults in her world were reminded of the discomfort associated with the despair and loss over the rejection of God by some in our lives. 

Why would God subject Himself to rejection like that? Or to phrase it in the words of a nine-year-old, “Why would God create Adam and Eve if he knew they were going to sin [and ruin it for everyone else]? 

Why did God do it? He could have easily created humanity to choose Him. But He didn’t. Why not? 

Echoing Augustine^[2], Norman Geisler argued that God wanted us to be free. In order to be truly free requires the ability to choose.^[3] In other words, God could have created Adam and Eve in such a way that they would have never chosen sin, but they would have never known what it was to choose good, either.^[4] Nor would we.

God created Adam and Eve with the ability to choose good or to choose evil and placed them in a garden of perfection with direct access to Himself (Genesis 2). The Bible tells how the serpent came to Adam and Eve, coercing them into choosing evil (Genesis 3; 1 Cor 11:3). A debt was incurred by humanity, greater than our ability to repay. 

In the context of God’s perfection, humans rebelled against God.

Anselm of Canterbury pointed out that only God can repay God and only man owes God something. God created man; there's nothing we can pay Him that he doesn't already own. To make things right, repayment must be made by a man who can make such a payment, i.e., a man who is Divine and has never sinned.^[5] There were none. Until Jesus.

God created humanity in His image and “gave them a quality of relationship with him that no other creature has.”^[6] After that image was broken with the introduction of sin, God came, Himself, in the person of Jesus to exercise free will on humanity’s behalf. 

In the context of our rebellion, Jesus chose perfect obedience to God. 

The Bible says God then gave the results of Jesus’s actions to humanity, paying the debt that was owed because of humanity's sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). The rejection of Jesus’s actions on behalf of all creation results in separation from God and everyone we love—a separation that continues for eternity.^[7] This is where we typically begin to notice the lack of fairness in the relationship.

Responding to the little girl’s questions about God’s fairness, we were tempted to assuage her emotions—and ours!—with watered-down reinterpretations of Christian doctrine, not unlike the fictional story of Otto and his unrepentant encounter with God’s fiery judgement.^[8] Timothy George reminds us of who has been treated unfairly in the relationship between God and humanity.^[9] With God, however, the issue of fairness is vastly overwhelmed by the depth and intensity of His love for His creation.

But that's a bit much for a nine-year-old's mind to comprehend when all they can see is their loved ones won't be with them in heaven because they don't believe in Jesus. That feeling in her little heart is a reflection of the love of God for the same people she's now afraid she will lose (2 Peter 3:9).

Is God fair? To a nine-year-old little girl, it doesn't seem that He is. For some reason, people lived in a paradise and chose to leave both it and God. God loved his creation too much to let it go, so He came into their mean and confusing world and made the right choices that they weren’t able to make—because He wanted them to be with Him. Someday, she will understand where the unfairness lies in humanity’s relationship with God. She will understand that Love Incarnate chose to experience total separation on behalf of, in place of, the very humans that rejected Him, which is every one of us (Rom 3:23). 

^[1] Paul Gould, Travis Dickinson, and Keith Loftin, Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2018), 145–146.

^[2] Augustine, “Evil and Free Will,” in Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 419.

 

^[3] J. P. Moreland and Tim Muehlhof. The God Conversation : Using Stories and Illustrations to Explain Your Faith, (InterVarsity Press, 2017), ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=5783989

 

^[4] Alvin Plantinga, “A Free Will Defense,” in Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 423.

 

^[5] Anselm of Canterbury, “On the Incarnation,” in Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 258.

 

^[6] Timothy George, “Has God played fair? Why did an omniscient God create humankind knowing that people, in every generation, would reject him? (Good Question)”, Christianity Today (November 12, 2001), 96, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A80162077/BIC?u=vic_liberty&sid=summon&xid=88683afc.

 

^[7] Gary Frazier. Hell Is for Real : Why Does It Matter?, (New Leaf Publishing Group, 2014), 44-45, ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=1899788

 

^[8] Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell : Rethinking Everything You've Been Taught about God's Wrath and Judgment (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liberty/detail.action?docID=5974194.

 

^[9] George, “Has God Played Fair?,” 96.