"5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God" - DAY 4

Day 4 – advantage #2 of God’s existence: ultimate justice

My father and mother were deeply religious. My brother and I had no time for religion… Then my brother was killed. My father and mother had resources, and with their resources they could meet that shattering loss. But I had no one. I had no resources at all.  –ROBERT J. DEAN

Every person on earth, it seems, has a sense of justice. If we play a board game, we want it to be played fairly. If we seek a promotion, we want equitable treatment. If the game or the hiring isn't fair, something innately recoils within us, something that desires the wrong to be made right. 

What is so frustrating is that all of us, so universally bent on fairness, live in a world that seems so unfair. Hear the psalmist, complaining to God that the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper.¹ Listen to Job, demanding a day in court with God to address his undeserved treatment.² Recall the words of Jesus, asking "why?" as he hung in torture on the cross.³ They are professing what we all know to be true—the world is often an unfair place with no guarantee that justice will prevail. 

This is the final conclusion of atheism, the end of the story. When the universe seems unfair, it advises us to resign ourselves to this pessimism and move ahead. It asks us to quit looking for justice, for justice does not exist in a universe without God.⁴

Belief in God, however, opens the door to justice (in this life or the life beyond), because it asserts there is more to the universe than nature alone. If God values justice, it assures us we have every reason to hope that justice will someday come. 

Daily Quotation

Robert J. Dean, How Can We Believe? (Nashville: Broadman, 1978), 25.

¹Psalm 10:1-15; 94:3-7.

²Job 13:3; 23:1-7.

³Matthew 27:46.

⁴Although atheism denies the existence of ultimate justice, no atheist acts as if this is so. The Argument from Fairness (Days 32-34) will elaborate further on this inconsistency.