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Equality...Fairness...Justice


            What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
           “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”
           “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
           "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
           “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.”
           “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:9-18)
 

Here it is…equality…justice…fairness. You, I and everyone else are worthless. There are no Disney Princesses, no one who makes the grade. No participation trophies. The only way that everyone is included is in worthlessness. No one is good enough, wise enough, bright enough or spiritual enough. Those are all masks we wear to hide the corruption. The descriptions of Hell provided in Scripture are generally based on something with which the people of that day were familiar: the local garbage dump. It was where the refuse, including dead animals, was taken to rot or be burned. This is our common end.
Some may object that we are people, not garbage, not stinking carcasses. At the very least, if we are dead, we deserve a proper, respectful burial. I tend to be a bit unconventional. I don’t see why human corpses should be treated differently from animal corpses. Yes, I have already arranged to remain within the usual customs, and yes, I understand that people might think it traumatic to see the bodies of people they know carted away like so much trash – but this is equality. This is cold, hard equality.
Of course, the reality is that we don’t want to deal with reality. We want there to be exceptions, and we want to dictate what those exceptions will be. If we can’t be among the exceptions, we want to be part of the honored ones who went before and helped create the heaven the exceptions who follow us inherit. If there was ever a worldview that dealt in cold, hard, equality, Christianity is it. Everyone fails. Everyone is a traitor. Everyone deserves the garbage dump. Every other philosophy involves one group or another having an advantage.

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