Every parent has had to adjudicate over the issue of ‘fairness’. It sometimes seems like the constant preoccupation of small children desperate to ensure that some other sibling doesn’t get better treatment than they do. For this would be ‘unfair’. Yet as adults we can seem to lose sight of how essential fairness is.
A recent example of this is the kidnapping of over 200 girls from their school in northern Nigeria into slavery. The man who has claimed responsibility is promising that they will be sold as child brides. At the time of writing, 187 girls are still missing.
More and more people are pointing at how unfairly thisincident has been responded to within Nigeria and by the wider global community. Dare I say it, that if these had been white European children instead of black African children, I am certain there would there have been a far swifter reaction? Are too many of us still swayed by unjust attitudes rooted in colonialist attitudes and even racism? When Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared with over 239 people on board, 26 countries worked together and spent millions of dollars to search for the missing. Yet the global community has seemed content to stand by after this crisis in Nigeria.
What are the issues of fairness here? Aside from the urgent necessity to bring these girls home because they have been taken illegally without consent, the broader issues of fairness include the low value too many people in our world place on education —especially education of women.
Fairness also extends to whether we value and protect girls as much as we do boys. I pray that these girls will be returned safely to their homes and community. And I pray that as a global community, we will wake up to ourselves and remember the basic human principle of living fairly amongst others so that we will be prepared to rescue those that are treated unfairly by rogue people and power structures in this world. As Jesus so succinctly said, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’
Christina Tyson
Editor
Romans 1:20 New Living Translation
‘For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Th rough everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.’
Roma 1:20
‘E kitea nuitia ana hoki nga mea ona, kahore nei i kitea, no te hanganga iho ra o te ao, e mohiotia ana ki nga mea i hanga, ara tona kaha mau tonu, me tona atuatanga; kia kore ai he kupu whakahoki ma ratou…’