Title: Being Fair: What It Looks Like, How It Works, and Whether It Is Worth It
Speaker: Pastor Steve Murphy
Date: 28th June 2026
Location: Medway, England
Summary:
“Fairness can have teeth.” Being fair sounds soft until you watch it hold its ground. This episode starts in Psalm 99, where God is described as one who establishes equity, and asks three plain questions: what does fair look like, how does it work, and is it worth it?
Most of the answer arrives through stories. A widow selling the family home after more than forty years is offered £20,000 less the night before she moves out, and she says no. A goalkeeper in a penalty shootout takes away the opposing keeper’s notes, wins, and then explains himself honestly. Written law cannot cover every circumstance, which is why courts have always leaned on fair minded people rather than on the letter alone.
Then it turns inward. Ecclesiastes points out that no one is consistently just, so expecting perfect fairness from a world that includes you is a poor bet. Paul tells Timothy the aim of the commandment is love from a pure heart, a good conscience and honest faith, and warns that some were never aiming at it. Exodus finishes the thought with manna: given daily, enough for everyone, and useless once hoarded.
Key Points:
- Psalm 99 holds two things together that are often set against each other: God forgives, and God still deals with what we get up to. Neither cancels the other.
- Equity is fairness applied to circumstances, which is why written law on its own cannot deliver it. A camera cannot tell the difference between someone doing wrong and someone pulling over for an ambulance.
- Being fair is not the same as being easy to push around. A woman who refused a last minute price cut on her house was not being unfair.
- Expecting perfect fairness from other people is unrealistic, partly because Ecclesiastes says nobody is consistently just, and that includes you.
- The aim of the commandment is love from a pure heart, a good conscience and honest faith. The failure described is not missing the target but never aiming at it in the first place.
- Some good things take you part of the way and cannot take you all the way home. Acknowledge what they do well without asking them to do everything.
- Circumstances are never handed out evenly, but responsibility is the equaliser: more given means more required.
- Manna was provided daily and measured out so that nobody had too much or too little, but it still had to be gathered and used that day.
Reference Scriptures:
- Psalm 99:4-8
- Ecclesiastes 7:19-22
- 1 Timothy 1:3-6
- Exodus 16:12-18
- Exodus 16:20-21