Can man judge whether God is fair?

IS GOD FAIR? I hguess sometimes it feels like we are asking the wrong questions.Jesus' parables as well as many old testament books prove God to be the foundation of everything. So as someone in a previous comment put it... our thoughts as well as everything else about us, come FROM GOD. This just like in any postulate, or theory, we must predicate our assumptions on one immovable fact. Proven, beyond question. The only thing that fits that requirement is that GOD is GOD and as he says three times both in the old testament and the new " I will have mercy on whom i will have mercy..." I'm not advocating, mindless following or that we check our brain at the door of Christianity. but just like DeCartes reasoned so many years ago "Je pense jusqua je suis" (I think therefore I am") We must come to at least one immovable conclusion and with this conclusion in mind we can allow our thoughts to ponder and question but in the end if we truly believe in our immovable conclusion (God as creator of all), there is no choice but to subjegate our thoughts of fairness to HIS. just like in Habbakuk God answers this question in Job "Brace yourself like a man. I will question you and you shall asnwer me" Then he goes on to answer Job's question

I have to object to David Schwartz's answer above.

You have to consider one thing, and that is: the person trying to put God to the fairness test is usually outside the faith, while the person proclaiming God to be good is usually a believer. In one sense, as a believer I don't much care is God is not fair, because He is good to me.

In short, the believer views God as sovereign, while what the unbeliever sees is a potential candidate for president (an illustration that comes from Tim Keller). This latter view is the baggage of one's culture.

As for how to handle the question of fairness, I would look into this thing called Presuppositional Apologetics. The basic idea is that the natural man is at odds with God, and cannot understand God's truth merely through his own efforts. You may have to bring this up at some point in the conversation as it is biblical.

Sure: a man "has the capability judge" God in the sense that he has the free will to regard himself so highly as to pass judgement on God. Obviously that doesn't mean such a man as the moral right or ability to do so. It seems to me that anyone who openly questions why God allows such-and-such an evil (be it starving children in Africa, being evicted from their house, getting in a car accident one day after their medical and car insurance expires) is demonstrating a free-will capability to judge God.

(I didn't address "fair" in my answer, but on what other issue would there be to "judge" God?)

I would like to add to the answers so far.

In my experience, it seems like "fairness" or "unfairness" of God is a concept that is a major preoccupation of the contemporary Western liberal mindset. It may not have occupied the concerns of people who lived up to the Enlightenment. It certainly does not occupy the minds of the religious Indian, for example. However, show me an Indian with the secular, liberal Western mindset (they exist in urban India), and I'll show you someone who will put God to the "fairness" test. So it is clear to me that this disposition is a result of certain cultural baggage, which includes a loss of reverence for God.

So it is best to say to the person raising the unfairness objection: We are in no position to judge God, and we certainly don't relate to Him right without a certain amount of reverence.

Judging God to be fair is akin to judging God to be good. Fairness is one of the key attributes of goodness.

If you believe God is good, it can only be because you have judged him so. Compare these two positions:

"Joe is good, but I cannot judge him to be good."

"Joe is evil, but I cannot judge him to be evil."

Are they really even different? They both contain a claim but they are then followed by disclaiming any means to establish the validity of that claim.

If we are not in a position to judge something, then how can we reach the conclusion that it is good? It is simply incoherent to concurrently maintain that you believe God is good but that you also cannot judge God.

I have never read a line that claimed God or life in general was "fair". Fairness seems to be a concept that we have developed to evaluate our interactions with each other. In addition fairness is largely subjective and relative.

Is there a need for fairness in our dealings with God? I suspect that if you consider what God offers for devotion and following His directions for living our mortal lives, we are getting the better end of the deal. So I would say no, God is not fair. In fact He is quite generous from our mortal standpoint in that we make a few sacrifices and choose to live a live by the laws set out by God for a limited time and then we are rewarded for eternity.

So can we make that judgement about the fairness of God? Certainly, He has granted us free will and the ability to ask questions and discover their answers. He has also allowed for us to choose to deviate from the path He has set for us. But we must remember that God has never made a claim to be fair from our mortal standpoint. So when we deviate we risk the judgement of God. But Jesus Christ has also offered forgiveness when we realize our sins and return to the path.

One concrete example from the Bible of a prophet judging God is from the book of Habakkuk. The book begins with the prophet Habakkuk judging God for His inaction:

Habakkuk 1:2-4 2 How long, O LORD, will I call for help, And You will not hear? I cry out to You, “Violence!” Yet You do not save. 3 Why do You make me see iniquity, And cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; Strife exists and contention arises. 4 Therefore the law is ignored And justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore justice comes out perverted.

Very quickly God responds that Habakkuk doesn't have a clue what God is up to and what God is about to do.

Habakkuk 1:5 5 “Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days— You would not believe if you were told.

The bulk of the book is a dialog between Habakkuk and God over whether or not God really knows what He is doing. The conculsion is that God knows a whole lot more about what's going on that Habakkuk realizes and that renders Habakkuk's attempts at judging God meaningless. In the end, Habakkuk realizes that his only proper response is to rejoice in God regardless of the circumstances.

No. God's ways and thoughts are so much above ours it's difficult to understand.

Isaiah 55:8-9 (NLT)
 ⁸ “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
      “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
 ⁹ For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
      so my ways are higher than your ways
      and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.