When Fairness Becomes a False God
Agency, Compulsion, and the Spiritual Cost of Forced Goodness
We live in a world where unfairness is real, visible, and often heartbreaking. It’s natural to want to correct it—especially when we see people suffering because of the choices of others. Recently, I’ve been talking with people who feel deeply that the world’s inequalities must be fixed by forcing people to be more charitable, more giving, more socially responsible. The intention is noble. The method is not.
Because spiritually—and doctrinally—compulsory goodness is not goodness at all.
The Plan That Promised Perfect Fairness
Latter-day Saint doctrine teaches that in the premortal world, agency was the central issue. God declared, “I gave unto him his agency” (Moses 7:32), and modern revelation affirms that “every man may act… according to the moral agency which I have given unto him” (D&C 101:78).
But there was another proposal.
A plan that promised perfect fairness.
A plan that guaranteed no one would fail.
A plan that removed all risk, all inequality, all suffering.
And the price was agency.
Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3), offering a world where righteousness was mandatory and therefore meaningless.
Why Forced Charity Cannot Produce Righteousness
If we compel others to give—through legislation, protest, or social coercion—we may redistribute resources, but we do not create discipleship. The Church teaches that if we were forced to choose the right, we would not be able to show what we would choose for ourselves.
Compulsion removes:
- The giver’s opportunity to choose good
- The spiritual growth that comes from sacrifice
- The blessings tied to voluntary righteousness
Forced charity may relieve a temporal need, but it cannot produce the eternal consequence God attaches to freely chosen compassion.
C.S. Lewis and the Tyranny of “For Your Own Good”
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
—C.S. Lewis (Goodreads source)
Lewis’s point is piercing: when we force others to be good, we become the tyrant—even if our intentions are pure.
When We Try to Control Others, We Forget Step One
Step One of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches:
“We admitted we were powerless…”
The spiritual truth behind that step is universal: we are powerless over other people.
Trying to control another person’s moral behavior—no matter how justified it feels—always leads to frustration, resentment, and spiritual exhaustion. It is the same unmanageability AA warns about, just wearing a more “righteous” disguise.
God Has a Plan for Every Wrong, Every Hurt, Every Unfairness
The scriptures promise that God will “wipe away all tears” (Revelation 21:4) and that He will “restore all things” (Acts 3:21).
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught a principle of deep hope:
“Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.”
—Jeffrey R. Holland, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come,” October 1999
We are not the fixers of the world.
We are the ministers in it.
Ministering One by One: The Only Righteous Way to Address Unfairness
Christ never commanded us to force society into righteousness.
He commanded us to minister one by one.
This is the quiet revolution the Savior invites us into. The Savior taught this pattern Himself: leaving the ninety and nine to seek the one who was lost (Luke 15:4–6).
His ministry was never mass‑produced—it was personal, deliberate, and one by one.
Ministering is the antidote to both resentment and coercion. It is the way God refines both the giver and the receiver.
A Gentle Call to Arms: Turning Our Strength Toward the True Work
In the end, the great struggle of our day is not between the fair and the unfair, the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. The real battle—the one that has echoed since the councils of heaven—is the battle for the human heart.
And that battle is won not by force, but by formation.
Not by compelling others to be good, but by becoming good ourselves.
Not by reshaping society through pressure, but by reshaping our souls through Christ.
President Ezra Taft Benson taught this with prophetic clarity:
“The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.”
—Ezra Taft Benson, “Born of God,” October 1985
This is the true objective of mortality—not to force fairness, but to become like Him who will one day make all things fair, all things whole, all things new.
So let us lay down the exhausting weapons of control, resentment, and coercion.
Let us take up instead the armor of light—charity, patience, meekness, courage, and the quiet, steady resolve to minister one by one.
This is our call to arms.
This is our discipleship.
This is the work that will change the world—because it will first change us.
And in the end, when Christ wipes away all tears and restores all things, we will find that nothing we surrendered, nothing we suffered, and nothing we offered in love was ever lost.
It was all becoming.
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