Fairness was something Jesus spent a lot of time discussing (and changing people’s minds about).  The prevailing understanding of poverty and suffering in his day was that they were punishments for sin, while wealth and well-being were interpreted as divine rewards for a person’s righteousness.  Either way, your social position was duly earned and deserved.  Thus, the earnest question put to Jesus by his disciples in John chapter 9: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind (and doomed to destitution)?”  And thus Jesus’ rhetorical questions in Luke chapter 13– “Do you think that the people who were murdered by the Romans in the temple recently, or the people who were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed on top of them suffered those fates because they were more evil than other people– because they did something to deserve it?”  Jesus goes on to answer all of these questions with a resounding “no.”

I read an intriguing opinion piece* recently about the concept of fairness.  The article centers around two competing means of evaluating the “fairness” of various laws and public policy: the “veil of opulence” and the “veil of ignorance”.  The veil of opulence, the author explains,  asks questions of fairness only from the perspective of “whether it is fair that a very fortunate person should shoulder the burdens of others.”  It seems that so often, we instinctively approach everything from tax laws to business practices to foreign policy from the perspective of the elite, regardless of whether or not we ourselves actually find ourselves within that privileged group!  This perspective ”assumes that the playing field is level, that all gains are fairly gotten, that there is no cosmic adversity. In doing so, it is partial to the fortunate” because it implies that whatever prosperity or failure a person encounters has been fully earned by their individual actions– i.e. the CEO got where he is solely because of his good business sense and hard work, the people in the inner city can’t seem to get ahead solely because they make poor decisions.  

Reality, as Jesus knew, is not so straightforward.  As I’ve been learning first-hand over the last several years, poverty (or prosperity) is usually a complex web of structural forces, uncontrollable factors and personal choices– unjust laws, illness, physical or mental disability, social stigma, and poor individual choices can all contribute to some people’s poverty; wealthy parents, elite social connections, good health, and– yes, unjust laws– can likewise contribute to others’ prosperity.  

Taking all of that into account, an alternative way to consider laws and policies is from behind the so-called “veil of ignorance”, which forces an individual to approach the issue at hand hypothetically assuming that they are completely ignorant about their own place in society– their own health, income, opportunities, talents, etc.  The necessary starting point from that direction is to ask, “What system would I want if I had no idea who I was going to be, or what talents and resources I was going to have?”  In other words, “If you were to start this world anew, unaware of who you would turn out to be, what sort of die would you be willing to cast?”  The author concludes that the “veil of ignorance” is necessary in order to escape the natural human tendency to think primarily about “what is fair for me” (whoever I am).   

Rather than attempting to craft fair policies for either people who are wealthy or poor, sick or healthy, fortunate or unlucky, our goal should be to create systems which are impartial toward everyone– which is the definition of fairness in the first place.

* “The Veil of Opulence” by Benjamin Hale, posted on the New York Times website