And the Scales Will Be Balanced

Concerning people who seem to receive more or less than they deserve; We sometimes see honest and able men who seem unsuccessful, and we see unscrupulous and unethical men who seem successful. We see undeserving people prosper and deserving people as frustrated failures – or so it seems. And so we ask ourselves: “Why are such things permitted to be so?” Perhaps part of the answer is found in a simple faith in the law of compensation. For example: the man who appears to prosper by dishonest practices has something happen to him inside. What happens to him, we don’t always see, but it is there just the same. A dishonest or dishonorable person misses many of the elements of happiness. He loses self-respect. He loses the quiet comfort of being at ease in the presence of honorable people. And with an accusing conscience he also loses the power to live at peace within himself. But suppose he has silenced his conscience; suppose he has gone so far wrong that he has lost the power to feel real remorse. If he has, he has lost the power to feel other things also. He has lost sensitivity to some of the finer things of life, for he who persists in going against the grain of virtue and of conscience has his very inner nature and character coarsened, and he cannot help missing some of the refinements and some of sincere happiness and enjoyment he might have had. Because these things are not always seen on the surface, we may sometimes assume that they are not so. But the surface isn’t all there is to be seen, and a person always surely pays a price for everything he does contrary to conscience or contrary to correct principles. If we had to give all the answers here and now, we should fail to satisfy ourselves. But however inconsistent some situations may now seem, we may rely on the judgment and justice of God, and have faith that we shall sometime, somewhere find the answers that we now fail to find. We may have a sure and certain assurance that the eternal scales will be balanced.