www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Does God punish in this life?

Dear Friends,

After the Tsunami disaster, I heard a priest say that God does not punish anyone in this life.

Punishment is reserved to the next life.

Your comments?

Alex

I make my living working with Catholics. YES, God punishes in this life! :p

Dear Alex, et. al:

As I have understood it, God does not need to punish us in this life. Our sins themselves are our punishments.

If we chase each other around while single, we'll have difficulty being faithful when married.

If we are lazy, then we'll achieve little.

If we drink too much or take drugs, we destroy the body that we were given.

If we fill our minds with unholy ideas and images, we will fail to recognize the holy when we meet it.

In short, everything that we do that is sinful contributes to our own dehumanization. We gain nothing in sin and lose everything, our soul as he intended it to be.

[That's right, the old expression, "to err is human" should go like this, "To err is like a fallen human."]

Or as Metropolitan Joan of Korca often says, our sins lead to "a kind of mutilated life."

True life, "life abundant," as the Master says, is a life in Christ. It is one that is not only ashamed and repentant of our sins, but that leads to less and less sinning.

In relation to the catastrophic Tsunami, Fr. Kyriakos of the local St. Thomas Malankara Orthodox Church (which I am blessed to have just down the street) preached movingly on the 1st of January on this theme. I summarize what I understood, (although I may have misunderstood):

God has decided not to restrain the waves in this case. When we chose to declare independence in the garden of Eden, we became fully subject to the laws of nature that He has set upon the earth. True, He occasionally intervenes and restrains those forces in His great mercy, especially when we invoke His intervention, but at times and for reasons known only to Him.

In a sense, if we have so mutilated and dehumanized ourselves in this life, imagine the torture that we will endure when we come face to face with the true image and likeness of God, His perfect son, Jesus Christ, both man and God. How we will despise our sinfulness and how we may loath ourselves. I think of how painful it is to think back on the worst things that I have done and believe that our punishment in the next life would be something along those lines but so much more intense.

A man's work in this life will be tested by the fire. Let's try to build something in this life that is valuable and that will endure the test.

In Christ,
Andrew

I think that God allows "bad things" to happen in this life (not the equivilant of punishments)to help us learn things we need to reach theosis...On the other hand, God has been known to smite the wicked (see OT stories).

Gaudior, not privy to the Mind of the Lord

I believe that everything that happens to us in this life--the good, the bad, the happy, the sad, and the glad--God ALLOWS to happen so that we will turn again and again to Him. We should be turning to Him when we are happy or glad or have something we perceive as good in thanksgiving; in the not so happy in supplication.

Scripture has it that God chastises those He loves. I also believe that chastisement comes to strip us of attachments which can easily become idols that we spend more time with than we do in growing our relationship with Him.

As for natural disasters, I have to go with the idea that they occur to call from us the reaction of Christ. We're called to be His Presence and we are called to give what we can and to pray for the living and the dead. If we have the peace of Christ residing in us, these things will not shake us to our core and ask where God is. When I saw the TV accounts of the tsunami, I had a quick thought about how far our rebellion had taken us. We're subject to the natural laws of this planet of which this was one. We traded a long life in a Garden cavorting with the animals and working on the perfect tan for this!?!?!?! When people ask where God is in all this, I often reply that He's standing close by crying over the mess we've made of His Plan, but waiting for our turning back to Him.

It seems to me that this and all natural disasters points to one enduring lesson: we have no permanent home here; we are on pilgrimmage; we are in exile until the call home. In the meantime, we have lots of work to do as Jesus said when He was found in the Temple, "Do you not know that I msut be about my Father's business?" And so should we be.

Alex, I think your question comes from a mindset that is not "in Christ." (And I am not implying that you are in this mindset.) When we are "in Christ," that is "in His Body," everything takes on a new look and we have a new approach. What seems like punishment to one "not in Christ" can often be seen by one "in Christ" as the Providential Hand of the Father--through the eyes of faith. The world often thinks of this kind of God, but they still don't "get it."

We don't worship a God who sits with a big accounting ledger waiting to say to us, "Gotcha." We are adopted into a family relationship with a Father who often ALLOWS events and things to happen to turn us to Him again for lessons and growth in faith and life.

It seems to me to be a bit like "the fear of God." When we love our Father enough to want nothing more than to do His Will in everything, the fear goes out the door because love is greater than fear.

In Christ,

BOB

It would depend on what is meant by "punishment." If punishment is meant as *correction*, then yes... but if it's meant as "I'll teach you to do such and such!" and cause you to contract a urinary tract infection, then no He doesn't. I wouldn't call it "punishment" even, but He simply allows you to face the consequences of your actions. Sin always has bad consequences.

Re the tsunami, that does make me think, because the city in Indonesia that got the brunt of the tsumani damage was Aceh, which is pretty much the Islamic terrorist training grounds capital of the world. Though I'm sorry that many innocent people were killed, I can't say I'm sorry that Aceh got wiped out.

I don't know the answer. God is limitless, and we cannot limit God in what He can do. We cannot, with our feeble intellect, know much about His possibilities.

I think He could punish in this life if He wanted to. I just don't see Him doing that in my own feeble understanding.

I tend to have faith that God wants to help us, not hurt us, though - even when we're insufferably awful, He seems to want us to choose to turn ourselves around. Why else would He have sent us His Son?

To me, the lesson of Jesus and the Good Thief (sometimes called St. Dismas, I believe?) is that God can forgive the sincere penitent a lifetime of wickedness, just like that, and take that person into Paradise with Him. He can see what no human can see.

We are truly loved by Our Father. When Jesus taught us to pray, His prayer was basically a bunch of petitions - please, Lord, let us have our bread, let us forgive and be forgiven, help keep evil things away from us... etc.

Wow, we are often pretty awful, rotten, spoiled, self-important brats and yet He keeps loving us and hoping that we'll be like the Prodigal Son and come home, where He'll greet us.

Why bad things happen to good people (or some variation of that) has always been a question we ask. There is good and evil in the world and nature surely presents us with scary challenges sometimes. I would not personally see natural disasters as punishment from God, though.

As many of you have said, I also do not believe God "punishes", but certainly leaves us to bear the consequences of our acts.

As I see it is a cause-effect situation, as Andrew said, if we do something wrong, we shall expect a bad effect sometime in our lives.

As for natural disasters, I have been thinking and I am convinced that many of these happenings are the result of our selfishness and abuse. God gave us this wonderful world for us to take care of it, and we have abused of it. We have tried to absolutely control nature and have tried to make nature follow our laws, and not the natural laws that were written by God, therefore necessarily sometime nature gets "out of hand" with all the disastrous consequences. It is not a punishment from God, is a result of our own pride.

As to why bad things happen to good people, I don't think we'll ever find all the answers, God's will is unexplainable, I try to see it as some "purification" in this world when bad things happen.

One of the most terrible moments any person may have is when somebody dear dies; how common is for one to rebel and get angry and blame God; how many times one may have heard the phrase "Why God, why did you take him(her)? It's a difficult moment, a very hard one, and human explanations often are not sufficient. I don't recall the exact part in the OT but there is a part where it says that God takes his beloved ones home soon, for the world not to pervert them, to show the enemies of good that the final victory is God's victory.

Finally, and I apologize for this long reply and maybe having gotten out of context, I am sure that the so called "punishments" for our actions are only the effect of breaching God's law.

God bless.

When 9-11 happened many cried...Where was God?" And the best answer I heard was from a priest who said that God was there in the midst of it with the rescue workers, firefighters, and others. It was man's inhumanity to man and the forces of evil which brought 9-11 about...

But I also think that it is true that sometimes we "reap what we sow." so sin does have consequences which are often faced in this life. God out of His great love does thwart the way of the sinner and sometimes that can feel like punishment. Sort of like a loving parent who knows what is best for us and won't let us have our way.

However, if we repent and turn to God He is ever faithful to forgive, heal, restore, and reconcile us to Himself. +

In Christ,

Mary Jo

What eloquent, insightful, and enlightened posts. I have nothing to add but to thank you all for your wisdom and for this thread.

May our Lord God bless us all.

In Christ,
Alice