Over at my church’s youth blog some of us have been having a discussion on if and how God punishes. It arose originally from a statement that went something like this – well here, I’ll quote it for you, “Give thanks with a thankful heart, or some day God will take away all that is thank worthy, to make one see how thankful they were.“ Maybe I should not have stirred the pot because from the sounds of one youth’s comment, (“OMG! Do you people have lives! Geese look at those bloody paragraphs. And you guys are arguing about something that no body cares about!”) we are discussing stuff they don’t care about anyway. But it was another youth who started out commenting so here goes. And don’t get me wrong I am not doing this out of disrespect for our youth leader just it is a topic I am passionate about.
I am passionate about this because – if God is not a God of grace then I’m done for. I have experienced the grace of God and no arguments can change the reality of it for me. I could never return to trying to follow the rules (not because the rules are bad), or trying to work hard enough to earn my way, simply because I would fail again. Then, if I had to take the punishment I deserved for breaking the rules – well you can see maybe why I need to rely on grace.
My argument in this whole discussion is that when I look at Jesus’ life and teachings, I do not see him punishing. I see Jesus loving and forgiving – even those who by all rights under the law should have been punished by death. Actually, he is very hard on one group of people the Pharisees and hypocrites but exceptionally gracious to sinners (and I feel that I fit into this class).
This morning, I began reading the Gospel of John again. I just finished Luke and it sort of follows. Within the first chapter these are the words I encounter;” The Law was given through Moses, but loving and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (Verse 17NLT)
Then, I flip back to where I am reading in the Psalms and I read Psalm 103. 2Praise the Lord, O my soul. And forget none of His acts of kindness. 3He forgives all my sins. He heals all my diseases. 4He saves my life from the grave. He crowns me with loving and pity. 5He fills my years with good things and I am made young again like the eagle.(NLT)
I am not trying to imply that there is no punishment for wrong. Just, I believe that in the here and now of our lives that we punish ourselves, having to live with the consequences of our sin. I know there are instances where God punishes people outright at the time when they sin but these instances seem a lot more frequent in the Old Testament. Jesus’ stories of the Kingdom of God are full of forgiveness. Lives are changed by his compassion.
I think I know where the guys that I am in discussion are coming from. I was there too. One thing about age is that it gives you time to learn a lot. I can remember thinking, as a teen and young adult, that most “Christians” treated God cheaply – that they should take him more seriously and be more obviously devoted to God in their lifestyles. And of course for me that meant following certain rules – rules that I had grown up with that just seemed to be equivalent to proper living out of one’s faith. And these things that I believed Christians should do were good things involving service to others, treating others fairly, using resources economically, being generous, etc. I took my faith seriously, worked hard at behaving like a Christian and I thought that everyone else that called themselves Christians should do the same.
And then God started to work on me. He began to show me that following the rules is not faith. I began to learn about the artificiality of the rules that I and other Christians followed – or didn’t. Even doing good things does not add up to faith.
God used someone I had helped come back to faith to teach me. I had to sort out what was faith and what were just rules. I learned both good and bad things about myself. I saw that some of my legalism was detrimental to the living out of my faith and also deterred others. So, I began to change my understanding of just what was essential.
Then I found myself in a sinful situation that I did not want to get out of. Well, I did but didn’t at the same time. All my beliefs in the necessity of working hard to follow God, doing all the right things, I ignored – deliberately. Instead of punishment, which I certainly deserved, God rescued me, forgave me and life went on. But I carried the knowledge of my disobedience around like secret baggage. And other stuff I added on as I went. It has taken me years to dump it all, as it were, on Jesus and accept the fact that he loves me, really loves me, just as I am. And that what I do, how my children turn out, etc. doesn’t increase or decrease the love that God loves me with. I am passionate about this – this realization of the grace of God and what it feels like.
So, I wish all of my children and their friends, and all the youth in our congregation would encounter this God of incredible grace and love. That they would learn that they don’t need to haul around big garbage bags to hold past sins or put their new sins into. Kind of nice when God says to us, “Here, let me take care of that trash for you.”
God does not want them to come to him so he can punish them like they deserve. He just wants them to come and hand him their trash and be free of it.
If they do, I think we will not need to worry about the obedience to God. The obedience kind of flows out of a grateful heart. If they encounter this God of grace, and experience this kind of forgiveness, they will know that there is no other God like him.
LineaLanoie's Weblog 
Hi Linea,
I agree with you completely in regards to our God being a God of love, mercy and grace. My comments on the other site were just to present what I felt was a little bit of “the other side” which was neglected in the comments section. Jesus made a whip and drive out money lenders and merchants from the temple. Jesus had an encounter with Saul/Paul that left Paul temporarily blind. These particular events don’t necessarily fit with the image of Jesus that you presented. So, I presented them. By not mentioning these times of correction or, that nasty word, discipline, it seems like we are withholding examples contrary to our conclusion. That may ultimately undermind our position when we discuss the issue with others, as though we were deceitfully ommitting events contrary to our opinion. It seems Jesus did do some things which are unaccounted for when you said,
“when I look at Jesus’ life and teachings, I do not see him punishing.”
It may be the semantics of the word “punish”, but Jesus did “correct” or “discipline” in some ways we would consider harsh.
God does do some fairly heavy “correction” in the NT which we can’t just sweep under the rug.
– having an angel strike Herod down after which Herod was eaten by worms
-killing Annanias
-killing Saphira
-throwing people out of the temple and overturning their tables
-leaving Paul temporarily blind
While these examples are few and far between, they are still there.
I believe if we are to see God completely, we need to see Father, Son (God made flesh) and Holy Spirit. I agree that NT examples are isolated, but that does not mean they should be ignored or called “special circumstances” so that we can exclude them from the person of God. After saying all this though I want to reaffirm with you that,
“God does not want them to come to him so he can punish them like they deserve. He just wants them to come and hand him their trash and be free of it.
If they do, I think we will not need to worry about the obedience to God. The obedience kind of flows out of a grateful heart. If they encounter this God of grace, and experience this kind of forgiveness, they will know that there is no other God like him.”
Clinton,
I think it is probably semantics. I know correction and agree that it is necessary. Punishment to me is a more final thing – not done so much as to correct but as make you pay somehow for the evil you have done – a penalty that you are required to pay to atone for your wrongdoing.
And in terms of ourselves and God – well we can’t do that, Jesus already did this for us. And I think you would agree with me on this as well.
Thanks for your comments – and for your e-mail.
Clinton, I’ve never heard of Herod being struck down by an angel and eaten by worms. Do you have a reference?
Ananias and Sapphira weren’t ‘punished’ per se. They died because they “lied to the Holy Spirit” (Acts 5:3). Their death was a consequence of their actions, of their decision to disobey God. It was just a physical display of the spiritual death that happens when we chose to disobey.
How was Jesus’ cleaning of the temple a punishment? He was angry, righteously so. He was consumed with a passion, and he just couldn’t stand their hipocracy and capitalism (I guess).
I don’t see Paul’s blinding as a punishment. I see it as a result of him seeing Jesus in all his glory. The men with him “did not see anyone”(acts 9:7), so they did not see Jesus. Acts says that he ‘fell to the ground’, so you might say, “if he was on the ground, he couldn’t see anything”, but it also says that “a light from heaven flashed AROUND him”. Granted, later on ‘something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes’ (Acts 9:18), but maybe God gave him that protection in the instant that JEsus was revealed to him. Maybe those scales were sort of like sunglasses, and helped to prevent a permanent blinding.
I don’t think that my answers are ‘sweeping things under a rug’, but I think that they are answers that seem to go with the character of God that I know so far. They don’t contradict the image of god as just, or as loving, but merely deal with his wisdom. Was he right to kill ananias and sapphira? I really don’t think that Jesus in the temple, and Saul on the Damascus road are good examples of God disciplining his people. I don’t understand how someone could think that running around like a crazy man in a temple is punishment to anyone but Jesus. And how is God’s 3 day blinding of Saul punish him for the years of persecution he inflicted on the christians? That would be ridiculous. Like a pat on the hand. If that was the sort of punishment god gave out, he wouldn’t be god. He would be a joke.
Oh lovely, two people seperated by a common set of beliefs 😉
Johanna, the reference to Herod is in acts 12 v21-23.
The issue really is how we perceive punishment/discipline, as Linea has pointed out. If we view these things as ‘divine retribution’ then they are indeed farcical. If we perceive them as God’s guidance and shaping of character they align with what we know of God’s mercy and grace.
We also need to lose our human focus on comfort before we can understand God’s approach to dealing with us. Humans naturally believe that discomfort and suffering are wrong and bad. God seems to have a quite different take on things, and will permit ‘suffering’ because He knows the outcome and reason, and can see beyond the immediate effect.
Actually people can do that too – think about the pain involved in training for a sport. I know how much people will allow themselves to suffer for something as trivial as winning a race, because I do it too. How much more useful it is to suffer somewhat in order to become more like Him. That doesn’t mean God WANTS us to suffer – quite the opposite. But as Paul suggested, Jesus ‘momentary suffering’ was as nothing compared to the glory He would receive. Fortunately God is able to decide justly what we need to endure to move us forward.
These are good thoughts you’re having – keep exploring.
Just hope I don’t now have to demonstrate what I’ve preached 😉
First, lets stop saying punishment for a while. It is a distraction from what I thought we were discussing. My main points since this all started were:
1 God takes an active role in disciplining. It was said on the other site that our “discipline” for sin was the result of our own bad actions (only).” [The “only” part was implied in the context.] I disagree. The consequences of sinful actions (or inactions) are not the only “correction” we receive all the time. There are enough biblical examples of God playing an active role in correcting and disciplining to illustrate this.
2 I felt those describing Jesus’ love and forgiveness intentionally avoided incidents which could be considered not so loving. I felt that presented a selective picture. Imagine being an outsider who has only read comments on Jesus’ love and then comies across the temple incident. There would be some sort of contradiction never presented to this person who would have to reconcile it on their own. I wanted to make sure everyone is well informed of the variety of incidents in Jesus’ life before making up their minds. It seemed Jesus was mentioned as graceful, merciful, loving and forgiving only, while avoiding Jesus’ anger, aggression (or maybe even violence?) or frustration. That is what I felt was selective about the descriptions.
Next, I hope no one got the impression I was saying that we can pay for our own sin. (That’s one of the reasons I didn’t use the word punishment; because of its implications.) Only God can pay for our sin, and he did that. We can accept this gift but we can not earn it.
Herod (different Herod than when Jesus was born) and the worms can be found in Acts 12:23. (Interesting to note Jewish historian Josephus backs this up)
I disagree with Annie and Ira dying as a natural consequence of their sin. It seemed rather timed and executed, which could only mean it had a timer and executer. I do believe God played an active role in their deaths. Of course the wages of sin is death but to accept their on-the-spot deaths as just the normal consequence of their sin means everyone else on earth probably only has a couple minutes to live. This was a unique example that was not merely a natural consequence of their sin.
Interesting ideas on Paul and the sunglasses. However, I am not sure why God would chose to keep him that way for 3 days if he only needed eye protection for the vision itself. Because Paul was blind for 3 days I would have to call it a discipline of some kind. I never called that event punishment. However, my main point was that God was actively involved in it. It was not just the consequence of Paul’s sin. You agreed with that yourself. However, you said that if it was “punishment” it was a slap on the hand for all of Paul’s murders and God would be a joke. I disagree. It is a very human desire to want to meet out extreme punishment for what we feel is exptreme sin, unless of course we are the offending party. God is a God who does not give us what we deserve, thank God. I thought that was the main theme of this whole topic. It came across to me like there’s different levels of “punishment” for different levels of sin. I tend to see sin as a light switch. On or off. No dimmer. I think that Paul’s repentance is all the “punishment” God allowed for his sin. There may be other consequences but I believe that our own repentance is the worst “punishment” we will ever go through for our sins (but that’s another thread). That’s not to say we can earn our salvation through it eithor.
Your response to these issues is not sweeping things under the rug. I said that by not mentioning them, they were swept under the rug. These are things I wish were discussed on the youthblog along with all the other examples given of Jesus’ character.
If blinding Paul for 3 days, and making a whip and driving people out of the temple and overturning tables and pouring money out on the ground is not “correction” or “discipline” what would you call it? Hanging out? Visiting? A kiss goodnight? Yep, Jesus was righteously angry, but that doesn’t mean what he did wasn’t discipline of some sort. I don’t think I could exactly call those “blessings” although they may have lead to great things down the road.
And finally I want apologize for being so instigating or sarcastic in my writing style. I want to say I agree with both of you on the character of Jesus. I just wanted to bring in other points that I felt were not dealt with adequately to support our belief.