No matter what I do or what I have been taught, I have a view of God that is just plain wrong; not all the time mind you, but more often than I am comfortable with. I often think of God as a punishing God, you know, like in the Old Testament.
I am afflicted by thoughts that I am being punished for sins when things go wrong in my life, or something bad happens. I know the Father isn't sitting on his throne, watching my every move just to smack me if I do something that is not right. That is NOT what a loving father does. He disciplines yes, and many times the disciplined might view things that happen as a punishment, and perhaps I do also. I know from my own experience as a father that my children clearly knew when I was disciplining them and when they were being punished.
There is a running joke among my adult children that whenever I assigned chores to them when they lived at home I would say, after a fair amount of whining from them, that the chores would build character in them. I actually did say that to them, for I knew they wouldn't understand what I was trying to do. So I would explain to them that we all lived in this house that we call home, and we all have to have a hand in taking care of it. And of course...it builds character. They knew this was not punishment per se, but it sure felt like it to them at times!
But when the time came for real punishment...they knew the difference. Why can't I tell that difference with God, my Father? Why do I so often feel as if I am being punished for my sins when something bad happens to me or my family? I learned a long time ago that God does not have to punish us in this world for committing sin. Many times our own actions provide the punishment itself.
Remember when the man who was blind from birth came to Jesus and our Lord was asked by the others around him, "whose sins caused his blindness, the sins of his parents or his own?". I remember so well his answer to that, that it was not caused out of sin, but for the glory of God to be shown...and at that point, he cured the blind man. Or the 18 people that were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them, he told them that it wasn't because their sin was greater than all those who lived in Jerusalem. In other words, things happen. Bad things happen in this fallen world.
This isn't an essay on why bad things happen to good people. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I hope it is a beginning of my dissection of why I think the way I do about God being a punishing God. I know he is the final judge of all of us, but I also know his mercy endures forever. I know there is punishment for sins, but perhaps not in this world, but in the next. Why else are we told that he makes the rain fall on the good and the evil? If evil deserves punishment, why not punish them rather than giving good things to them? You see?
Yeah, things happen, and I've got to stop blaming God for a world that was created in all his goodness, which man desecrated with his sin. I'm wrong in the way I view what happens to me in this life and thinking God is punishing me for my sins. Now...how to change my attitude......
Ah, Resolute, I hear you on this one. I have the same perception, and I don't really know why. I have to cause to think of God as a punishing avenger, because there is so much goodness, so many blessings in my life, and in the lives of those I love. When it comes down to it,though, I feel like I'm an Old Testament girl. The prophecies and sagas speak to me. Perhaps I'm on a journey to the New Testament, when I will finally be able to embrace the love and mercy freely.
ReplyDeleteI've thought about this some more since writing the post Tess, and though I don't like this sense of a punisher rather than a dispenser of mercy on God's part, perhaps, in a deep and profound way, it is to keep me from taking advantage of His mercy and having no fear of His punishment. It would be easy to go through life thinking, yes, I just sinned, but he'll forgive me, rather than, I may be punished for what I have done unless I repent. In some protestant views, there are those that believe once you are born again and have a personal relationship with God, once saved, always saved, then nothing you do will change that. Luther once preached, that if you sin, sin greatly, for you are saved. There are some that justify their sinning because of this idea. I don't want that. That is being presumptuous that we are saved no matter what we do.
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