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“Why is God punishing me?” An answer to the age-old question affects our well-being in many ways. Modern psychology and progressive theology offer insights built on God’s love and human choices which inspire hope in the toughest times of life. Explore the teaching Jesus offered when the disciples struggled with the same question to develop greater resilience in your own journey.
Segments include:
Everyone knows the answer 1:00
Jesus said, “Not so fast” 2:10
A loving God doesn’t do bad things 4:05
The natural world and human choices 6:25
God’s work inspires resilience 9:24
(Artwork by Stocksnap on pixabay.com)
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The chaplain listened quietly to the story of heartache unfolded by his patient. The story poured out: a grievous injury, a bitter divorce, a son’s death by overdose, now the stage four cancer. With tears, his question came to the clergyman. “Why is God punishing me?”
I’m LP, your host of Tracks for the Journey, a network dedicated to your well-being. The search to answer the question of divine punishment and human behavior is as old as humanity itself. The answers we hold can profoundly affect our well-being. Let’s explore some ideas from modern theologians and why they may help us.
The man at the bar knows the answer for the bad things that happens when he says, “What goes around comes around.” The evangelist knows the answer and thunders, “The wage of sin is death!” The woman at the coffee shop knows the answer: “It’s just karma, honey.” These backstreet theologians all have the same perspective as old as our hominoid ancestors: the suffering man did something wrong, and God is making him pay. The ancient Greeks knew Zeus punished Prometheus for stealing fire for mankind and the woman in the New York skyscraper holds the same idea of her God and her sins.
Many of the people described in the Bible held the same idea. We find it in the legend of Adan and Eve driven from the perfect garden by their violation of God’s rule. The morality play of Job brings the admonition of his friends to admit his secret sin that brought the ruin of his life.
But then Jesus came. His teachings as retold by the early followers of the Way held a new word about God and evil. The Lukan Gospel recounts Jesus discussing with the disciples two tragedies where many people were killed. In one, Roman soldiers killed people near the Temple, perhaps during a riot. In the second, a large tower by the Pool of Siloam collapsed, killing 18 people. The people of Jerusalem had the answer, “They were all sinners and God killed them.” Jesus shuts that down. “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.”[1] In these words, Jesus shatters the cliché of “Bad deeds bring punishment.” He teaches instead that everyone has messed up. One person isn’t worse than the other. All of us are subject to the darkness of evil from others and the randomness of events which happen to people regardless of who they are or what they have done. There is not a moral or divine cause that singled out those victims for some special kind of death.
Basing spirituality on the best theology is important. Think of the confusion and shame the hospital patient has endured, wondering what he might have done to deserve this punishment. He had been taught a mistaken theology. Some of it may have emerged from confusion about God’s power. Some Christians have taught that God unilaterally controls the universe in every detail. This includes natural disasters or human violence that bring suffering to animals and humans. For the patient, this would mean that God choose to mutate the cells to become cancer. But wait and think of what this means. The hidden corollary of this doctrine must mean that God deliberately chooses to plot the path of the tornado that kills dozens of people or to stir up the malice of a hate-filled terrorist who bombs a synagogue. A variation of the teaching is that God just allows these things to happen, choosing to not change the impending event. Stories in the Old Testament carry this perspective, detailing the idea that God commanded Israel’s armies to commit genocide as they invaded Palestine or in the voices of the prophets saying that idolatry brought the destruction of the nation.
But this theology has problems. First, these teachings make God the source of evil, commissioning the events or omitting actions that an omnipotent deity could do to save the lives of innocents. What would we think of someone who saw a child crossing the street in front of a car but choose to do nothing to save her life? That is a moral outrage and evidence of a stone-cold heart. Surely, that cannot be true of the God of love and good described in the Bible. Further the theology of the all-powerful God eliminates the free will humans possess to choose good or evil. An all-determining God means creatures have no capacity to determine anything. We would be merely puppets on the stage of life.
A better approach draws from what Jesus said to the disciples. God operates within the natural universe. There is no superpower hiding in the sky for God to command and change the laws of physics that governed the collapse of the tower in Jerusalem. In cases of moral evil, God does influence all the creatures of the universe toward good while leaving each creature free to choose a response. The Roman soldiers had a choice to not kill the people near the Temple. We are very much aware that every person has freedom of thought and action that can turn to evil. We often are selfish, hateful, eager for revenge, and willing to hurt others to gain power for ourselves. God is working constantly to lead us toward good, justice, and love but will not control us.
We may think of God as the director of a great orchestra that plays beautiful music, yet the hands of each instrumentalist must work on their own for the music to harmonize. Love is non-coercive and not deterministic. God’s essential nature of love means God cannot exert unilateral control without contradicting God’s own nature. The ministry of Jesus, who evidenced mercy, forgiveness, and rescue, offers the prime example of God’s essential love and human freedom. Theologian Thomas Oord says, “A loving God would not allow genuine evil that is preventable… if God loves perfectly, God must not cause evil nor be culpable for failing to prevent it.”[2] Humans are solely responsible for their evil actions, not God.
From these truths, we can return to the bedside of this tearful patient to give reassurance that God has not singled him out for retribution. Cells randomly mutate and overdosing a drug kills the victim from the natural processes of our universe. In human society, children make wrong choices, and loved ones turn away. The consequences of our choices and the actions of others are sometimes tragic for all concerned. The miracle we can offer is our companionship in these times of suffering.
There is also a deeper presence near to the suffering. God suffers with us as we experience the pains of our life. Jesus wept in grief at the grave of Lazarus and God weeps with those who are suffering today. The Spirit is a companion in the valley of the shadow, soothing emotions in our darkness. The mercy of Jesus overcome evil and turned the life of a cheating tax collector toward integrity, lifted a woman sex-worker to a new direction, and gave a thief hope for eternity.
The good theological insight that God helps in times of suffering brings greater resilience. Clinical studies have shown that having hope for the future is a key factor in promoting resilience, or the capacity of coping with adversity. Hope and optimism come from varied sources. For many, hope Is built on a faith in God. A study of Army Special Forces troops found those who viewed spirituality as a vital part of life had hormone levels that contributed to lower stress and greater adaptability to negative events.[3] Today, the Spirit of God offers that power of resilience and hope to those who are struggling with the traumas of life.
A further work of the Spirit is in drawing us to a better future by offering ideas of wise choices. Under the catalyst of the Spirit, we can find a way forward through new beliefs about ourselves, others, and the context of our life. The theology I’ve described today about the God who suffers with us and works to lead us forward provides hope for the future. When God has met us in the valley then God’s presence makes the journey with us to bring better days.
The chaplain’s words carried that comfort and hope. “You have suffered so much. God has suffered with you, feeling and understanding every pain you have known. Now God is here to give the best possible for you. God gave this longing for hope that opened this conversation. God will give direction as you make choices for making the days ahead the best they can be. Follow where this spirit of love is leading.”
In some sense, all of us are like the patient. We have times of real suffering. But our well-being grows from the truth about the God of love revealed in Jesus. We are not being punished for our sins by an angry God. God is actually the companion who is with us in our suffering. We have a choice to embrace new beliefs and hope as the Spirit leads through suffering to security in the love of God.
[1] Luke 13:4 NRSVUE
[2] Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God. Intervarsity Press, 2015, p. 68.
[3] Anne Nolty and others, “Spirituality: A Facet of Resilience.” Fuller Magazine, Issue 12. https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/spirituality-a-facet-of-resilience/
