Now to most of us, consciously anyway, it might come as quite a surprise to find that many Christians believe in a God who punishes but in my experience many do, they wrap this belief up in different ways for sure but it is there. I met one Christian lady once who had Chronic Arthritis in her hands, when I asked her about it and offered to pray for her healing she maintained that there was no point as it was Gods punishment on her for a past indiscretion. Others, for example, simply live with a sort of background fear that God just doesn’t quite love them; some believe that God won’t heal them because of their Sin and others live on a perpetual quest to increase the amount that God loves them and so continually pray for forgiveness whilst forever trying, and of course failing, to live some sort of holier life.
All of these people, and other variations of them, live within a sort of spiritual limbo land where the love of God is limited by their ability to earn it in some way or worse, where the love that God would have for them has been corrupted by the way that they have lived their lives. And so, for them, God stands above them holding out but not quite delivering to them his cup of his Grace, God withholds, God stands back, like a Father who holds the cookie treat out while his baby toddler endeavours to stand up for the first time and walk over well enough to reach it for itself. When sickness comes it is Gods punishment, “be sure your sins will find ye out” when they are not healed it is because of un-confessed sin and when life goes wrong “well who knows the mind of God” “he knows why he has brought this on you” or “it’s for your benefit, to refine your faith, to build your trust in him” or such similar nonsensical rubbish somehow becomes the accepted rational. In the end however all this simply means is that God is a punishing God, punishing us: doesn’t it?
No! I say out loud to all this tosh.....But someone says...
What about Job?
Good point, but really, even if we were to accept an interpretation of the Job story which appears to support a punishing God who ruin’s a poor man’s life just to teach him a lesson in this or similar form, -and there are other interpretation’s of course which by no means see the Job story in this way- should we really build a whole post resurrection theology of suffering from this one (or any other) Old Testament example? Doesn’t the cross mean anything at all? Can we really completely subvert the message of our Passover Lamb, suffering servant, sacrificial offering, Sin bearing Christ in order to attempt to justify a view of God which in all likelihood has developed from our own inability to divorce our psychological life scripts from our experience and belief?
God isn’t like a father ‘tempting’ us with the promise of his love. God IS Love, at least that’s what the New Testament tells us, God LOVES us absolutely and completely. As for his wrath, according to my Bible that was completely satisfied on the Cross at Calvary, as far as my Sins go he sees them no more, he has poured out his grace upon us, he doesn’t hold anything back we are completely acceptable in his sight. The rest, all those desperate attempts to see God as one who either punishes us or withholds his love till we are better people simply deny the efficacy of his work in Christ and so they must be wrong! Mustn’t they?
God does not ever punish us! He never brings upon us illness or suffering, pain or hurt, he never withdraws from us because of sin, any sin, he, if anything holds us tighter in these times less we fall away from him through our own sense of unworthiness!
A short aside: have you ever wondered why anyone would teach this view of a God to be feared? (because ultimately that’s where this theology goes)? Think, as a minister wouldn’t that give a very real sense of power and Control? If God is like this and you are his authoritative messenger ‘the voice of wrath’ where does that place you?
I would seriously question the hidden motives and life scripts behind any Christian leader who taught in this way, especially if he/she seemed themselves to be presenting a self image of the ideal example. (psst their lying honest!)
Revd David John