Punishment
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 3:49PMA few sundays ago we announced a series on God's goodness. The first part, titled 'Punishment', asked a couple of questions such as "when something bad happens to you do you feel like God is punishing you?", "when something bad happens to other people do you feel like God is punishing them?", etc. We looked at several scriptures but it was more or less a discussion among friends and family. How does God's wrath and punishment work with His goodness and Love? Age old question. Can of worms. Call it what you will. If we don't have a better grasp of our own perception of God's punishment we won't ever grasp the full severity of His goodness and lovingkindness.
As people, we all suffer and observe suffering in some form or another. As such, each of us has developed and devised our own coping mechanisms to handle the suffering. Some of us try to explain it. Some of us embrace it as a weird kind of badge of honor. Some of us feel justified in pointing fingers at others, while others point the finger at themselves. Within these coping mechanisms we strive to fit God comfortably within our understanding of goodness, suffering, sovereignty and circumstance. Many doctorines and behavior patterns have been (and will be) birthed out of our perception on how God fits in with all this. As you may have discovered, He doesn't always fit very well.
Does He allow the suffering? Does He inflict the suffering? When something bad happens (cancer, car accident, loss of a child, earthquake, fire, chronic illness, money issues, injustice, abuse, etc) do you have a sneaking suspision that God is punishing you for something? Do you feel like Satan is tormenting you and that God has failed at protecting you? Do you feel like God's sovereignty is in conflict with His goodness? Does suffering (especially prolonged) make you question God's heart towards you?
If you answered "Yes" to any of those questions then please stay tuned. And please, please weigh in with your own thoughts on the matter.
More to come tomorrow.
Reader Comments (1)
I feel like I can say, "yes" to about all the questions at different points in life...