Does God Punish?

Many still believe and some even teach that God brings sickness, trouble, accidents even death as punishment or to teach a lesson, ignoring the basic truths and beauty of the New Testament. The Carpenter's teaching replaces the old fearful theology with a new spiritual reality. Consider: When we name something we define its nature, so what is the nature of God?  The same fountain cannot send forth both sweet and bitter water. It would be a bit schizophrenic to ask for help, direction, healing and intuitive thinking from a power greater than ourselves that professes love, but could turn on a dime and bring us pain, suffering, even death? Emmet Fox explains "hallowed be thy name" from The Lord's Prayer thusly: “The word hallowed has the same root as holy, whole, wholesome, and heal, or healed; so we see that nature of God is complete and perfect-altogether good.”

Does trouble, sickness and suffering exist? Of course. So why does our all loving, all knowing Father allow it? Our gift of free will. Of all known creation we alone have the ability to create, for both good and ill, and all reap the crop they have sown. The innocents who suffer and die by the actions or calculated  inaction of the cruel and evil reap their reward beyond the flesh, just as their persecutors who fail to change. No one dwells in eternity with the ledger of their actions unbalanced, but God does not keep the ledger, we do. Everything we have ever done, said, seen or felt, experienced in any way, is written on our eternal heart, in our hand. God does not keep score, we do.

When we hold to the idea that God punishes, for any reason, we build in our consciousness a back door for self centered fear to creep in strangling faith. Pain in living is not optional, neither is the passing of the flesh. Our “soul”, the spark of the Divine within each of us, though is eternal, was never born and will never die, has always been and will always be. The Lord’s Prayer names God as “Our Father” and is not the child always connected to, a product of, the parent? Do not allow the fear and pain of today to convince you that God is punishing you, for nothing could be further from the truth of being, for God wants each of us to be, happy, joyous and free.

© Vincent Lee Jones Living In Spirit All Rights Reserved

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