Understanding God (9 of a series)

Before discussing the attribute of the infinite mercy of God, it is important to understand how God punishes. This is because humans do not seem to be able to grasp how merciful God is as long as they hold to the delusion that God punishes to be arbitrary and cruel, or to the delusion that God does not really exist as the all-knowing, and thus he does not punish at all. Whenever I discuss his mercy with humans, they always worry first to know about the punishment, hiding their own anticipation of guilt behind delusions of God's "unfairness" (too severe punishment or arbitrary) or his lack of "involvement."

A quote from the Qur'an is the most pithy in explaining the by far the most common way that God punishes. Here is the passage from the Qur'an:

Surah 22:1-2

O people! guard against (the punishment from) your Lord; surely the violence of the hour is a grievous thing.

On the day when you shall see it, every woman giving suck shall quit in confusion what she suckled, and every pregnant woman shall lay down her burden, and you shall see men intoxicated, and they shall not be intoxicated but the chastisement of Allah will be severe.

In this passage you observe two examples of God's punishment yet, how are people to interpret this, since they are examples of bad human behavior? In the first example women no longer nurse their babies and in fact, they lay down the entire burden of having children, abandoning it. And the men are not working, or protesting their women no longer caring about their children, but instead are lolling around drunk and "under the influence." So how is this punishment by God, to say nothing of being "violence" of punishment, its most severe?

It is simply this. When God seeks to punish he just steps out of the way, and grows silent, and lets humans "do what they want." The Holy Spirit stirs less and less (though never totally abandoning humans) and humans are left free to architect their own downfall. Nothing God could "think of doing" to "cause suffering" is worse than what humans come up with on their own, in their grave woundedness and hubris. And is this not exactly what we have seen in society today? Has not God let you all have "just what you wanted?" Birth control so that families are totally abandoned, abortion, pornography, sexual violence, sexual exploitation of children, violent entertainment, depressive goth and vampire "culture," use of occult tools, idolatry, alcohol and drug addiction? These are all things that have stemmed from humans deciding that they know best about being "liberated" and "sensual beings." And so millions of women have laid down and denied the joys and the responsibilities of having and caring for children, and two generations of men have been drunks and drug pushers and users. Whenever you open up a news story on any given day you can read what "joy" and "liberation" such a "free will" society has become, whether it is a child gunned down in her bed because drug gangs have a shoot out in the street, or crack or meth head parents letting their infants die of neglect, often horribly abused in addition to the lack of care. And so many women just want to be "sex in the city single" with no child and no bulges to their figure from pregnancy that there are times when I worked in Manhattan that I could go weeks without seeing a child. A generation has been skipped, and now when women (often too young) do have children, they grew up with parents who didn't have a clue how to properly and lovingly raise a child. And so you have babies born to mothers who beat them to death, or who let their boyfriends do it for them.

How can anyone not see this freak show society as punishment? I feel punished every day just watching all of you who think that you have achieved "liberation."

So when God punishes, he doesn't "zap" someone, or have a temper tantrum like humans do (for example, a Swedish rapper just drove over a California musician pedestrian, killing him, in a "crosswalk" "road rage" situation). When God has tried and tried and tried to get humans to use their free will in a healthy and loving way, and all else fails, and he must punish, he steps aside. God simply steps aside and lets all of you "do your own thing." And a woeful thing it is that you do. I love how modern atheists like to blame organized religion for everything. Gosh, yep, those bad religions, going out and making people be addicted to porn, booze, drugs, guns, forming violent street gangs, popping off children, convincing crack and meth head parents to beat them to death (maybe after first filming them being sexually abused)... yep, you sure got us there. I'm surprised that secularists and atheists "cracked the secret code" where the institutional religions are preaching all that behavior in the sermons, driving the otherwise enlightened people out to such depravity *sarcasm.* It's not a coincidence that atheists and other religion detractors have to keep quoting the same dreary "examples" (the Inquisition, Islamic extremism, etc) yet ignore that puzzlingly, the worst blights of society are the very things that the faithful, to say nothing of God, frown upon.

I can of course cite from the Bible, in addition to the Qur'an, this insight into God's prevalent form of punishment, which is to step aside and let humans do what they "really want to do," but no where is it as pithy and prescient as in this passage from the Qur'an.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Homework assignment: So, goodness gracious, if God punishes by letting people do the wicked things they want to do, until they bring suffering onto their own heads, what does God do to bring mercy to humans? What could it possibly be? Maybe, send his Son to point the way? Maybe send the Holy Spirit to not only enlighten, but stir the guilty conscience? Maybe set some boundaries, and teach self containment, as any good parent would? You know, boundaries, those things that humans ignored and thus brought upon themselves the very things they oh so very much "wanted?" Should not be too difficult to figure out, but it's always good to discuss it together, as we will next time in this series.