I noticed an article by a pastor refuting the idea that God ever punishes (via weather or individual tragedy) in these modern times. You can find it by doing a Google news search on punishment, which is how I came across it. I thought about writing to the pastor but decided to write a quick column here instead.
Now, I'm going to say this with kindness, but firmly. Too often pastors who want to minister in a time of grief are so mushy that they surrender all scriptural integrity and thus ultimately lose their credibility with the believers that they are trying to help. The tone of that opinion piece, for those who don't read it on their own, is as follows. 1) He's quivering with indignation at those pastors who imply that disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina etc might be the full or partial result of God's wrath 2) He is faced with a person situation where members of his flock have suffered the loss of a small child in a tragic accident 3) The parents, grief stricken, worry if they are at fault via sinfulness or omission of faith in some way and 4) Pastor assures them that God does not punish temporally. What???
I am ALL for comforting the parents. Here is how it ought to have been done. 1) Yes, God does punish, because the scripture is full of God's own words of warning and specific follow up, and he does punish both individuals and nations 2) Thankfully his punishment is very rare because most humans suffer their own consequences of misdeeds, so God tends to punish mostly in instances of great sin and falling away of faith, such as idolatry 3) They can, however, receive great comfort from the Gospel's clear and unmistakable correction of two sinful misapprehensions of the time of Jesus, which is that the sins of fathers and mothers are visited upon the children (Jesus refutes that) and that children are not of great worth to God (Jesus most certainly refutes that).
So this pastor should have confirmed rather than minimized or denied that God has, does and will indeed punish both individuals and nations, but thankfully that is rare and it is very difficult to second guess a specific incident. He should have praised them for their self examination in this matter. He then should have comforted them most strongly by explaining that Jesus himself refuted what was a popular belief which is that calamity fell upon children due to either their own sinfulness or that of their parents, plus Jesus explained that children are the role models for those who wish to enter heaven. Thus it is extremely unlikely that God would punish parents for some imagined (or real) fault by having their little child run down by a car.
The pastor probably would have to explain the difference between God being in control and allowing bad things to happen versus God actually smiting via punishment, since people, including those in ministry, seem not to understand that, so of course the people are also confused. It is back to the obvious truth that God put into place natural laws and consequences, including the dangers due to mechanics and physics of death via injury due to mishap or lack of care or attentiveness. God is not going to step in with a miracle to overcome such an inevitability in a finite and injury/sickness prone human life. That is the difference between God "being in control/allowing" bad things to happen versus God "punishing" or "smiting."
Think of the time when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and God sent punishments, warned of by Moses and intending to motivate the Egyptians to let the people go. God sent punishments that on a low scale happen anyway, for the most part. For example, grasshoppers eat crops all the time, and people die of plagues, etc. When it is normal part of life, it is an example of God being in control but not punishing. However, when Moses warned the Pharaoh that he was defying God's will and then God backs up what Moses says with an eruption of pests or the sudden onslaught of plague, that is God smiting or punishing. If one always uses common sense when reading scripture one always finds illumination.
So the pastor could have explained to the parents that little children get into tragic accidents all the time and it is a constant but natural danger of life, which God is in control of but does not manipulate arbitrarily... far from it, since he allows humans to stumble into finally doing the right thing (such as automobile safety features, safe food laws, etc) all on their own taking decades or even hundreds of years to do so. Like the natural hardships in Egypt, their child's accident is a consequence of a routine risk of being alive. God intervenes with punishment, as the scripture demonstrates, only when the people and their religious leaders as a whole fall away from him, especially those who engage in idolatry.
The parents may be grieving but they are thinkers. They will read the Bible and wonder why any pastor denies that God does punish somewhere and somehow since the Bible is filled with examples. The pastor's job is not to strip God part of his job description, but to explain how to wisely discern and be comforted through the Gospel, the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, who addressed exactly those questions during his time (see where the disciples ask Jesus about deaths in a recent rebellion, plus deaths in an accident involving a collapsed tower, where they asked him who was the sinners that caused these current news tragedies, and Jesus explains that it does not work like that in God's eyes.)
I hope you have found this helpful, especially if you are in a helping profession where such questions are encountered on just about a daily basis.
.... I just decided to add one more thought, as I'm trying to pretend this is a conversation and anticipate questions. What if I was asked, "OK, suppose these parents were idolators? Does this mean that God kind of sent that car to run over the child as punishment?"
My answer is that no, it's not such a direct action, since God never causes evil to happen. What it means is that if the child's death is at all connected to the parents' idolatry, this is how it would occur, in one of two ways. The first is that their idolatry distracted them from routine precautions and responsibilities. I'll make an extreme example just because it's simple to get. Suppose those parents thought that nothing bad would ever happen to their child whenever the Moon is in the sign of Leo (which occurs for a few days every month). So on those couple of days the parents are very lax in their dilligence of their child's safety, thinking that due to the idolatrous teachings of their cult that their child is "protected" due to idolatrous and bogus powers. Thus God does not have to "send the car" to hit the child since the parents' own false beliefs prompted through natural law of cause and effect a dangerous situation with no precautions. So it is a punishment of their own making for putting their faith in false idols instead of in God and in the truth of the world as it really is, which is that children must always be watched and protected, where at all possible without turning yourself into a total control freak.
The second possibility is that again, suppose the parents were secret idolators. As idolators that means they have no faith in the true God, or that they are lukewarm believers who diminish God's authority in their personal lives by sharing it with bogus idolatrous beliefs. In this case God has a option to perform a miracle and save their child by having an angel tap the shoulder of the driver, or push the child out of the way, etc. but God will usually withhold a miracle if, I mean, duh, people are diminishing his authority through disbelief and idolatry. Thus, again, God does not send the car to hit the poor child and instead, God's heart breaks for the child, but he does not intervene with a miracle if that miracle is going to be attributed to glorify idolatry and occult beliefs. Again, that is punishment that is a natural outcome of the people's own actions, in this theoretical scenario...
Showing posts with label certainty of punishment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label certainty of punishment. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Understanding God: timing of his wrath
This is going to be a short post that should hopefully provide lots of thought. I can't really believe that I have to explain this, but here goes. The motivation for this topic is the gradual uncovering of the many occult beliefs that have permeated society, culminating with so called Satanic worshippers and horror rap, etc., such as that Sam guy who is accused of murdering four people. He poses with religious icons and graves to degrade them, etc. This has shocked some people who are "in the know" enough to at least admit the widespread problem in the comment sections of news articles, etc. So I'm going to now "spell it out for you" whether God is tolerating this evil or not, and help you to understand his timing.
First of all, you must understand something right up front. No one "gets away" with evil and living lives full of sin. No one. Why? Because God's "batting average" is one hundred percent to send them to hell for all eternity when they die. It really is as simple as that.
Somehow these past two generations have decided that if God does not zorch on the spot someone who sins or "disrespects him and his" that God either doesn't exist or does not mind, or is powerless. That is so lame, stupid and wrong that it would be laughable if it wasn't so serious for the millions and millions (imagine a very big number) of evil people AND chronic sinners who now occupy hell. They all thought they "got away with it" until they died and woke up in hell, thrust there by God's avenging angels. No, they do not get to "argue their case" in front of God: they wake up in hell, forever (Luke 16).
That's why I mentioned my combination of boredom and dismay several years ago when kids made Internet vids kind of daring the Holy Spirit and God by stating their disbelief and blasphemy. They should have stated their youthful stupidity instead. The Bible and the Qur'an make perfectly clear that humans lead lives filled with their own crap and own free will, and then when they die, rather than be "free and clear" and "getting away with it," they awake in hell with no dialogue, no appeal to God, no nothing but "There you Are!"
The second point is that the Bible and the Qur'an make clear that God does indeed smite when he chooses to do so, either in temporal (while alive) punishment of some sort or in actually striking down a person or even a country. God usually does so by "raising up an enemy" against the sinners, rather than actually striking the blow out of the blue, miraculously. Why? For the mercy, duh. He, who is ALL Knowing, intervenes when certain points that only he knows are reached in his patience. You can trust that since he knows all that will ever happen, he smites when there is a maximum chance of those who observe and likewise sin to come to their senses, while at the same time doing minimum "loss of patience" intervention.
For a reminder of that read the section of Genesis, recently blogged about here, where Abram (Abraham) negotiates with God (who appears as an angel) about how few good people who might exist in Sodom and Gomorrah would be enough for God not to strike down the entire city. This will help you to understand that God knows all the "numbers" in advance, obviously, yet he allows even one human being to try to speak up for the rest and change the free will that humans exercise. So when God hardens his heart and lets someone evil or sinful fall on their own sword, or, as he will do, directly smite them, you can trust that it is because he knows the best time to do this so that 1) those around the persons will get the point and maybe, just maybe, actually repent and convert and 2) future evil that the persons he smited will either perform willfully or enable is minimized. Sometimes God pulls the plug for just that reason. Think of King Solomon, much loved by God, who lived to an old age, but could have lived a lot longer if he had not started to worship idols brought in by his many wives and concubines. God curtailed his life rather than 1) allow him to throw away all his grace and mercy and risk hell and 2) so that he not continue for more years to lead many souls of his people into idolatry.
Only God can do that, as I have repeatedly reminded and warned people. No human can "decide" in kind of "star chambers" who is "good" and who is "not" and thus who should be "contained" or "harmed" for the greater good. Nazis thought that and believe me, they obviously 1) did a lot of damage and 2) there is a lot of screaming done in German in hell. The analogy I've been using is that if people who think they "know who is good" and believe they can "defend" "people" from "evil forces," would have been the first to kill Saul (who persecuted Christians, them doing so in "self defense" you know) before the resurrected Christ converted Saul to, yes, St. Paul. It is absolutely forbidden in the Bible to have even evil and judging thoughts about another person, say nothing of taking God's place in judgment and thus gravely sinning, even to murder. Seen a lot of that recently.
Regardless if someone evil or a completely incorrigible sinner or enabler of sin seems to live out his or her life and is does "OK," believe the Bible and the Qur'an, and the testimony of Jesus himself (Luke 16) that those people, to their astonishment, wake up on their death in hell, one hundred percent. There is no debate or conversation with God, St. Peter or anyone else, for those who God will send to hell for their deeds: they wake up there without any argument or advocacy.
Finally, I really hope that kids (and adults) who are punked out and who think that hell really can't be all that bad a place and that Satan will "take care of them there," wise up and grow up. The Qur'an is helpful in letting you know that God ups the punishment in hell to the totally unbearable for all eternity, not Satan. Satan despises the people he fools and torments them even worse.
Why and how do we know that? Because the more Satan leads astray the sooner the End of Times and the full wrath of God will descend, and when the earth is destroyed Satan is stuck without his main home and now has to spend all of his time in hell. Duh! In the Bible you read how Satan roams the earth. Do you think he wants to be in hell? DUH! If he thought the people he fools (allegedly, since most people are wicked all on their own) are such awesome company and he could turn the thermostat so that it is cooler, why would he spend all his time on earth and dread being chained into hell with the losers?
If you actually read the Bible and/or the Qur'an, it is amazingly helpful.
Remember, no one "gets away" with evil or unrepentant continual sin and enabling: it is one hundred percent to hell for all eternity, regardless of the lack of obvious smiting any individual (or country) may experience up until that day of personal death.
Sleep well!
First of all, you must understand something right up front. No one "gets away" with evil and living lives full of sin. No one. Why? Because God's "batting average" is one hundred percent to send them to hell for all eternity when they die. It really is as simple as that.
Somehow these past two generations have decided that if God does not zorch on the spot someone who sins or "disrespects him and his" that God either doesn't exist or does not mind, or is powerless. That is so lame, stupid and wrong that it would be laughable if it wasn't so serious for the millions and millions (imagine a very big number) of evil people AND chronic sinners who now occupy hell. They all thought they "got away with it" until they died and woke up in hell, thrust there by God's avenging angels. No, they do not get to "argue their case" in front of God: they wake up in hell, forever (Luke 16).
That's why I mentioned my combination of boredom and dismay several years ago when kids made Internet vids kind of daring the Holy Spirit and God by stating their disbelief and blasphemy. They should have stated their youthful stupidity instead. The Bible and the Qur'an make perfectly clear that humans lead lives filled with their own crap and own free will, and then when they die, rather than be "free and clear" and "getting away with it," they awake in hell with no dialogue, no appeal to God, no nothing but "There you Are!"
The second point is that the Bible and the Qur'an make clear that God does indeed smite when he chooses to do so, either in temporal (while alive) punishment of some sort or in actually striking down a person or even a country. God usually does so by "raising up an enemy" against the sinners, rather than actually striking the blow out of the blue, miraculously. Why? For the mercy, duh. He, who is ALL Knowing, intervenes when certain points that only he knows are reached in his patience. You can trust that since he knows all that will ever happen, he smites when there is a maximum chance of those who observe and likewise sin to come to their senses, while at the same time doing minimum "loss of patience" intervention.
For a reminder of that read the section of Genesis, recently blogged about here, where Abram (Abraham) negotiates with God (who appears as an angel) about how few good people who might exist in Sodom and Gomorrah would be enough for God not to strike down the entire city. This will help you to understand that God knows all the "numbers" in advance, obviously, yet he allows even one human being to try to speak up for the rest and change the free will that humans exercise. So when God hardens his heart and lets someone evil or sinful fall on their own sword, or, as he will do, directly smite them, you can trust that it is because he knows the best time to do this so that 1) those around the persons will get the point and maybe, just maybe, actually repent and convert and 2) future evil that the persons he smited will either perform willfully or enable is minimized. Sometimes God pulls the plug for just that reason. Think of King Solomon, much loved by God, who lived to an old age, but could have lived a lot longer if he had not started to worship idols brought in by his many wives and concubines. God curtailed his life rather than 1) allow him to throw away all his grace and mercy and risk hell and 2) so that he not continue for more years to lead many souls of his people into idolatry.
Only God can do that, as I have repeatedly reminded and warned people. No human can "decide" in kind of "star chambers" who is "good" and who is "not" and thus who should be "contained" or "harmed" for the greater good. Nazis thought that and believe me, they obviously 1) did a lot of damage and 2) there is a lot of screaming done in German in hell. The analogy I've been using is that if people who think they "know who is good" and believe they can "defend" "people" from "evil forces," would have been the first to kill Saul (who persecuted Christians, them doing so in "self defense" you know) before the resurrected Christ converted Saul to, yes, St. Paul. It is absolutely forbidden in the Bible to have even evil and judging thoughts about another person, say nothing of taking God's place in judgment and thus gravely sinning, even to murder. Seen a lot of that recently.
Regardless if someone evil or a completely incorrigible sinner or enabler of sin seems to live out his or her life and is does "OK," believe the Bible and the Qur'an, and the testimony of Jesus himself (Luke 16) that those people, to their astonishment, wake up on their death in hell, one hundred percent. There is no debate or conversation with God, St. Peter or anyone else, for those who God will send to hell for their deeds: they wake up there without any argument or advocacy.
Finally, I really hope that kids (and adults) who are punked out and who think that hell really can't be all that bad a place and that Satan will "take care of them there," wise up and grow up. The Qur'an is helpful in letting you know that God ups the punishment in hell to the totally unbearable for all eternity, not Satan. Satan despises the people he fools and torments them even worse.
Why and how do we know that? Because the more Satan leads astray the sooner the End of Times and the full wrath of God will descend, and when the earth is destroyed Satan is stuck without his main home and now has to spend all of his time in hell. Duh! In the Bible you read how Satan roams the earth. Do you think he wants to be in hell? DUH! If he thought the people he fools (allegedly, since most people are wicked all on their own) are such awesome company and he could turn the thermostat so that it is cooler, why would he spend all his time on earth and dread being chained into hell with the losers?
If you actually read the Bible and/or the Qur'an, it is amazingly helpful.
Remember, no one "gets away" with evil or unrepentant continual sin and enabling: it is one hundred percent to hell for all eternity, regardless of the lack of obvious smiting any individual (or country) may experience up until that day of personal death.
Sleep well!
Friday, November 28, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, July 25, 2008
People might forgive too soon
Two nights ago just before my evening prayers I had an ominous feeling that people who had wronged me, grievously wronged me, around thirty years ago were going to be severely chastised by God. While these people have done nothing to indicate atonement and certainly have done nothing spiritually or materially generous in recompense in my direction, I was moved to pray to God for him to have mercy on them.
Even I, who knows God very, very well, was surprised at the rebuke that I received. I don't mean like I was yelled at or something went wrong to me, but I viewed a very swift chastisement of people who have benefited materially by my being wronged. I was given to understand quite clearly by God that I am not to forgive people who do not repent, atone, and ask for forgiveness. God describes it with this kind of image, that a person being beaten and tortured cannot have the torturers scream at her "forgive us" while they assault her further.
I thought I would share this communication because I wrote recently on this very topic, and there has been a pressure put upon pious people to "forgive," even before the sinner or criminal has made even nominal admission of guilt and regret.
So, sorry a-holes, but I'm not to forgive anyone for anything, even though I reluctantly, but sincerely, tried (half knowing the answer in advance but still surprised at how swiftly God responded to demonstrate that his chastisement, even decades later, will come to those who refuse to repent). Additionally, do remember that God promises that his vengence for wrongs to him and against the innocent will fall on multiple generations (since those who benefit, especially materially, from their parents' trangressions will also have to pay for the injustice). Therefore, a delay in chastisement often only means that God will chastise multiple generations, and I've seen some examples of that recently. It's not like the Bible hasn't made that abundantly clear. "Experts" ought to be more thorough in their Bible study and not cherry pick.
Even I, who knows God very, very well, was surprised at the rebuke that I received. I don't mean like I was yelled at or something went wrong to me, but I viewed a very swift chastisement of people who have benefited materially by my being wronged. I was given to understand quite clearly by God that I am not to forgive people who do not repent, atone, and ask for forgiveness. God describes it with this kind of image, that a person being beaten and tortured cannot have the torturers scream at her "forgive us" while they assault her further.
I thought I would share this communication because I wrote recently on this very topic, and there has been a pressure put upon pious people to "forgive," even before the sinner or criminal has made even nominal admission of guilt and regret.
So, sorry a-holes, but I'm not to forgive anyone for anything, even though I reluctantly, but sincerely, tried (half knowing the answer in advance but still surprised at how swiftly God responded to demonstrate that his chastisement, even decades later, will come to those who refuse to repent). Additionally, do remember that God promises that his vengence for wrongs to him and against the innocent will fall on multiple generations (since those who benefit, especially materially, from their parents' trangressions will also have to pay for the injustice). Therefore, a delay in chastisement often only means that God will chastise multiple generations, and I've seen some examples of that recently. It's not like the Bible hasn't made that abundantly clear. "Experts" ought to be more thorough in their Bible study and not cherry pick.
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