Grace & Peace!
Good point, but look at parents who yell at their kids when they do something wrong. It’s not because they hate them its because they love them so much. Maybe it’s the same with God. He loves me and in order to get me to stop he allows for bad things to happen
Benjammin, it’s clear, that you’re in
incredible pain because of the “big m” habit, caught between the desire to stop, the knowledge that stopping would be good, and the inertia of habit. It has been said that sin is its own punishment, and it’s true. God is not punishing you.
God is not a human parent–he’s infinitely more loving and understands you infinitely more than you understand yourself! He would never punish you by causing your loved-ones pain: that’s what gangsters do, not your Heavenly Father. He would never punish you by leading you into situations in which you would be bullied or harmed, nor would he keep loved ones from you or cause you to be unemployed. The whole point of the Incarnation is that God wants us to share his life with him–he doesn’t want us to be miserable! The life of Jesus Christ shows us who God truly is–when he rose from the dead after we murdered him, did he rise the God of Death and Vengeance, visiting wrath and punishment on us? No!! He rose full of love and forgiveness for all of us. That’s the sort of God he is. His mercy is truly incomprehensible!!
So incomprehensible is God’s mercy, in fact, that we often can’t believe it. It’s easier for us to believe that God is just a more powerful version of our human parents. Easier to believe that when good things happen to us, God must like us, and when bad things happen to us, God is punishing us. But that’s not the case. Even the saints lived lives of hardship and suffering–holiness of living is no guarantee of a painless life in this world–it’s not called a Vale of Tears for nothing! Life is full of pain and adversity–but not because God wills it, but because we sinful creatures have collectively engineered suffering into the world by our sinfulness.
So no, God is not punishing you. You are punishing yourself–you are blaming yourself for all the bad things that have happened in your life, filling yourself up with such self-hatred that it’s crippling. If only you could see yourself as God sees you–a beautiful and beloved child for whom he wishes nothing less than a life of bliss and union with himself!
Do you know the “Revelations of Divine Love” by Julian of Norwich? I highly recommend it to you. She was a medieval visionary anchoress who wrote: “…our life is all based and rooted in love, and without love we cannot live. And therefore to the soul it is the most impossible thing that can be that God would be angry, for wrath and friendship are two opposites…. I saw no kind of wrath in God, neither for a short time nor for a long." And finally, “…when I saw all this, it was necessary to agree that the mercy of God and the forgiveness is in order to abate and consume our wrath, not His.”
God wants to swallow up all of your self-hatred and wrath in his mercy and forgiveness. The more you hold on to your self-hatred, the more it will come to define who you are–the more you will understand yourself* in terms of your sin*, not in terms of the
redemption offered you by Jesus *Christ! *
But, you might say, that’s easier said than done. And you’re right. It’s often hard to get out from under a burden of self-recrimination, hard to give up an image of ourselves as unlovable. Why? Because our unlovableness explains the world to us–why else would bad things happen to us? We deserve them! But the message of the cross and resurrection is this: God suffers with us–he doesn’t dole out the pain. And it doesn’t matter what you think you deserve–God
loves you, whether you deserve it or not. You are (in the words of Margery Kempe) God’s dear-worthy darling. He doesn’t want to punish you–
he wants to give himself to you and share his life with you.
Have you spoken with your priest about your feelings, either in confession or in a more general counselling scenario or both? I would urge you to take advantage of the sacrament of confession and to seek counsel from your priest–that’s what he’s there for! And if you fall into old habits, know that God is waiting to help you get back up again. The important thing is making progress in grace–we often feel like we have to be perfect in order for God to accept us or in order for us to be in a state of grace, but I think human perfection consists in progress in grace, not in a static state. Avail yourself of the sacraments and of the counsel of your priest!
May God give you strength to resist temptation, grace to stand up again when you fall, and the knowledge that he loves you, no matter what!
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
