God doesn't punish sins in this life?

[BarbaraTherese]

buffalo:

God is all loving and perfectly just. He has to judge perfectly.

The justice dimension is not taught very well anymore.

Hi there Buffalo…Yes indeed God is Just and His Mercy flows from His Justice. He has Mercy because He is Just: “that you be without reproach when you judge, oh see a sinner was I conceived”(Divine Office). God’s Justice is not vengeaful or punishing. I think God can be angry…but unlike us He is not vengeaful. But rather Merciful to all who call on Him. He does not punish sinners, rather the punishment is in the sin itself - it comes with sin.

Barb in Bethanyhttp://www.smileytown.com/application/content/love0001.gif

 

[mspencer]

Your remarks involve matters that I don’t understand well. If God does not punish, how could Jesus have spoken about those who are thrown into the place where the worm does not die and the fire never quenched?(Mk 9:48). On the other hand, Saint John said repeatedly that God is love; he didn’t say God is justice. love it must be is the important thing about God. How are these two things together in God, whose Being is one and indivisible in reality, I don’t know. I will have to spend time in thought and prayer on this question.

First, to quote MiJoy:
Absolutely! In God there is peace and joy, fulfillment and adventure for I think the spiritual life is the greatest adventure a human being has the priviledge to emabark upon.
Whereas the lost in sin and the crazy pursuit of pleasure and gratification are basically very unhappy people if one really gets to know them. In fact, and I come across many in the area I live, I feel tremendously sad for them and pity them and am compassionate on their unhappiness.

Hi there MSpencer!
I am no Scripture Scholar but I am wondering if ‘punishment’ and ‘correction’ are interchangeable in The Bible. For the point remains if God is a God of Loving Mercy and He is…how then can he deliberately punish? It is a clear contradiction. For if He punishes He is a vengeaful God. In fact He is revengeaful and revewge we are told is sinful. Hence a punishing God makes no sense to me.
However God can and does permit a calamity or negative event to fall as a means of calling a person or group back to Him. It is an act of love, desiring to call sinners back to Him. Time and again in the Old Testament God sends prophets to call the people back to Him and letting them know that if they do not something calamitous will fall upon them. Mostly the prophets were murdered by the people for their trouble…and hence the dreadful event they were warned off came about. And at this point, having experienced the Power of God, returned to him in obedience. These were acts of love, not punishmnet. Acts of love because if they remained (we remain) in our sinfulness Hell is the result brought about by mortal sin itself. Seems God asking us to love Him does not always work…but send a negative event and it is then often that people turn to God.

Again from this tired and worn, wonky armchair!

The passage to which you refer in the New Testament is not connected with sinners getting their reward here…but rather the virtuous who like to be seen as virtuous. Jesus states they have their reward already.

Barb in Bethany smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/3/3_4_101.gif

 

[CyberSaint]

That God killed thousands of people within Israel and without because of their wickedness is irrefutable. The Bible states it clearly. God killed the firstborn of the Egyptians. God killed the wicked in the Flood. God killed the wicked in Sodom and Gomorrah. God killed Ananias and Saphira when they lied to the Holy Spirit. Et cetera. None of this was to get the victims to repent. It was retributive, wrathful.

Does God punish sins in this life. I’d say the Bible gives a resounding YES. Some Marian apparitions state he punishes sin in this life too. I just can’t find anything from the Church on this, at least at the Catechism level.

When I taught my 6th-grade PSR about the Flood, I likened it to a radical containment and elimination of a population over-run by the Plague. The people were over-run by the plague of sin in this case, and God’s destruction of that people probably had in mind the greater good of His people. If he didn’t act, what would wickedness have done to the last of God’s people? Same for the other examples of his wrath. I believe he may have had a greater good in mind- to scare the hell (pdp) out of the rest of the people and/or to excise the cancer of wickedness before it could harm (further) the righteous.

In other words, it is precisely because of his love that he must, he MUST unleash his wrath on the wicked at times.

This is just my own thinking on the matter. I am still looking for something authoritative. But I think my priest was wrong. If the Church doesn’t teach that God doesn’t punish sins in this life, my priest shoudn’t have said it either. It’s just his own opinion. If the Church teaches God does indeed punish sins in this life, then my priest is teaching false doctrine, and he should correct what he said. On the other hand (or third hand?), if the Church teaches God does not punish sins in this life, I would like to be corrected and in that correction I would like to understand the reasoning behind the teaching, if possible.

What is the truth of this matter??

Does anyone have some more for me on this?

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Your remarks involve matters that I don’t understand well. If God does not punish, how could Jesus have spoken about those who are thrown into the place where the worm does not die and the fire never quenched?(Mk 9:48). On the other hand, Saint John said repeatedly that God is love; he didn’t say God is justice. love it must be is the important thing about God. How are these two things together in God, whose Being is one and indivisible in reality, I don’t know. I will have to spend time in thought and prayer on this question.

Hi there MSpencer…thank you for your response and I admire tremendously your closing remarks:

“I will have to spend time in thought and prayer on this question”

This bowled me over and I was struck absolutely by your humility and the criteria virtue of holiness. I am humbled!

Yes, Jesus indeed told us there was a Hell and that it was a terrible place indeed and I hope I can explain this clearly from my understanding anyway. When I sin, the punishment comes with my sin completing that sin unless I repent and ask of God His Divine Loving Mercy. Hence if I commit a mortal sin and remain unrepentant, the punishment that completes the mortal sin is to be cast into hell and forever, for all eternity. This comes with any mortal sin and completes the sin meaning that I not only choose the sin, but the punishment that completes it. In other words I choose Hell.
God does not act outside any sin including mortal sin by a punishment in addition to what completes the sin itself.

And again I think you are completely correct, God is indeed PerfectLove…and because He is Perfect Love, He is Just and because He is Just He is Merciful, from which flows His Infinite Understanding and Insight, Compassion.

Thank you again for your inspiring post which I state most humbly in the light of your inspiring humility…Barb

 

[buffalo]

BarbaraTherese:

Hi there Buffalo…Yes indeed God is Just and His Mercy flows from His Justice. He has Mercy because He is Just: “that you be without reproach when you judge, oh see a sinner was I conceived”(Divine Office). God’s Justice is not vengeaful or punishing. I think God can be angry…but unlike us He is not vengeaful. But rather Merciful to all who call on Him. He does not punish sinners, rather the punishment is in the sin itself - it comes with sin.

Barb in Bethanyhttp://www.smileytown.com/application/content/love0001.gif

God is our father. A father has to sometimes admonish and punish his children. We are Gods children. The OT is the Father fathering His children.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

buffalo:

God is our father. A father has to sometimes admonish and punish his children. We are Gods children. The OT is the Father fathering His children.

Hi there Buffalo…well I can’t say anything to that and beautifully insighted I thought …and in what may befall one in life it is all by the Will of a Loving Father. Thank you…

Barb

 

[LambOfGod]

PROVERBS 3:11

My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction:

PROVERBS 3:12

For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

In Jesus Name Thy Will Be Done, Amen and Amen.

 

[LambOfGod]

Leviticus.26

[13] I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.
[14] But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments;
[15] And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant:
[16] I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
[17] And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.
[18] And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
[19] And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
[20] And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
[21] And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
[22] I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be desolate.
[23] And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me;
[24] Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.

 

[LambOfGod]

Leviticus.26

25] And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
[26] And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.
[27] And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me;
[28] Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
[29] And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
[30] And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
[31] And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
[32] And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
[33] And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
[34] Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
[35] As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
[36] And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
[37] And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
[38] And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
[39] And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
[40] If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
[41] And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
[42] Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
[43] The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.

 

[LambOfGod]

Hebrews.12

1] Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
[2] Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
[3] For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
[4] Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
[5] And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
[6] For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
[7] If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
[8] But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.