Sunday Inbox Inspirations
3rd Sunday of Lent
Cycle C
March 20, 2022
Does God Punish?
There is a way of thinking about God that makes me very uncomfortable.
Over the years, I have heard some Christians, including some Catholics, labeling certain people as sinful and even evil. As if that isn’t enough, some take it a step farther.
They say that when bad things happen to those “sinful” people, it is God punishing them. So, maybe those people have fallen on hard times financially or maybe they have come down with a serious sickness.
Some say that God is punishing them because they have been bad. The bad things that are happening to them are God’s intentional punishment.
By the way, I even heard some say this about the Covid pandemic. Some have said that the world has gotten so bad that God sent this to punish us and bring us back to himself.
God Does Not Punish
I don’t believe in any of that and, in today’s gospel, Jesus debunks this way of thinking.
The people around Jesus bring up a recent event. Some folks up in Galilee were put to death by the Roman official Pilate.
They were thrown into a fire that they themselves were using for their religious ritual. Jesus realizes that the people around him are thinking that those Galileans who were killed must have done something bad.
They must have been really bad sinners, and Pilate’s action was really God punishing them. And Jesus says: “No way!
“They probably weren’t any more sinful than any of you. And for sure, God doesn’t work this way.”
Jesus himself then raises another example. A building had collapsed, and some people were killed.
And again, Jesus insists that those people weren’t any more sinful that anyone else. This was not God punishing them for being sinful persons.
Not Punished for Sin
So, what I see here is Jesus teaching us something about our image of God.
The point is that God is not a punisher. Yes, sometimes bad things happen to us.
But bad things don’t just happen to bad people. They happen to good people too.
They just happen. God is not a punisher or inflictor of bad things.
Jesus’ dominant theme is that God loves us. And a loving God does not turn his back on us and punish us; it is we who turn our back on God.
God just keeps loving us when we foul up and keeps trying to draw us closer to himself. That’s the correct and healthy image of God.
Punished by Sin
One of our good Catholic theologians puts it this way.
We are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins. Let me repeat that: we are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins.
This is really a key point and may be a shift in our understanding. So, yes, you and I can sin, but it is really our sins that punish us.
For example, if I keep on holding a grudge against someone, the bitterness in my heart can really eat away at me and distort me as a person. It’s like crunching a piece of paper and holding it tightly in my fist.
After a while it is gets painful, and then a little while longer, and my hand almost gets paralyzed and gets hard to open up. That kind of grudge-holding or failure to forgive ends up hurting and punishing me.
So, the point is that we are not punished for our sins by an all-loving God. Instead, we are punished by our sins – to the sadness and disappointment of our loving God.
Repentance
At the end of today’s passage, Jesus gives the image of the fig tree.
Scripture scholars tell us that Jesus is not saying that he is going to cut us down as someone might cut down a tree that bears no fruit. Instead, Jesus is trying to shake us up a bit.
It’s as if he’s grabbing us by the shoulders and saying: “Wake up! Turn back to God!
“Identify the sin in your lives and repent of it. Because if you don’t, that sin is going to hurt and punish you.
“Just turn around and look at your loving God! And live out of that love and you’ll be fine.”
Fr. Michael Schleupner
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