Posted on: 24 Nov 2021
[Shri Anil asked: Pādanamaskāram Swami: In a Quora forum a friendly discussion took place with a Christian devotee regarding Your knowledge that ‘any soul receives the misery due to its previous sins and punishment is for reformation of the soul’. The devotee accepted this point but he also adds that punishment need not be always for the previous sins by quoting several examples from the Bible as given below. He quoted the case of Job, a devotee, mentioned in Old Testament in which it is mentioned that Job was a devotee of God and to test Job, God gave lot of misery to him still Job persisted. Another case he referred is the case of healing of blind man in which Jesus said it for the glorification of God and not because of the blind man’s sin. I request You to kindly give reply to the following points raised by him.
I have some queries about your extensive comment. You wrote, “All the punishments are only for reformation of the soul and not for revenge”. Some of Gods’ punishments are never for revenge, but for “tough love” if you will, as a loving parent disciplines his /her children. Agree? Doesn’t the book of Job tell us that Job was without fault & God allowed satan “… to do anything to him but kill him…” that tells us some punishments are not for our sins?
The Bible records God punishing people in this life for their actions through natural disasters. God rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah because of their inhabitants’ depravity (Gen. 19:24-25) and he sent venomous snakes to afflict Israel when they became impatient and spoke against God in the desert (Num. 21:6). Some of these punishments include sending diseases to afflict people such as the plagues upon Egypt (Exod. 7:16-17) and even a plague upon Israel (2 Sam. 24:15).
And this isn’t something God only did in the Old Testament. St. Paul admonished the Corinthians who received the Eucharist while in a state of sin: “that is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:30). St. Luke records how Ananias and Sapphira fell down and died after Peter confronted their dishonest behavior towards the communal collection (Acts 5:9-11).
Now, there is a question about what the biblical authors mean when they say God sent a plague or other disaster. It could be the case that God directly intervened in the natural order to bring such a calamity about or that he permitted a natural evil to unfold and simply chose not to stop it. Either way, the testimony of Scripture shows that we can’t say that God never causes sickness or death as a punishment for sinful behavior.
But that doesn’t mean illness or death are always a punishment for sinful behavior. A central theme of the book of Job was that he had done nothing wrong to incur the afflictions he endured (1:1). In fact, God became angry with Job’s friends for wrongly suggesting Job’s afflictions were punishments for sin (42:7). He tells Job (and the rest of us) that we are not in a position to judge why God allows some evils to occur (38:1-41). That’s because, as God said through the prophet Isaiah, “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (55:9).
Jesus likewise taught that some evils occur without any connection to sinful behavior. He said the victims of a building collapse in Siloam were not any more sinful than Jews that Pontius Pilate slaughtered (Luke 13:2-5) and that no one’s sin caused a man to be born blind from birth (John 9:3). God instead allowed the man to be blinded so that His healing power would be displayed through Jesus’ healing of him. This is similar to why God did not heal St. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (which may have been an illness of St Pual; cf. Gal. 4:13, 15). Paul’s suffering was not a punishment for sin but an opportunity for God’s grace to be revealed. That’s why God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
Not every natural evil should be seen as a punishment for sin. In fact, God usually allows the world to unfold according to the laws He built into it—miracles are the exception, not the rule. Because we live in a world governed by natural laws, we should start with the presumption that any natural evil, whether personal and communal, is a byproduct of those laws and not a specific punishment for sin.]
Swami Replied:- The action of God always is multi-dimensional with several simultaneous angles. God makes the devotee to view in a specific angle, which is important as per the context of will of God. Sin and merit will never cancel each other because their fruits are always experienced separately. Unless the way of reformation involving realisation, repentance and non-repetition of sin is followed fruits of sins are never cancelled. Sometimes, they may be kept in cold storage by the will of God, but, the file is never destroyed. Sometimes, God may postpone the fruits of sins to be enjoyed in future with accumulated interest. You say that punishments can be given by God for the sake of testing the devotee regarding his/her devotion to God. I agree with this. But, simultaneously the punishment of a sin is also consumed in this test without the knowledge of the devotee so that the devotee need not repent for his sin. But, God consumes the punishment of some sin of the devotee so that even if the devotee fails in the test, the devotee need not blame God that unnecessarily he/she is subjected to punishment on failing the test. God might have masked this truth of consumption of a sin in the test so that this point itself is again another test to see whether the devotee will blame or not blame God. Knowledge of all angles need not be revealed by God to the devotee in view of the context of a specific angle, which alone is revealed by God. Without denying your examples, I am giving this explanation, which allows your argument in open phase and simultaneously allows My argument also in hidden phase of background.