Does God Punish Us? | Bishop Barron

Peace be with you. Friends, our gospel is the famous question to Jesus, you know, how many will be saved? I know it's everyone's favorite question. I'm not gonna preach on it. I preached on it a lot I've written a lot so you can consult those but I want to focus on the second reading which is from the marvelous letter to the Hebrews we've been reading from and It's a topic that is also very controversial and very important the topic of the divine punishment Does God punish us, we don't when I was coming of age I said this many times to you there was such a one-sided view of God God is of love and and compassion and Kindness that we never talked about this. Oh, no. No God doesn't punish That's an old-fashioned category and you know, it's dangerous and don't talk about that. God is love well again the problem as I mentioned last week to you is Love is not something namby-pamby Love is willing the good of the other and if we're off kilter then love is gonna be kind of harsh It's Dostoevsky, right? Love is a is a harsh and it's dreadful thing sometimes And is the divine punishment something that? Not in the Bible It's just this later, you know import from some some hung-up spirituality No, in fact, it's impossible To avoid the theme of the divine punishment in the Bible. I'm gonna give you a couple of examples Think of you know It's just a lot of the sufferings we endure in the natural world read in the book of Genesis as a punishment for sin think of the Tower of Babel and the scattering of people and the and the variety of languages is seen precisely as a response in punishment to sin Think of Noah's Ark the destruction of the world the Bible construes as the result of our sin Think of Israel's enslavement in Egypt is construed as chastisement. So is there long wandering in the desert? When Israel loses a battle, I mean almost invariably it's seen as punishment for its its wickedness think of Saul's defeat and as a result of his disobedience to God Think of Eli's death as a result of his sin and that of his son Think of David's punishment in the wake of the Bathsheba incident think of the Babylonian captivity and exile is construed by the prophets as a Response to Israel's sin and I'm just giving you a couple of examples throughout the Old Testament Does God punish Israel? Yeah, it seems to me pretty clearly Can we see in every case If Israel's going through something bad as punishment. No, not in every case, but it's certainly mentioned a lot And you say well, okay, that's that's Old Testament stuff Think again. I'm looking Paul in Tells the Corinthians that many of you are sick and dying because of the way that of the Eucharist The Eucharistic gathering is being abused Look at Ananias and Sapphira two figures in the Acts of the Apostles struck dead because of the way they were handling money improperly and Think of in the culminate book of the Bible the book of Revelation Where this terrible destruction is visited upon the earth as a response to sin now look everybody I understand the complexity of these biblical texts and there are different ways to read them and so on But I think you're kind of hard-pressed To say that divine punishment is not a motif in the Bible I think that's simply not the case. In fact, and it's not a minor motif. It's a rather major motif I've said before, you know the difference between a theology of karma and a theology of grace and and the Bible Yes is a book of grace, but there is a theology of karma as well In other words that that bad behavior is answered in some way by by punishment Yes, that's true in the Bible, too Okay. So how do we make sense of this without falling back into a terrible view of God as a sort of arbitrary? capricious tyrant So, all right, I'm making my way through life and all right, I made a mistake I sinned and so now I have this terrible punishment is visited upon me or is God You know like a puppeteer and sort of playing with us toying with us How do we make sense of this language without falling into that understanding of God? Well, can I suggest to you this little passage for today from the letters of the Hebrews? Gives us the interpretive key and it's a very helpful text listen up my sons Do not disdain The discipline of the Lord nor lose heart When he reproves you For whom the Lord loves he disciplines he scourges Every son he receives Okay, there's the master text Because it's predicated upon the master metaphor for God throughout the Bible Culminating in Jesus own great prayer at the our father But God is best construed not as a deist, you know cosmic force lying in the distance nor is a capricious tyrant but God is best construed as a father as a Parent so now listen to me, especially parents My sons do not disdain the discipline of the Lord their words interesting disciplina It's from the Latin word desiree disciple comes from the same word because it means to learn Huh discipline no arbitrary cruel, you know imposition. No, no discipline properly understood is a learning Process in Greek does that lovely play methane pathane methane think mathematics nothing. He's like to learn Pathane is to suffer Very often our learning comes from our suffering Bring them together God disciplines Those he loves and again love is to will the good of the other God wants to teach He wants to love someone who's deep in sin that will look like and feel like Punishment again parents You know what I'm talking about or anyone that's that remembers their childhood coming of age Think of a little kid now. Let's begin with a like a toddler who's having a tantrum a Tantrum means that he's just not getting his way His will is just completely set against what's best for him and for those around him So the parent will say it's a timeout for you. I Watched parents do is kind of interesting to me Time out and they put the kid in the corner and you you got to be there for five minutes or whatever it is what are we doing there, but They're stopping the resistance of the kids will they're compelling him to stop this destructive behavior destructive to himself and others They're disciplining the child now Parents that never do that So everything my kid does is great I'm never gonna I'm never gonna have a timeout Yeah, well welcome to complete dysfunction right in that child thing now in the Bible Jonah right is told what to do by God Go east by land and Jonah went west by sea. He was throwing a tantrum if you want What does God do? The Great fish swallows him up. Well, that's a that's a disciplining of his will It's a kind of timeout saying that it's stopping Jonah in his rebellion and then limiting his freedom So as to bring him back where God wants him to be Friends, can we sometime fellow sinners here? Listen to me? Can we sometimes understand the suffering? We're going through as a kind of divine restriction of our freedom So as to bring us back where we need to be Now move from a little toddler to an older kid. I remember when I was sixth grade. So, what are you 11 and 6th grade? I was pretty Cooperative kid I do they went along with authorities, but one time there during the winter This great snowball fight broke out. It was the sixth grade against the seventh grades I remember and it was one of these things where everybody got involved, you know Chicago days was plenty of snow around and we got into this big snowball fight and someone must have hit like a little ice or something in a snowball and a kid got hit and it was bleeding and finally, you know outcomes the principal and She was a sister and she's alright Alright, I want all the sixth grade boys all the seventh grade boys in my office now And so I remember we lined up and you know kind of afraid was what's gonna happen Well, she had this this paddle and it really wasn't that painful And we all we came in one by one and then she gave us a whack, you know now again It wasn't physically all that painful, but it was humiliating and the fact that I remember it to this day how many years later? It was humiliating and honestly, I never got involved in a snowball fight like that at school again she punished me in a way that Got my attention and I realized yeah. Yeah, I got I'm not gonna do that again All right, let's say she had never done that but oh no, no, I never punished kids. Oh, no, never never never Welcome to dysfunction You know go a little further in life teenagers 16 17 and They've been drinking and driving in a way that's really dangerous to themselves and to others Would a parent, you know, I'm take away the keys. I mean you cannot drive for the next month you ground it You can't use the car. How cruel of you how? Capricious now, I don't know. It's a punishment that gets the attention limits the freedom and imposes a painful penalty That brings that child back on line Now go a little further go deeper into life. Now. Now you're you're a parent of an adult child late 20s or 30s Stuck in an addiction. Maybe it's taboos or drugs or whatever it is And that addiction has become so destructive of that person's life and the lives of those around him It's become one of these dreadful dreadful spiritual and physical crises And a parent at that point might have to engage in tough love The child comes back broke sick Hopeless and mom and dad. Could you could you please take me in? Can I? No, you can't come back in the house how cruel how awful No, you can't come back in the house. You have got to deal with this issue What are they doing? Well as the term suggests it's an act of love Love is willing the good of the other sometimes this terrible punishment of separation Rejection that terrible punishment is precisely what that addicted person needs to get his or her life back in order You know, so we see all these things readily enough Why can't we see them in regard to God who's not a distant uncaring cause or force? But God who's like a parent our father who art in heaven. We're all his children Can we see readily enough that God would sometimes engage? Would allow things to happen or actively impose punishment So as to bring us back on line Listen to this endure your trials as The discipline of God who deals with you as sons For what son is there whom his father does not discipline good question I mean you if you're a son of a father who never disciplines you you're gonna be dysfunctional son, believe me, right? You can specify it what what good father Whatever refrain from disciplining his son and then listen to this Again, the psychological realism is striking to me at the time. It's administered all Discipline seems a cause for grief But later it brings forth the fruit of peace and justice To those who are trained in its school dead, right? Dead right when you're enduring whatever it is Whatever darkness or difficulty or limitation or it just seems like dumb suffering How how how could God allow this to happen? but in time and with retrospect Can we see okay, you know what that was it was a discipline a learning Discipline, uh, it was a learning that I needed and maybe could not have gotten in any other way Not friends that we should read every type of suffering under this rubric I think that would be wrong to remember when they asked Jesus Who's responsible for this blind man's blindness his own sinners parents and Jesus said neither one It doesn't apply to every single case of suffering But are there times are there times? When yes Our suffering is a type of discipline Precisely what we as children of a loving father need And God bless you