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I know someone who believes that God is punishing her for past mistakes. I believe she's really just making the same mistakes over again.
How can one tell?
Do people here believe that God punishes us? Like you were rude to a customer so God makes your heater konk out on the coldest day of the year? That kind of thing? Cosmic retribution -- a balancing of accounts...karma...
<insert "your karma ran over my dogma" joke to get it out of the way early>
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I believe that God doesn't punish those who are bad, but helps those who ask him for it via information, not via miracles.
Posts: 2292 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Do I believe that God sometimes punishes us in this world for our mistakes? Yes, but not as often as some people think. Far more often, I think, it's more of a wake up call, a reminder to change.
OTOH, I don't think that worrying about whether she's being punished is the useful question here. Granted, she thinks she's being punished for past mistakes. What then is she doing DIFFERENTLY now? When a parent does a GOOD job of "consequencing" (we don't say "punishing" anymore, it's passé ) a kid, the end result should be that the kid thinks long and hard about their actions.
If someone thinks that they "were rude to a customer so God makes your heater konk out on the coldest day of the year," do they make a concerted effort not to be rude to customers? Analyze their behavior and see if it's a pattern? Take anger management classes? Do something to change what they recognize as improper behavior?
Or do they just figure they've worked off some "karmic debt" and are back to square one?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Or do they just figure they've worked off some "karmic debt" and are back to square one?
Exactly!!!!
And by the way, I reserve the right to slap the first person who uses "consequencing" in my presence. My face was frozen in a horrid rictus for nearly a full minute as a I pondered that word.
Horrid, truly horrid!
"I'm sorry, Johnny can't come out to play, he's being consequenced right now."
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For some reason when I opened this thread I could have sworn it said (capitalization mine) "KAMA and Christianity" instead of "KARMA and Christianity" Posts: 1466 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I'm still annoyed that The Matrix: Revolutions confused Karma with Dharma. Jeez, couldn't the Wachowskis be troubled to buy a book?
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I had a friend who believed/believes that because she broke a promise to God (that she would quit smoking), He allowed/caused her baby to be stillborn. It was very hard to be a good friend to her, because she refused to believe in a Loving God, and because she refused to believe that anyone could love her.
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I have no idea what God is doing, but I assume it must be good in the end, and that's all that really matters.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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jexx, my friend isn't quite as extreme, but I really just wanted to brow-beat some sense into her.
But you know...mote in your own eye, etc...
So I gently explained that I thought God is not above teaching us a lesson, but that there's often enough no guiding force behind the things that happen to us. We can still learn lessons from events that appear random without having to ascribe everything to God. I learned not to use extension cord for in-the-wall wiring but it wasn't because God sent Mr. Treadwell into my life as the previous owner of a home I bought.
Maybe it's a little tougher with moral or spiritual lessons to decide that the message may not be from God. I guess I'm just of the opinion that NOT everything happens for a reason. Or at least not a reason we are privy to or can hope to get the right meaning out of.
So the stillborn baby isn't because God got angry at someone who failed to quit smoking. It COULD be because she smoked all through her pregnancy. Or it could just be that the baby wasn't forming properly and the fetus wasn't viable no matter how healthy a life she lead.
She'll never know.
And giving credit to or blaming God is like giving up, IMHO.
Sometimes you have to give up. But most of the time, you probably shouldn't.
Oh well. I'm not really making sense here. It just got me wondering if...once again...I'm so far outside the mainstream as to be incomprehensible to most Christians.
Hey Dana! I'm sure there are cogent arguments to be made here. Care to wade in?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote: And giving credit to or blaming God is like giving up, IMHO.
I disagree, but I agree too.
I believe that EVERYTHING comes from God, and that acknowledging that is a good thing. But that doesn't let ME off the hook!
I'll use my divorce as an example. Various things I did and did not do, and things my ex did and did not do are the PRIMARY and proximate causes of the divorce. But He, for whatever reasons He has, many of which may be beyond my ken: caused me to meet my ex in the first place, caused various things to happen (spacing of kids, personality of kids, jobs that were available to me and to ex, availability of particular therapists, and a million tiny events each and every day).
I cannot blame Him for my divorce, even though I believe that He chose to 'let' (that's not exactly the right verb) it happen. And I absolutely believe that it is my responsibility to LEARN THE LESSONS that come from it -- lessons that perhaps I failed to learn from earlier opportunities.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Assuming we have free will (which I believe wholeheartedly), I believe we are responsible for our own choices and our own mistakes.
Whether God or random chance puts the opportunities in front of us, it is up to us to choose which opportunities we accept and which we reject. We act or don't act. We do it the way we know we should, or we don't.
And when bad things happen even when we try our best, or when good things happen and we weren't trying at all, I have a hard time finding God's hand in that.
I think there's a lot to be said for praying for guidance and "letting go" of the things you can't control -- in essence asking God to take those on. But that too is a conscious choice we make.
But I truly believe that God helps us when we ask and when we need it. But he doesn't stand around with the middle finger poised to flick us on the back of the head (cosmically speaking, of course) when things start going too good for us, or we catch an undeserved break now and again.
That kind of idea, I think, came from the Greeks and their anthropomorphised gods. And it worked for them because there were multiple gods who might war with each other and take favorites, and mess with each others favorites.
With monotheism, I think you have to propose that God is a schizophrenic spiteful creature to believe that He's watching for opportunities to yank our chain, pull the rug out from under us, etc.
Even if we HAVE been sinning.
I understand the notion of the wakeup call. But is that God talking or our own guilt and innate desire to be what we know we should be anyway?
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