Is Bad Stuff a Punishment for Sins?

A few weeks ago someone wrote me an email asking whether our church believes bad things that happen to us are punishments for sins. I thought other folks might be interested in that question and my answer. So (because it's easier than writing something new), here is my answer. I'd love to hear what you think!

First, you ask “do we believe…?” It’s a rare theological question that can be answered with a sweeping “here’s what Christians believe.” That’s one reason I’m so interested in the other responses. I’ll say upfront that I’m coming from a premise that the Bible is true and a Wesleyan understanding of what it means. In regard to this question, that mainly means I believe God allows humans free will as opposed to predestining everything everyone does.

Rev. Leslie Weatherhead, a pastor in London during the German bombings of WWII, wrote a small book (I think it was called The Will of God) about that question in which he distinguished between God’s perfect will, God’s permissive will, and God’s ultimate will. Basically, he says that because of God’s regard for human free will, God allows some things that he would not prefer (things that people do that are against God’s will are called “sin,” and there is a lot of it), but that ultimately God’s plan unfolds as he desires in the end. In other words, we can mess up our lives and the lives of other people, but we can’t mess up God’s ultimate plan. Rev. 21-22 is going to happen some way, somehow. God is capable of taking our free will choices and weaving them together in such a way that ultimately his final plan works.

That’s the cosmic scale. On an individual level, a lot of the things we experience are the result of what you might call generic human sin, the accumulation of the results of the sinful choices of human beings since Adam and Eve – your “trickle-down effect.” Wars, man-made ecological disasters, etc. are examples of that. Others are the result of the fact that at the Genesis fall, the world was knocked out of kilter (see Romans 8:19-22). In other words, when God created the world, it was good. It didn’t have these destructive hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. And when the earth is restored at the end of time, those things won’t happen either. Same thing with sickness. Jesus healed every sick person who asked him to. There is no sickness in heaven (Rev. 21:4), and Jesus told us to pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is done in heaven (the Lord’s Prayer). So wherever earth is not like heaven, God’s perfect will is not being done. (And part of our job as Christians is to see that those things are changed as much as possible, through justice ministries or medical research or whatever.)

So the short answer is that the bumper sticker is right: “[Stuff] happens.” In Matt. 5:45 Jesus says, he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Luke 13:1-5 says, 1There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? 3I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” (“Likewise” doesn’t refer to the means of death, but that everyone is going to die – repentance doesn’t change physical death but does change the eternal consequences of it, so it’s no longer “likewise.”)

As you point out, there are two ways of looking at it, and I think both are wrong. Fear that God is up there with his lightning bolts cocked, looking for an excuse to fry somebody, is clearly not right. If that was the case, most of us would be pretty singed right now. On the other hand, the idea that if we accept Jesus and try to live right nothing bad will ever happen to us is also clearly not Scriptural. Jesus himself said, In the world you will have tribulation (John 16:33). But he went on to say, But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. I believe if we learn to pay better attention to the nudges, hunches, or intuitions of the Holy Spirit, we can avoid some of that tribulation – we all know of examples when we say, “Something told me not to do that, and I wish I had listened to it.” I believe that “something” is the Holy Spirit. But we can’t miss it all.

Most of the Old Testament examples of punishment threatened for sin were for nations, not individuals. We need to keep that distinction.

And of course there are cases where someone suffers the consequences of their own bad choices, like a person dying of a drug overdose. But I don’t think you can say that is God punishing them for their sins.

On the other hand, there are some specific examples of individuals being punished for their sins in the New Testament, such as Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, or the death of Herod in Acts 12:23. But these are rare, at critical junctures, and I think we are best not to build a doctrine on them against the weight of the rest of the Biblical evidence.

So far I’ve been looking at the sins and saying, “Is God going to punish someone for this?” Maybe you are looking at it the other direction: “This bad thing has happened to me, does that mean I’m being punished by God?” Job’s “comforters” used that kind of theology on Job: “Come on, fess up, you must have sinned or God wouldn’t let this happen to you.” God got really mad at them for misrepresenting him like that. If you are aware of sin, confess it, stop doing it, and move on in the knowledge you are cleansed and forgiven (1 John 1:8). If you aren’t aware of sin, don’t worry about it, because the Holy Spirit will let you know if there is something you need to be aware of (John 16:8). James 1:2 says, 2Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet various trials. Not, “Get all bent out of shape about why it’s happening.” Roll with it. Stuff happens. What counts with God is how we deal with it.

Ultimately, it comes down to this. If you are afraid that some slip or failure is going to cause God to punish you, or send you to hell, I think the clear answer is Romans 5:8. God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. That’s God’s answer to our sin: not punishment; mercy and atonement and forgiveness. God so wants to avoid punishing us for our sins that he sent his only Son to die so God would be able to forgive us instead of punishing us.

Wow! I really got wound up on that. I get really excited when people actually think about things like this. That’s a sure way to distract me from paperwork, give me a nice juicy theological question. I hope my answer helps. I’ll be interested to see what everyone else says.