{"id":6086,"date":"2020-04-05T17:41:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-05T07:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6086"},"modified":"2020-04-05T18:13:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T08:13:14","slug":"why-is-god-punishing-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/why-is-god-punishing-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is God Punishing me?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Why is God Punishing me?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from a sermon by Fr David Shehata<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

John 9:1-41<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gospel of John was written after the other three gospels. John did not aim to write a narrative of Jesus’ life but to reflect on the seven signs He performed that revealed His divinity. The sixth of the seven signs was the healing of the man born blind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While walking with His disciples, they ask Him, \u201cRabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind<\/em>?\u201d (John 9:2). They didn\u2019t wait to ask Him privately, but in front of the man born blind who could clearly hear what they were saying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In first century\nPalestine, there was a close association between sin and suffering. If someone\nsins, there will be punishment. This was the Judaic mentality and it went\nunquestioned, up until this moment. If this man was blind, it had to be the\nresult of sin. If he was born this way, then it was clearly a sin of his\nparents that was passed on to their offspring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this may seem absurd to us now, it is possible that we share a similar logic. How many times have people speculated that the coronavirus pandemic is God punishing the world? How many times have people inferred that this must be the result of God\u2019s anger and wrath? Even on a personal level, when faced with tribulation many of us will question, \u201cGod, why are You punishing me?\u201d<\/em> We will reason and speculate that every bad thing I have done in my life is what has caused my tribulation, that my sin has triggered God’s wrath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus, in this story,\ngives us a third alternative. It\u2019s not punishment, it\u2019s not sin, \u201cbut that the works of God\nshould be revealed in him<\/em>\u201d (John 9:3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christ\u2019s response is for our benefit also. There is a different purpose to tribulation. Maybe God wants us to learn something new from this experience that we wouldn\u2019t be able to learn in any other way. Maybe God knows the nature of my heart and knows the best way to reveal His glory in my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Orthodoxy, we argue that always – in any trial, in any tribulation – there is always a bigger purpose. There is always a hidden blessing that will come from my struggles, if we choose to dig a little deeper. The very best is coming, and we won\u2019t know the full extent of it until we have reached eternal life. This is especially difficult to see while the tribulation is unfolding before us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of the man born blind, he was about 35-40 years old, we don\u2019t know his exact age. Why would God allow so much time to pass before revealing the purpose of his blindness? Does that not seem like an unnecessarily excessive period? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all their affliction He was afflicted,<\/em><\/strong>
\nAnd the Angel of His Presence saved them;
\nIn His love and in His pity He redeemed them;<\/em> – Isaiah 63:9<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Isaiah, we are given divine reassurance. Make no mistake. Every single bit of suffering and discomfort, the Lord shares in all our suffering. He doesn\u2019t just watch over us as a distant observer. This could never be the case. He bestows compassion and mercy upon us during our times of suffering, every step of the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Gospel of Temptation, the Lord underwent every temptation that we can face. Every bit of suffering, He has endured too. The difference being that He overcame every temptation. He never bowed down nor fell, and that is our source of strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr Daoud Lamei puts forth the image of the Lord that does everything for our own benefit and our ultimate salvation. Imagine if we could go to the man born blind in heaven and ask him about what he endured on earth. If he was asked the question, \u201cIf you could go back, would you prefer to have your eye sight from day one?\u201d <\/em>This man would turn around, surrounded by God, the angels, the saints and the congregation of heaven, seeing where he is compared to the mere 40 years of suffering and the one encounter he had with the Lord that led to his place in heaven and say with full assurance, \u201cI would not change one thing, this is what led to my edification and salvation. If I had my eyesight, I wouldn\u2019t have encountered Christ in this way. My heart wouldn\u2019t have been changed. My heart wouldn\u2019t have been moved in a way that granted me salvation. It wouldn\u2019t have been worth the risk.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson for us to\nlearn is to stop focusing on who or what is to blame for our situation. The\nearly church fathers argue that the Lord\u2019s voice is clearer in our lives through\ntribulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HH Pope Shenouda III\nused to say that during tribulation, we hear the voice of the Lord and learn\nmore than if we listened to 1000 sermons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is during this time that we no longer focus on who to blame or what to do but we look to God. When we turn to the Lord, He lifts the conversation to Heaven. This is how He responded to His disciples when they questioned whose sin was responsible for the man’s blindness. He told them to stop looking for who to blame and look to the glory that will come from his healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The questions we\nshould be asking are, how is the healing\ngoing to come? How will his life change and How will this tribulation lead him\nto heaven?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our tribulations,\nthe questions we should be asking are, Lord,\nwhat can I benefit? What do you want me to learn?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our focus shifts, we learn to walk by faith and not by sight, just as the blind man did. He didn\u2019t know that the Man that spat on the ground before him, then put dirt where his eyes should be was doing this for his benefit. But he walked by faith, not questioning Christ. This was pivotal to his healing. We must walk with eyes focused on the Lord, looking for the lessons Christ is teaching us that will ultimately bring us to His glory. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why is God Punishing me? Adapted from a sermon by Fr David Shehata John 9:1-41 The Gospel of John was written after the other three gospels. John did not aim to write a narrative of Jesus’ life but to reflect on the seven signs He performed that revealed His divinity. The sixth of the seven signs … Continue reading “Why is God Punishing me?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[239,240,10],"class_list":["post-6086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-punish","tag-tribulations","tag-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6086"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6091,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086\/revisions\/6091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}