God Does Not Punish People

Occasional Sunday Articles May 8, 2021

It is not uncommon to hear some people blaming God for bad things they have experienced in their lives. For instance, those who have been subjects of accidents, unemployment, sickness, social injustice including discrimination, poverty including hunger and homelessness, crime including terrorist acts, natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes, etc., may go about lambasting God for allowing such terrible things to happen to them. Some may even go as far as denouncing God's very existence, with negative arguments like, surely, if God really exists, he would not have let them suffer the bad things they went through.

At the same time, some staunch believers of God who have been victims of bad things from others, and particularly crime and social injustices, may not blame God, but will turn to him through prayers, asking him to deliver severe punishment to the perpetrators of the criminal acts.

Unfortunately, however, both beliefs about God's role in bad things that happen to us as individuals or community; or that he punishes those responsible for unleashing such things on us, are totally false. We will now tell you why.

First and foremost, God does not punish people. God has given us intelligence and individual freedom hence ability to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. Choices that are wrong take us away from God and closer to Satan. There are the bad choices we make, buttressed by Satan's destructive and harmful actions and directions that lead us to wrong/dangerous situations that deliver bad things to our lives. Even when we are close to God, Satan can still infiltrate us and trigger harmful incidence in our lives or lead us to dangerous situations, albeit in such cases, God will rescue us if we ask him for help.

Even children can be close to Satan if their parents/guardians guide them wrongly or are left to live unguided through neglect. God requires parents/guardians to guide children in their choices. Satan does not distinguish the ages of those who can worship him, or he can infiltrate! People of all ages can therefore be agents of Satan or infiltrated by Satan to unleash satanic bad things on others.

Although God does not punish those who harm others under the influence of Satan, and particularly Satan worshipers/agents, the latter, however, may pay extremely high price for their actions because Satan will always unleash very harmful actions on them as well. Satan is not grateful! He does not recognize or appreciate services rendered to him by those who worship him! Satan’s harmful actions to his worshipers may include: making it possible for them to ultimately face severe prosecutions for the bad things they have done to others; serious personal issues; and many other personal circumstances that may lead to very miserable ending. Such eventualities to agents of Satan may be misinterpreted by some God worshipers, as been God's punitive actions!

Second, further to harmful actions and directions from Satan, the cause of bad things that happen to us as individuals or community may be inherent in ourselves as individuals, or in the society that we live in, both locally and globally. We discussed this in our previous articles, but we would, nonetheless, like to put that into the context of this article.

Bad things like diseases and their effects including physical disabilities, environment pollution and its consequences, accidents, wars and their consequences, poverty including hunger and homelessness, discrimination including genocide and racism, etc., are all man-made hence a product of society per se. All such man-made bad things are preventable, but often, we as individuals or community deliberately choose not to prevent their occurrence. Even the deleterious impacts and human costs of many natural disasters can be avoided through appropriate human actions like good governance, proper natural resources management, proper land use planning and development control, appropriate environmental quality standards, and adequate investments in effective global early warning systems, among others.

Because God has given us intelligence and ability to choose what is right and wrong in the form of individual freedom, he expects us to be capable of controlling diseases, managing earth's natural resources appropriately, and organizing ourselves for the good and benefit of us all. But then, we often choose not to do what we are capable to do for ourselves as mankind, for reasons that are mainly based on individualism, selfishness, and obsession with material wealth. We will exemplify as thus.

First, while there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, egoistic and non-inclusive decisions and actions by some individuals, companies, and even governments may create artificial shortages of food in the world, resulting hundreds of millions of people to face unnecessary starvation.

Some silly and immoral arguments like fear of distortion of markets, or deterrence of local agricultural sectors in recipient countries, may, for instance, lead to excess food in richer countries been destroyed rather than been distributed for free to the poor and hungry worldwide! Starvation may also be deliberately caused by mankind per se through embracing sectarian values as well as some political models and situations that are deterrent to effective distribution of food to those affected by famines. So, while food may be readily available, it may, however, be inaccessible to those who desperately need it due to distribution problems. Cases like this have been reported in Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Yemen.

Second, we know how some materially obsessed greedy heads of state and other ruling elites have been stealing massive amounts of their national wealth, while majority of their citizens are living in abject poverty. There are many examples of such leaders and politicians particularly in Asia and Africa. Parallel to this example, are the greedy so called entrepreneurs or investors mostly from the West and operating under the banner of globalization, who actively loot the wealth of poor and developing nations through: evading corporation taxes and other types of revenue taxes, paying exploitative low wages to local workers, and using their wealth to corrupt poor local officials into signing trade and investment deals that economically favor the entrepreneurs/investors and their countries of origin.

Third, we are all aware that civil wars always lead to the killings, all sorts of severe sufferings including hunger and diseases, as well as displacement of many innocent people including children. Yet, in some countries, different political and sectarian factions would choose war instead of talking with one another and have dialogue to resolve their differences hence conflicts. Intelligence and individual freedom gifted to us by God give us capability for peaceful resolution of conflicts but we often don’t use them to that effect!

Fourth, some greedy foreign leaders may start or instigate unnecessary bloody wars in other countries just because they think such wars may lead to easy access to personal and perhaps national wealth afterwards, in the form of post-war reconstruction and engineering contracts, or captured natural resources. To such leaders, material wealth is more important than the lives of others, especially those who are not nationals of their countries or sometime their race! For example, often when a handful of their soldiers or civilians are killed during such unnecessary wars, they will cry wolf and dramatize their sorrow without mentioning the massive numbers of innocent people killed and wounded on the other side!

Fifth, affluent rich countries pursuing pure capitalism may create huge numbers of unemployed people as industrial production become more and more automated through use of robots. At the same time, such countries may also create under class of workers with non-living wages as the wealthy upper class becomes increasingly greedy for unreasonably huge profits. Generated unemployed people and poor lowly paid workers are often blamed by the ruling elite and upper class, as been losers/bums if they end as homeless and beggars. In other words, the egoistic segment of the society will do all it can to convince the victims of non-inclusiveness that hey are themselves to blame for been economically marginalized! Such sophisticated manipulative tactics by the ruling elite and the wealthy upper class, are often aimed at rationalizing denial of public economic assistance to the victims of non-inclusiveness or exerting unbearable and undignified pressure on the victims before they can get any help!

In addition to the above five examples, we should not forget the potential danger posed to human life on earth by development and possession of nuclear weapons by some countries, alias nuclear states. Nuclear bombs have been used twice in war before, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, with catastrophic consequences by which hundreds of thousands of innocent people including children were killed. It is very unlikely that such weapons will be used deliberately in wars again. However, because nuclear weapons are getting extremely powerful, sophisticated, and computerized, there is now possibility that they may be detonated accidentally, or through hacker attacks by let say terrorists, resulting in massive killing of people in the nuclear states per se and beyond. Despite this danger, nuclear states have so far rejected all suggestions for global denuclearization, including some from United Nations.

In concluding this article, we would like to reiterate the following

Firstly, God has given us everything we need in our search for peaceful and happy lives, hence total enjoyment of the wonderful world. However, our refusal or partial acceptance as individuals or community, to embrace the God's offer, through decisions and actions that bring us close to Satan or that are influenced by Satan, as well as egoism and obsession with material wealth, we often find ourselves susceptible to perpetual experience of bad things in our lives.

We must emphasize that obsession with material wealth coupled with egoism, at both the individual and community levels, are probably the most powerful drivers of evil hence bad things in the world. Such obsession and egoism account to a very large extent to: crime, unnecessary wars, poverty, and social injustice in the world today. Even Satan use the two parameters in his relentless endeavors for unleashing misery on earth.

When linked to Satan, material wealth is pseudo-fortune! We have talked about that in previous articles. Accordingly, if you have more material wealth than you need and yet you would not help others, but instead you want more and more of it at all costs, then you should be very wary about your way of life and especially your distance from God. Such egoistic obsession with material wealth is sometimes difficult to comprehend because we all know that our adult life span is a lot shorter than that of most material wealth objects, i.e., capital assets. As such, accumulation of the assets is in strict terms senseless if there are no collective goals for the benefit of others attached to them, and that you intend to implement. In such cases, other people may attach their goals on your massive personal material wealth even if you had stipulated some in your will, or simply waste the wealth when you are gone.

The above notwithstanding, it is the realization that we as individuals or community have God given capacity for ensuring good quality of life on earth, that seems to drive some individuals, governments, and organizations to use some of their wealth and influence to contribute to the containment of some of the implacable problems facing mankind today, particularly poverty. Examples of such contribution are numerous and include the following:

1) Cancellation of massive debts owned by some poor countries to some rich countries, resulting from massive campaigns by people like Bono and Bob Geodof, and responsible positive response by presidents like Bill Clinton of the USA. Cancellation of huge debts has contributed to a great deal to alleviation of poverty in indebted poor countries through redirecting the hitherto debt payments to development projects.

2) Funding programs aimed at eradicating serious mass diseases, that include the following:

i) The Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access alias COVAX initiative that was launched in April 2020 by WHO, EU, and Government of France, in response of covid-19 pandemic. The initiative is a global pooled procurement mechanism for covid-19 vaccines, aimed at ensuring fair and equitable distribution and access to the vaccines for all 190 participating countries. Under the initiative, covid-19 vaccines are provided free of charge to 92 low and medium income countries. ii) The iconic and largest global health program ever called Presidential Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that was initiated and launched by US Ex-President George W Bush in 2003. The program made available over $15 billion for combating HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. iii) Bill & Belinda Gate Foundation multi billion funding of endeavors geared towards eradication of malaria and other infectious diseases iv) Rihanna and Madonna use of part of their personal wealth to fund improvement of medical and health facilities in Barbados and Malawi respectively.

It is important to caution that, from the spiritual perspective, raising funds for charitable causes from others, while you have massive personal wealth that you do not share any of it with the less fortunate is not good, as it may be mere strategic cover up of egoism!

Secondly, we would like to reiterate that God has nothing to do with bad things that happen in our lives, as well as the consequences perpetrators of bad things may face for their actions. Because it is us as individuals or community who create problems and deliver bad things to ourselves despite having God given capacity for avoiding getting into such circumstances, it is therefore our responsibility to do something about that if we do not like what we have done to ourselves or the outcomes. Blaming God for deleterious outcomes of our own flawed decisions and actions or expecting God to intervene in favor of the victims of the outcomes, is like children blaming their parents/guardians for the consequences of stubborn refusal of good guidance from the parents/guardians!

Notwithstanding, however, God can guide us in our decision making as well as in our actions, hence protect us from bad things, if we are close to him and ask for help. God's help is not automatic, you have to ask for it explicitly through prayers. Even those who are close to Satan can get help from God if they denounce Satan, get close to God, and ask him for help. Parents/guardians should also ask for help from God through prayers to protect their children from bad things. A person who is not close to God hence close to Satan, is synonymous to a computer system without protection software!

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Last update: May 16, 2021

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God Does Not Punish People

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