God, being all love, can punish His children? Often, before tragedies, deaths, disasters and unpleasant events, we find the statement: “It was the Lord’s will.” However, it is also known that He is love and unable to do evil deeds. So what do we think? Does God punish or not? To clarify this question, we find in the book of Hebrews, a characteristic of God the Father: “The Lord disciplines those He loves, and punishes whom He accepts as a son” (cf. Heb 12: 6). Then we could give closed it and accept that God punishes and that the Bible confirms this. However, the “Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum, art. 12 “, the Church exhorts us that” to learn accurately the meaning of the sacred texts should meet with no less diligence to the content and unity of all Scripture, taken into account the living tradition of the whole Church and the analogy of faith “. To understand what is in the Letter to the Hebrews, we must look at what Jesus told us of the Father. In John 18.12 Jesus speaks of the shepherd who leaves all the sheep to find that one that was lost. Yet in John 6.26 to 28, Christ refers to the Father’s care in relation to birds and tells us: “You are much more valuable to the ‘Your Father’ than them.” When we read these passages, we think of a father who punishe? In the Book of Sirach, we can find an answer to this question: “Do not say, ‘In God is my sin'” because the Lord does not do what He hates himself. (…) From the beginning, the Lord created man, handed him to the hands of His will and left him in charge of his concupiscence. (…) In the face of man are life and death, good and evil; he will receive what he prefers “(cf. Sir 15.11 to 21). It is worth reading this whole chapter. It turns out, it is often easy to blame God, because then we do not assume the responsibility and consequences of our own choices. The Lord has endowed us with awareness and intelligence to understand the results of our actions. Often we do not take into account how our options also affect people who are around us, and all this generates a result, “what one has sown is what he will reap” (Galatians 5: 7). God does not ‘punish’ those who err, but love can not interfere with the consequences of our choices, allowing reap the error in experience and to take advantage of it for our growth. And in no way does that make God an executioner or avenger The intention of the Lord is one:. Lead us to a true conversion, and He knows that in some situations, pain is the beginning of a new life. Also suffering, when well lived, becomes a source of purification of our sins and the sins of the world. Some people are afraid of God, and therefore do not seek to make mistakes, which does not allow them act like children, but slaves. Others think the reward that the Lord will give you for not making mistakes and measure their actions as selfish mercenaries. However, the entire Bible has the intention to lead understand ourselves like children, only in this way can we truly live and understand that “God treats us like His children. And what son is not corrected by the Father? “. When we have in our hearts the certainty that we are beloved children of God, and that He wants to save us, we begin to look at what we live not as punishment but as opportunities that the Father uses to correct us and bring us closer to Him. “Everything works for good with those who love God” (Conf. Rm 8:28). This must always dwell in us. Not only the good things but also bad work together for our good. Let us ask God for the grace to assume the place of beloved children, and then, not as slaves, we see the act of the Father in our lives as providence for our personal conversion. God bless you all.
