I’ve been thinking about whether God is punishing us.
When COVID-19 crept into our world last winter, most of us believed we’d make our way through this cruel and deadly plague by summer. Here we are months later, and the latest surge engulfs us with suffering, death and an increasing dread.
In November, we had an election that we hoped would resolve the bitter partisan divide that has set us against one another. Instead, weeks later, we’re mired in political chaos that feels like an ominous threat and a political battle that will go on for a long time before we hold hands again as fellow citizens.
Supporters of US President Donald Trump protest inside the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.
Credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images (ABC News)
I grew up with a vengeful God and like to believe I’ve outgrown such nonsense. But I find ancient bits and pieces of me wondering at moments if that vengeful God is pissed off at us and is punishing us for some undefined transgression.
This disturbing thought pricked a memory of a lecture I heard decades ago. A professor of religion said that unless your faith can make some sense out of suffering, your faith is a thin and ultimately useless cover against the onslaught of life’s predictable pain. The memory made me wonder what role religious faith plays in this terrible moment of so much physical suffering and political confusion, and whether faith can recover from such an assault.
For increasing numbers of us, the ancient plea for relief, How long, O Lord? has become nonsensical. There is no God up there to either bless or curse us. In the COVID plague, there is only physics, chemistry and biology – the forces we refer to as Mother Nature – doing what science tells us they do, running their natural course, even when that course is viral and deadly.
And we’re reminded that politics is a human endeavor, in which flawed men and women shape the governmental guardrails for the rest of us. So those among us for whom God is gone confront these dark moments without hope of divine intervention.
Perhaps some of you live with traditional religious convictions which, as different as they may be, each contain a narrative in which suffering and chaos find their place in a divine plan that God or Fate is working out. Among many Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Muslims, Baha’is, Protestants, Buddhists, Evangelicals and others, suffering and chaos fit in to a story of ultimate redemption.
These believers may wrestle, as others of us do, with God’s role in the pain and injustice of physical suffering or political confusion, but since God is in charge there will be ultimate vindication for those who suffer faithfully. So they remain hopeful even when hope is a dim glow through a thick haze.
Then there are the rest of us who don’t see God’s plan in all of this, people of faith who struggle to find God’s role, if any, as we live under this canopy of gloom. If what we’re enduring is God’s collective punishment, what is our collective offense? How do we deserve this ravaging pain, this raging confusion?
Innocent children are dying or orphaned and, as is typical, the poor and marginalized suffer physically and politically in greater numbers than those of us who are privileged. Surely if some God is in on this injustice, this God is a cruel tyrant whom fewer and fewer of us can or should revere.
Perhaps there is a hands-off God who creates us then sets us free to live out our human experience, neither punishing nor rescuing us but leaving us responsible for the good and the evil in our lives and trusting us to create our own future.
But at a time like this, of what worth is such a God? If God doesn’t intervene to help us, why would we even nod our devotion to such an absent Deity? Aren’t we wiser to rely upon ourselves, holding ourselves accountable for what happens in this drama and ignoring this distant, useless God?
I have a friend who insists, through this difficult time when God seems impotent, that it is enough that God walks with us through the joys and horrors. She believes that God joins us in this vast expanse of the human experience, not to punish or rescue us but as our companion on the journey. It is not as much as she wishes and sometimes pleads for from God, but it is enough, at least for the time being, to lend her comfort and sustain her faith.
Then there are people of faith who search but cannot find a coherent answer to God’s role in all of this. God doesn’t intervene to punish or bless us, nor do they sense God’s companionship in the midst of the chaos. Still, they cling to their faith. It is enough for them to take God off the hook, to say It’s all a Mystery, and to shudder as they march faithfully into the fog of an uncertain future.
Some of us left God behind a long time ago; or, perhaps better, we feel that God left us behind and therefore has no role in our struggle.
But for those of us who either cling to remnants of an earlier faith or are still all in, deep-down in our devotion, these are chilling moments in our relationship to God. It’s frightening to wonder what the virus and the deaths and the political chaos will do to damage or destroy these relationships once we’ve made our way through.
That's just what I've been thinking - what do you think?
Blessings,
– Rick