Is God punishing us?

Today we commence the Advent Season. As we await anew the coming of the Lord, we grapple as a people with painful questions. Because of the spate of natural and man-made tragedies — the MILF assault in Zamboanga City, the Bohol earthquake, Typhoon Yolanda, the PDAF scam — many of us have wondered whether God is punishing us.

One catechist maintained that God allowed the earthquake to destroy our centuries-old churches in Bohol because of the sacrilegious manner we have turned them into tourist attractions instead of using them solely for sacred and liturgical purposes. A prelate has voiced his opinion, shared by many, that these calamities manifest the wrath of God over the pending legislation of the RH Bill. Still others opine that the earthquake and super typhoon are God’s ways of punishing us for the extensive corruption, symbolized by the PDAF scam, permeating all levels of our society.

To be human is to interpret our experiences. We abhor meaninglessness, and thus, wrack our minds to find reason to make sense of even our most devastating experiences.

As we commence the Advent Season, allow me to share four insights.

Call to intellectual humility. In trying to find meaning underlying this series of catastrophes, we must bear in mind that whatever we claim to be God’s intentions can only be speculative, the projection of our spiritual reflections into the mind of God. Amidst our unanswered questions about the suffering of the innocent multitude, we must admit that we cannot fathom the inscrutable mind of God.

Call to scriptural meditation. In Jeremiah 29:11, the Lord declares “I have plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Our God desires fullness of life for all. Moreover, while the Lord detests and is angered by our sinful ways, the Lord confesses in Hosea that unlike us, He will not give vent to His anger (Hos. 11:8-9). He will not destroy us out of wrath, but will transcend his rage and disappointment with us in order to heal and renew us.

But others might point to other biblical passages that suggest a wrathful God, including our Gospel reading today (Mt. 24:37-44). How do we select and interpret scriptural passages then?

The Pontifical Biblical Commission teaches us that the meaning of a particular passage is shed light upon by the canonical meaning; that is, the over-all meaning of the Bible, the entire deposit of faith. The entirety of divine revelation which reaches its apex in the Christ-event reveals to us a life-giving, loving and merciful God. Our statements about God’s intentions behind these calamities ought to be gauged by and consistent with the canonical meaning of scriptures, the incredible revelation of a God who loves us unto death, death on a cross.

Call to contemplation of the Cross. Our question why the Lord allows us to suffer will never be satisfied intellectually by a rational proposition or a philosophical argument. God has responded most eloquently to our gnawing and nagging question about human suffering not with a proverb or parable or divine saying, but through the event of the Cross. In Christ crucified, God has embraced our suffering perhaps to hush our incessant questioning. The eternal God has appropriated human suffering in order to show solidarity with us, in order to make Himself accessible to us. God’s response to our question--why allow us to suffer?— is not a logical verbal reply, but an absurd divine act, the infinitely loving act of God’s self-sacrifice on the cross. The mute and lifeless Jesus hanging on the cross is God’s most sublime response to our protest against suffering.

Call to solidarity as worship. As God in Jesus Christ has expressed communion with suffering humanity, to become God-like is to enter and embrace the suffering of our brothers and sisters who have lost loved ones and livelihood to the massive earthquake and the super typhoon.

Going back to our question — is God punishing us through this spate of calamities? What is at stake is our image of God. Personally I cannot worship a God who will punish millions of innocent individuals for the sin of the few. I cannot worship a God who will destroy the earth and human lives just to prove a point. The God I worship is a God of love and mercy, who, according to Isaiah, intensely suffers with us, like a mother in labor (Is. 42:14). The God I worship is the God of justice who, according to the Book of Exodus is moved by the anguish of all those weighed down by suffering (Ex. 3:7-8). And because the God I worship is the God of life who wills fullness of life for all, to worship God is to be a conduit of God’s love and mercy.

Authentic worship of God entails sharing our resources, no matter how little we have, with those in greater need, collectively laboring to provide shelter for the homeless millions, livelihood for the dispossessed, offering the balm of consolation to the grieving, and hope to the despairing.