GOD AND PUNISHMENT - WHY BELIEF IN A GOD WHO SHOULD PUNISH SINNERS IS
VINDICTIVE
God may have to punish in this world to restrain sinners but that is only
necessary because of the kind of world it is. People are able to harm and thus
what cruelty they do is dealt with after it happens. He could make another
world and populate it with people in force fields where nobody can harm anybody
else.
Punishment is certainly an evil. It is not a nice thing even if it is
necessary. It does not change the evil inside the person unless the person
decides to change so it is really the person who can change. Punishment may
educate and inspire change but these things can be done without it. Though it is
good to try and convert through punishment on earth - when we have to punish we
may as well try to change the person through it - punishment is adding the evil
of suffering to the evil in somebody's heart and the evil they have inflicted.
It doubles the evil. It is worse to commit theft in a country that will jail you
for it for then you are not just committing the evil of theft but committing the
evil of pulling evil on yourself by the risk of jail. Theft is not so bad where
you will get away with it as long as you stop doing it.
God should make it possible for the person to have the bad intention but do
no harm with it for he makes it possible for the person to evade any punishment
by repentance. Though it is good to will the punishment of the evil in the
person on paper it is bad in practice. There is some sense in saying the person
should be punished but there is not enough sense in it to justify punishing. To
make sense of this perhaps this parable will be of assistance: A man murdered
his lover in cold blood. He deserves death becauseshe killed him. That is pure
logic. But it does not mean we should kill him. One way it does but because you
cannot destroy a person for a person is valuable even after they take a life so
you cannot do it. This implies that the welfare of the person is more important
than punishing them. The person comes before the punishment. It implies that God
has no business punishing anybody once they leave this world and certainly that
he has no right to punish people forever in Hell. If the person is absolutely
valuable then it follows that every moment of that person's life is as well.
Therefore the person deserves only happiness in this world and in the next no
matter what he or she does. Yes she or he does deserve to suffer but this
deserving is blanked out by the treatment she or he deserves as a person. The
doctrine of Hell which Jesus called eternal punishment shows a lack of moral
sense among the Christians and just how abominable many of their doctrines are.
God is an evil doctrine because it implies that a cosmic fuss should be made
over the hidden and harmless but evil intentions of the heart.
If punishment is so faulty then it is worse to hurt a person to reform them.
Why? Because if the punishment is bad though they ask for it and deserve it then
to hurt them without thinking of what they deserve is worse because if it is bad
to give a person what pain they deserve, it is worse to give them pain that is
not concerned with what they deserve. This reasoning is based on the free will
defence. The free will defence teaches that God gave us free will and we abuse
it so evil is not his fault. Because we do bad we deserve evil. So when we
suffer it is not that God wants to reform us, it is that he wants to punish us.
Religion has to say that if evil is for a divine purpose then it follows
that all suffering is rooted in punishment and that is its prime purpose.
It may think that even if it does not have the courage to say it.
