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Retribution

'GOD'S RETRIBUTION' - IS NATURE USED TO PUNISH SINFUL ACTS?

With the most powerful storm in recorded history weakening but every bit as devastating as its predecessors, saint, sinner and blogger alike are again wondering if God really does use nature in retribution for sin.
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Retribution

I don't believe God uses natural disasters as a way to make us pay for sin. We are not to receive our judgement and punishment here on Earth, I believe. In my opinion, God set up a system for the world to take care of itself, and these natural disasters are part of that system. Fires help in revitalizing trees and such in the forests. Hurricanes and such have been hitting this world since before all of the land was inhabited. Volcanoes are erupting on other planets that are not inhabited. There things of that sort happening on places that have no humans on it, so I really don't think it's a basis for retribution from God.

Plus, which I stated slightly above, God isn't a mean God. He isn't going to decide to take out a few thousand people and hit California with an earthquake because they have been bad. We will have to stand before him and make an account of our sin.

Retribution Beliefs Religious General

Well, I don't think it is as retribution, but the Bible talks of the signs we will see before he returns again. I wonder if that might be what is happening.

Retribution

If God doesn't use Nature as retribution then what was Sodom and Gomorah about. I think that God does use Natural Distasters for retribution, we ignore the warnings of our religious leaders so it's time for him to use a more powerful persuasion tool.

Retribution

I still can't believe that God would pick and choose certain parts of certain countries are going to get slammed with natural disasters as a punishment, while other areas go untouched. I do agree that Revelation speaks of natural disasters being a pre-cursor to Christ's return, but, and it's been awhile since I have read through Revelation, I don't recall it saying anything about those foreshadowing events to be a way of punishing us.

If he did, it brings up the questions of how does he choose who gets punished, whic has no sound answer. In God's eyes, all of our sin is the same. Being punished via a natural disaster is not the same as us committing a sin, and because of that sin we cause a problem in our life.

I just can't find it plausible that weather is a means of demise sent from God. Yes, in the Old Testament, before the life of Christ, he used it as a means to stamp out sin. But we have a Savior that they didn't have before, and His purpose of coming here was for us to be forgiven of our sins. If we sin, and our consequence of that is God sending down a firebolt to kill us, then what was the purpose of Jesus experiencing everything he did?

People falling away from God was prophesied. The more it happens, the closer to His return we become. Yes, I believe that he uses the situations we get ourselves into as a way of shaking us back to Him, but I don't believe He would use the deaths of thousands of people from a giant wave to do that.

Retribution

He doesn't punish us for our individual sins but has a whole community .again take Sodom and Gomorrah. At the time they were concidered to be the most wicked of all cities. In fact in an Apocryphal book called, "The Book of Jasher" it outlines basically why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed which sins they had committed to be worth of distruction.

God uses natural desasters not to punish the individual but the community. God promised Abraham if he found 10 righteous men in those towns that he would spare them.

Retribution

It is a pretty large assumption that God would devise such devastation to punish a whole communities. There are terrible people in the world, I.e. serial killers and such, yet they remain alive; if God were to punish humans for their sins as then it would probably be a very quiet world. For even Jesus knew that there were none without sin.

I believe our time on earth is our test, a test to the end. We are left to our decisions and the world is left to its evolution also. I also believe on the rare occasion there may be holy interdiction, but more on a smaller level. I also think once we are done with our lives on earth, that when we enter eternity the life we spent here will be but a quick moment in our memory.