Is your Higher Power a punishing one? This is something I wrestled with for a very long time, especially given the fact that I grew up going to a church and within a family where God was presented exactly as that. And it’s without a doubt the number one reason why I ran away from God for so many years. Thankfully when I came into the rooms of recovery from addiction, I quickly learned through my work there that I could create a God of my own understanding.
Doing so has definitely helped, as the concept I had of God prior to this was always one where if I did something deemed “bad” or “unhealthy” or a “sin” by myself or anyone else, I constantly assumed I was just going to be punished somehow for it by God. That’s precisely why I ran from God and anything spiritual for that matter, for so long. I mean who would want to serve a God that acted like this anyway?
I think that’s why so many people have such a negative view of God, because too many churches still preach this type of message. That’s why I’m pretty grateful I don’t see God in this light anymore.
This idea of punishment reminds me far too much of my parents who grounded me a lot for even the slightest of things during much of my younger years. But the image I have of God nowadays is one that is far more unconditionally loving. One where I think of God as being sad or crying when I make a poor decision. Ironically, that’s in stark contrast to how I used to see things. As before, I would visualize God reacting to my poor decision in anger, fuming, finger pointing or arms crossed, and then subsequently dishing out some type of punishment in my life that always involved great pain.
While I don’t feel God acts like this with me anymore, I must clarify that I still do believe that God does allow me to go through times of hardship to help mold me into a far better version of myself. Call that discipline, or whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. I think what matters is that the difficult times we each face in life are necessary for us to become spiritually healthier.
I’m going through one of those times in my life right now in fact, that in the past I would have looked at it as a punishment, one that came due to all my former addiction-laden behaviors and the people I hurt from doing them. Yet now, I see it as something that was necessary to shape me into a much more unconditionally loving individual, one who has a lot more compassion, one who’s ego is no longer constantly in charge, and one who is willing to follow God’s will way more than his own.
So do I think God punishes us when we fall short of living to our highest potential? Not at all and I am inclined to believe that was only ever my ego that made me believe God was like this. But thankfully I hold onto a belief today that God allows me to be disciplined for one reason and one reason only. To re-align me to why I came here in the first place, which is to become a spiritual being of unconditional love and light.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson