05- Sin, Wrath, and My Daughter

TL;DR: God didn't do it.

In most Christian churches today, there is an emphasis on avoiding sin or even the APPEARANCE of sin. That quickly gives way to fiery speeches about the Wrath of God if you don’t quit your sinning. Ain’t gonna be no liars in heaven, is what I always heard in the fundamentalist churches. Turn or burn, sister, and use plenty of SON screen. Sin is bad, God is good, Hell is hot, and you’re going there if you die in your sin.

I come from the background of having been raised in what I consider abusive religion, so I freely admit to being overly sensitive to religious threats. Being told I’m going to burn in Hell because I had some sort of unconfessed sin in my life, well, it doesn’t get much more threatening than that. Nevertheless, it is undeniably written in the Bible about sin and the wrath of God. So… What do I make of that? Are they right? If I sin, do I bring on myself the wrath and punishment of God?

Let me share something from my own life. My bonus daughter Barbara, God rest her soul, was a 3-pack-a-day smoker for 40 years. Was it her fault? Yes and no. She could have said no thanks and never picked up the first cigarette. But in our family, everyone smokes. My grandson and I are the only two out of 20+ people who don’t smoke. So, in her experience, it was the norm. And smoke she did. Like a chimney fire. And eventually it caught up with her.

Barbara was driving one day and blacked out at the wheel. She ran the car under a tractor trailer. The car was demolished, and her (might as well have been, after 30 years) husband was roughed up a bit, but they survived with no major injuries. She was taken to the hospital and underwent a battery of tests to determine why she blacked out. I don’t think they ever did find out why, but they did find something on her chest x-ray. A small black spot that looked suspicious. It turned out to be cancer.

Radiation and chemotherapy treatments ravaged her body, but they did stop the cancer. She got to ring the bell announcing she was cancer-free. Happy dance! At that time, nobody knew it had moved to her brain.

Then came the awful day that her brain cancer was discovered. Inoperable. Terminal. A death sentence. We were devastated. We went through shock, numbness, anger, sorrow, resignation, the works. But the one that stayed with me the longest was anger.

I was angry. Not at Barbara, but at the stupid cancer. The cancer was taking away someone I loved. And I wholeheartedly resented it for that. In Biblical terms, my wrath was kindled.

Barbara’s sin led to her death. Her sin against God? No. Her sin against her own body. Everyone knows smoking often leads to cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. And it ALWAYS leads to a lower quality of life. But she would not, COULD not, stop smoking, even when she got the cancer diagnoses.

I experienced wrath caused by my daughter’s sin. But I didn’t smite her. I didn’t condemn her to her punishment. It is the immutable law of the universe that you reap what you sow. If you sow hatred and bitterness into your dealings with others, you will become twisted and evil. If you sow kindness and love into the world, you reap harmony and peace in your soul. Barbara sowed the seeds of physical destruction, and they took root and manifested in her life. Sin is always its own punishment.

So, from my experience, I believe God feels this too. Yes, when we sin, God experiences wrath. Not against us, but against the results of our sin. When we hate our brother, we poison the entire community. That end result is why God is angry. His wrath was never against us, but against the results of our sin. And any punishments we receive came not from God, but as a direct result of our own sin.