The source of our punishment and hell are only we
In the 1980s, there was a party worker who had heart problems. He was advised to keep a dog and really, communicating with the pet, his health greatly improved. It was so improved that he decided that does not need the dog anymore and donated the pet to another person. A few days later after the donation, he got a heart attack and died.
Maybe this is the case when people say, “God punished.” But I did not like this phrase at all. I do not know what the clergy think about it but it seems to me that God does not punish anybody. On the contrary, He encourages us when we live right, shows us direction on how to do it. The public figures have a “punitive” function when the person breaks the laws of that country. The director of a company punishes when his employee fails doing this-or-that thing. Parents punish, for example, make their children stand in the corner when they behave naughtily. (To the point, it seems to me that the parents’ and the directors punishments should be brought to the minimum).
But when a person feels some physical, spiritual or material difficulty and thinks that his situation is “God’s punishment” (or worse, desperately asks, “For what sins?”), it’s probably a dead end. At least, a fatalism. In other words, you think that you do not deserve to have love and harmony in your life because you have committed a number of sins in your life. I think, it is a direct way to commit other, a more terrible sin. It is similarly wrong to think that God punishes someone else for his sins.
Actually, there is one person who can punish us, who can make our lives hell. And this person, as they say, is you. For example, in the case of the same party worker, we can say that he felt the need for an animate creature devoted to him, he was even sure that his health benefited communicating with this person but he had not realized his benefit to the end and gave up the wonderful opportunity that life had offered to him. What? Did God incite him to give up? Apparently, not. It was the wrong choice of given person. And how many wonderful opportunities do we give up every day and perhaps every minute?
Suppose you have a stomach ulcer. Most likely it was caused by wrong nutrition. But you will bring evidence that there are dozens of people around you who are fed up worse than you and have no ulcer. I’m more inclined to think that the disease is coming not so much from our wrong lifestyle (it is a consequence) as from our “wrong thoughts”. In other words, in this case, you have a stomach ulcer caused by the thought and feelings that poison your soul and flesh: hostility, arrogance, hatred, envy, and wrath. It is not God who punishes us for these poisonous thoughts but only and solely we ourselves.
All the diseases are the result of our wrong thinking because the flesh and soul are one united whole. Any “wrong thought” is a signal that straightforwardly pierces this-or-that part of our flesh. Any “right thought” is a panacea, which grants us health and happiness. But firstly, we sometimes do not know which is right and which is wrong, secondly, even if we know, anyway, often we are unable to restrain us and give to the so-called “black stream”.
I have read somewhere about the following prescription. You tie a bracelet on your hand, and as soon as you have an evil thought about someone, or take part in a gossip or evil-speaking, the bracelet transfers from one hand to the other. In the beginning, these “transfer” will happen several times a day. Later on, it happens rarer. The goal is to have the bracelet on the same hand for 21 days.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
