Does God Punish Bad Behaviour & Mistakes Throughout Your Life?

[Trewolla]

I have reason to believe that God chastised me for a behavioral problem that I was demonstrating. Basically, God placed me back in a situation that closely approximated another bad period in my life. He removed his hand from me and allowed me to experience how difficult life was without his guidance and blessing. I was also visited with a potentially fatal disease during that period. It lasted for almost a decade.

I never blamed him, never renounced him and he allowed me to live and to enter into a much more pleasant time of being.

I see it as being disciplined as well as being a test.

 

[Blade Runner]

Mostly, as many have said, it's the consequences of sin. And also, as has been said, how you react to those consequences then shows another aspect of your life and how you deal with reality, and if or how you repent. In my understanding of the world, and I try to be a devoted believer, much of what is mysterious to us is that we can only reflect back on things and retrofit situations or conclusions to make them simple or more understandable. I don't believe they are, I believe they are more on a mysterious spectrum of probabilities, some of which don't "happen for a reason," as most prefer to think. If one is honest, he will know that he got away with things here or there, and didn't pay a price, and at other times, he got caught red handed, and did. The simpleton thinks that each of those situations (and the respective outcome) has meaning in itself, but in reality, the meaning is the response to what happens, or the path taken afterward. Notice that with this explanation, the contrite person will feel an imbalance and not pursue a mistake even though he may have "benefited" but the greedy, egotistical person will keep pressing it - and probability catches up to him, just as one might expect - and increases the chances of a spiraling out of control and a greater demise, sadly.

 

[Elipe]

If people are wronging you, or have done so, do you think a variant of "God will see their wickedness, and punish / correct them for it"?

I feel that God is just, and therefore will look to correct those that indulge in malign ways. But i do wonder if to think this way alone leads to a certain passivity, that is not always helpful, eg if you are being slandered or otherwise treated contemptuosly, surely its most necessary for you to stand up for yourself, rather than just 'leave it to God'.

Certainly, God says that vengeance will be His, but shall that mean we become carpets for others to walk all over us? And can Christians not be part of God's vengeance upon the wicked? After all, has God not used nations to punish Israel in the OT? And even as those nations conquered Israel and became boastful, God punished them with yet another nation. Are not people then, capable of being the executors of God's vengeance?

I'm not saying that we should take up arms, I am simply asking: are Christians precluded from being agents of God's vengeance? It's a question to ponder. Even the martyrs in Heaven ask Jesus to exact vengeance on those who slaughtered them (Rev 6:10). Not exactly pacifistic.