cause and effect - 13th week Tuesday 2014

I would like to reflect with you in this Eucharist on our first reading, a reading from the prophet Amos and together let us ask ourselves the question most of us religious people ask all the time - does God punish his people?  Our reading today is like a very big tarpaulin placed on a road daw dira sa taytay malapit hall of justice.  And on that tarpaulin is printed the words:  Attention, Punishment is coming.

Amos begins this passage permitting God to speak for himself saying, “only you have I known among all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.”  Sa tanan nga mga pungsod sa bilog nga kalibutan ikaw gid lang ang kilala ko gani silutan ko ikaw.  Terrible isn’t it.  Ikaw lang ang kilala, ikaw pa ang silutan?  Indi bala aton iya, kon kilala kita gina-excuse kita.  Ay damo da kilala ko sa police station, puede ta ina maistoryahan.  But with God  it is different.  Why, because the knowing of God is different than the knowing of men.  God is like a parent who may sometimes punish their children because they know what their children need, they know what their children lack, they know that their children must learn and so they always have their good in mind and at heart, even though it would pain them to seen their children suffer for a time.  I know them and so I punish them.  You cannot and you must not punish if you do not “know”, you do not punish if you are angry or you have hatred in your heart because punishment in God involves knowing and knowing in the biblical sense is intimacy. – you love the person, you do not hate him, you are not angry with him – you “know” which means you love, you are intimate.

The second point which I would like to point out in this passage is this – does God really punish?  He answers this subtly.  In fact he answers this with a series of questions which leaves us answering the main question itself.  Does God punish.  He answers this by asking: Do two walk together unless they have agreed?  Does a lion roar in the forest even though he is without prey? Does a bird fall victim to a snare upon the earth if there is no bait to lure it? Does a trumpet sound in a city and the people do not tremble?  Malakat na bala sila dugan kon wala sila naghagaray?  Mangurob bala ang leon kon wala man lang sia may nadakop nga kalan-on?  What is the point of Amos with these series of questions?  Amos is simply saying all effects have a cause.  There is no effect without a cause.  There are people who believe that God does not punish.  But God created the word with a spiritual order and a physical order.  Ano kon sayuron ini?  Physical order  Kon indi ka magkaon siempre gutumon ka.  Kon pirme ka gutom siempre ulceron ka.  There is a physical order in the world.  Kon taas presyon mo kay may balati-an ka sa heart ginmando-an ka sang doctor indi ka na magkaon baboy.  Ginsupak mo ina.  Kag nagkaon ka litson damo-damo, bulong sa ima pero isa gid ka pinggan kaon mo.   So tepok ka.  Did the doctor punish you, did he curse you?  No. Things simply followed the physical order - the rule of cause and effect in the physical order. 

Now that also happens in the spiritual order.  We do what God does not want us to do, and the rule of cause and effect is followed in the spiritual order.  Does God punish us?  No.  Does God condemn us?  No.  But it is the rule of cause and effect which God allows.  Pray over this and thing about it.