{"id":110720,"date":"2021-10-20T18:15:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T01:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/?p=110720"},"modified":"2021-10-25T13:03:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T20:03:30","slug":"man-punishes-god-loves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/archives\/110720-man-punishes-god-loves","title":{"rendered":"Man Punishes, God Loves"},"content":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \n

John-Roger, circa 1989.<\/em><\/p>\n The Supreme God dispenses absolute balance; and that is not punishment. Man punishes. God loves.<\/em> - John-Roger\n

\n

This article by John-Roger was first published in the Movement Newspaper, March 1974.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea of \u201cpunishment\u201d is a universal one, which stems from quite a few ideas. One punishment is a person\u2019s reaction to someone different from themselves \u2013 \u201cI punish you because you are not like me and because you are not doing things the way I want you to do them. Therefore I punish you.\u201d If this idea is presented to people, many will say, \u201cNo, that isn\u2019t why I\u2019m punishing you.\u201d So you say, \u201cThen you must feel like you have a right to punish me. What is your right to punish me?\u201d If they say, \u201cI\u2019m your mother or your father; therefore I have the right to punish you,\u201d you may often say, \u201cYes.\u201d But children often add, \u201cThen when I\u2019m older and out on my own and no longer under your control, I can punish you\u201d \u2013 which comes to the second idea of punishment, which is getting even. This is the old law of Moses: \u201cAn eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.\u201d I think the Bible says, \u201cVengeance will be mine, thus saith the Lord.\u201d On the lower levels, this is an accurate point of view. But the Supreme God dispenses absolute balance; and that is not punishment. Man punishes. God loves. God even loves men who punish and those who receive the punishment \u2013 \u201cequally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many times you may enter into dispensing punishment when you feel you\u2019re being hemmed in, when you find that someone is crowding in on you, when they are usurping your authority over your own domain \u2013 \u201cWhat right have they got to look in my books?\u201d \u201cWhat right do they have to ask how much money I have?\u201d When you have established your \u201csovereign divinity\u201d over the things that you say are yours, you really feel right and justified in punishing whomever gets into that area. Maybe you reach out and slap their hands or shoot them or threaten them or something else.<\/p>\n

But, when you reach out to hit someone else, all you\u2019re doing is punishing yourself because you\u2019re really saying, \u201cI just can\u2019t handle it any other way.\u201d I\u2019d like to relate personal experience as an example of this point of view. I have two dogs at home who may be smarter than anyone else in the house. When they were still pretty young, we were fixing up a \u201cbarrier\u201d so they could have one part of the house and leave us the rest of the house \u2013 as sort of a compromise. But the dogs wanted the part of the house where I was. So many hours were spent devising a way to keep two poodles hemmed into a small area of the house. We\u2019d get all fixed up, then we\u2019d put them on the other side, and we\u2019d call them and whistle \u2013 and they\u2019d find a way to overcome whatever obstacle we\u2019d placed in front of them.<\/p>\n

We tried a lot of ways \u2013 without much success. Finally those who were working on this thought they had really come up with a \u201cfoolproof\u201d barrier that would keep them in. So we put them on the other side, and this time we didn\u2019t call them; we just sat and watched them work to get through. Well, one dog got through a space only a couple inches wide \u2013 a space that objectively he could never have gotten through. I was watching the auras of the others in the room and some reflected the impulse to grab a dog and \u201ccram\u201d him right back through the hole \u2013 with love, naturally. And some of the auras reflected the impulse to hit him with something so he wouldn\u2019t try that again. I saw these things so I thought I\u2019d demonstrate it to them; I picked up a piece of paper and hit it hard on the floor in front of the dog; and the dog backed off from that opening, but he found his way through another before too long. He wasn\u2019t going to let anything stop him. Both dogs are smart. They learned to get through that \u201crestriction,\u201d and we constructed another one, which they also learned to get through.<\/p>\n

It took quite awhile before we found a way to keep them within a certain area. We could have punished them, and they would have stopped getting through the spaces. We could have hit them hard enough that they would have become very fearful. But we would have lost them as soon as we\u2019d done that. Punishment is a losing proposition; but then sometimes people do learn in punishment. But they will learn so much more effectively through positive reinforcement and through love.<\/p>\n

Most people have been punished a great deal in their lives, and sometimes the punishment is that they are not allowed to think for themselves. People don\u2019t allow children to think; they think for them \u2013 \u201cDo as you\u2019re told and don\u2019t talk back. And don\u2019t you dare question me.\u201d A child asks, \u201cWhy?\u201d And you love them so you tell them again. And they say, \u201cWhy?\u201d So you tell them again and you think they\u2019ve got it, and they say, \u201cWhy?\u201d And about that time you \u201cpop\u201d them in the mouth or you punish them by giving them some nonsense statement that they know is not true at all; and right there you create a breakdown in communication that may effect the next forty years \u2013 and you\u2019ll know that you did it because you punished a child when he asked, \u201cWhy?\u201d He didn\u2019t want to know why, he wanted to know how does it work?<\/p>\n

When a child asks, \u201cWhy?\u201d he\u2019s really asking \u201cHow does this thing work? How can I work it?\u201d So that way you give the answer. Then if it\u2019s something mechanical, they\u2019ll get the idea of how to work with it. One time I was with friends and their child was asking about soap and washing the dishes and washing the clothes; and he kept up with \u201cWhy? Why?\u201d until they said a few choice words which I\u2019m sure they didn\u2019t really mean. When they were through, I picked the child up, put him on the sink, turned on the water, put soap in his hands, and started rubbing them together so we got lots of suds and bubbles. I said, \u201cNow do you understand why?\u201d And he said, \u201cYes.\u201d He saw what happened with soap. He didn\u2019t need to know any other information. Information wasn\u2019t his level. His level was, \u201cHow does this thing do it?\u201d Words did not relate to him because he did not understand the words after you told them to him. But he did understand how it worked. He did understand the experience.<\/p>\n

If someone asks you a question and you have to punish them, it\u2019s because you have failed to show them how it works or to explain to them how to do it. People are more often after the experience of something rather that the information. If you can bring an experience forward to people, show them something through which they can expand the range of their experience and creativity, you will have successful communication.<\/p>\n

Baruch Bashan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article by John-Roger was first published in the Movement Newspaper, March 1974. The idea of \u201cpunishment\u201d is a universal one, which stems from quite a few ideas. One punishment is a person\u2019s reaction to someone different from themselves \u2013 \u201cI punish you because you are not like me and because you are not doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":110729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-john-rogers-current-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}