Does God punish people who try to do right?
From the writings of the Rev. Billy Graham The Bible says that “whom the Lord loves He [disciplines]” (Hebrews 12:6). Believers are not immune to God’s chastening. The Biblical story of Jonah reveals that before God could use Jonah, Jonah first had to humble himself and repent. Only then would God use him to preach the Gospel to a pagan culture. Jonah is one who thought he could escape from the Lord—he found out differently. He was called to preach to rebellious Nineveh (the area today that is known as Mosul, Iraq), but instead he rebelled against God’s call. This miraculous story proves that God’s eyes are everywhere and that He devises retribution and punishment to bring about eternal blessing in response to repentance. Jonah resented the fact that God was sending him to the “great city” (Jonah 1:2), the capital of Israel’s pagan neighbor, Assyria. He didn’t believe the people of Nineveh deserved God’s salvation. So he did the very thing he was called to preach against—he