Although he was the wisest man I’ve ever known, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird could neither read nor write, but due to his excellent memory was conversant on many subjects, especially the Bible.
One afternoon as we sat on his porch, gazing across Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, he listened as I read a verse from Proverbs, Chapter 3: “Despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loves He corrects.”
“Jaybird, the Bible speaks so much of punishment and suffering that I get them confused.”
“How so?”
“Well, God annihilated the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, but they were His children, as we are. Why didn’t He punish them to correct them, as mentioned in Proverbs?”
“The wickedness of those people had become so great that they were no longer worthy of what matters most: God’s love. They gave themselves over to Satan, and to Satan is where God sent them.
“If I punish you, it leads to suffering, which leads to deterrence. When Satan tempts you to go against my teachings by making sin attractive, you remember my punishment and are deterred from temptation.
“When you become a man and repeat past sins, I believe God’s punishment will become harsher because you will have matured and should know better. At the same time, Satan’s attempts to lure you into sinfulness will be harder to resist because he is determined to make you ignore the consequences of evil deeds you have committed.
“Satan succeeds if God’s children repeat sins and ignore His corrections. When Satan wins long enough, God’s wrath is certain to follow, as it did for those who perished in Sodom and Gomorrah. Their souls will suffer eternally in hell, not only because of their stiff-necked refusal to ask for the Lord’s forgiveness, but also because they no longer accepted the certainty that their Maker corrects those whom He loves. Only sin mattered to them, not God’s love.
“Remember also that the wrongdoings of those who try but sometimes fail to obey God, which includes us, have punishment built into them. It is called guilt. Those people whom He destroyed had lost their sense of guilt.
“When you err, not only do you receive my punishment, but also, because you love God, you are ashamed that you displeased Him. That feeling is part of punishment, which makes punishment and suffering the same.
“The Father knows we aren’t perfect because we are creatures of the flesh, and for that reason, we struggle with iniquity and are often victimized by it, but eternal life with Jesus hinges on how well we struggle. The people of those doomed cities willingly allowed themselves to become enslaved by wickedness, which led to their eternal enslavement to the emperor of wickedness in his kingdom of utter hopelessness.
“To serve God and glorify His name, we must strive always to be mindful of that which those evil people were not: the temporary and the eternal.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
Although he was the wisest man I’ve ever known, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird could neither read nor write, but due to his excellent memory was conversant on many subjects, especially the Bible.
One afternoon as we sat on his porch, gazing across Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, he listened as I read a verse from Proverbs, Chapter 3: “Despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loves He corrects.” 
