“What Punishments of God Are Not Gifts?”
Graphic by Amelie Lima
In a 2019 interview, Anderson Cooper asked Stephen Colbert if he really believed a statement he had previously quoted from a letter by J.R.R. Tolkien: “What punishments of God are not gifts?” Colbert, after a brief pause, replied “Yes” with a smile on his face.
The interview between the two is heartbreaking, wholesome, and everything in between—particularly as the conversation is centred around the two’s personal experience with loss—but it is Colbert’s question, “What punishments of God are not gifts?” that I find myself always coming back to.
Grief is not a dirty word, but we, as a society, have decided to treat it as such. Grief and suffering, as Colbert discussed in the interview, are the inevitable byproducts of the gift of existence, even when it is hard to see them as anything more than unbearable.
We often look at grief in isolation, but, like hopes and joys, grief is shared. In his sermon at Memorial Church on Feb. 1, the Reverend Matthew Ichihashi Potts spoke to this notion. “Sharing our joys and sharing our griefs, and our hopes, and sharing this bread and this wine. This is what love looks like,” Potts said, in reference to communion. Grief and love are inextricably linked.
Having recently lost a close relative and contending with grief myself, this idea of love coming from mourning struck a chord. I have reflected upon speaking at my late aunt’s funeral and remember looking out at the congregation and thinking I saw a wave of sadness in front of my eyes. In reality, hidden behind those tears was love.
Even in writing this piece, I do not feel sadness, nor do tears well up in my eyes; however, just like Colbert, a smile has crept across my face. I smile because I know what love looks like now more than ever. It looks like many hands on shaking shoulders and silent dinners where the only conversation is between knife and fork—yet there is the understanding that I am here, and so are you.
I know what love is, but I still struggle. I wonder if the punishments, whatever they may be, that people endure throughout their lives are always worth the gift. I look out at the world and see widespread pain and unimaginable suffering. We bear witness to crimes so heinous that they would make the devil weep, day after day after day—and often wonder where the reward is. Is the punishment always worth the gift?
What gift of God will heal the heart of Mohammed Mahdi Abu Al-Qumsan, who, on his way to pick up the birth certificates for his newborn twins on Aug. 14, 2024, was informed that the boys Aysal and Ayser, along with their mother, Jumana, were killed in an Israeli strike? In a devastating parallel image, what gift of God will heal the hearts of Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two infant children were kidnapped and killed in Hamas captivity in Nov. 2023? Perhaps Colbert’s view holds for some types of loss, but not for losses like these. Not all griefs, shared or unshared, can yield a gift.
That is precisely why we must lead our lives with love. Standing at my aunt’s funeral, I saw love hidden behind the puffy eyes and the sniffling noses, but for Mohammed and Yarden, and for countless others, that love may never be enough. Nevertheless, we must offer it because we owe it to each other. If some punishments are senseless and exist just for the sake of punishment alone, then love is not the reward for suffering well, but simply what we owe one another despite it all.
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” Matthew 5:43-48 reads. This instruction acknowledges that compassion and care exist outside of fairness, politics, and violence. It suggests that, intrinsically, Mohammed and Yarden, victims of opposing forces, are equally deserving of our collective grief.
God does not ask us to love our enemies because it is easy; God asks us to love our enemies precisely because it demands something of us. Loving in this way means sharing in grief, refusing to let hatred define us, and choosing humanity over conflict. If love were only contingent on love returned, it would be transactional and fit neatly into boxes that do not exist.
Potts spoke of communion as a ritual that speaks to deeper themes, but I see it more as a reality. Mohammed’s and Yarden’s losses—though both heartbreaking in their own right—do not exist in isolation. Like grief, they are intertwined, bound by the sometimes unbearable fabric of human existence.
The people we love shape us in life and in death; we honour them by carrying forward the love they instilled in us, not by collapsing under the weight of their loss. With that thought, I return to the image of Stephen Colbert, smiling despite his great bereavements: not because the punishment was worth it, but because he chose to let love be louder than loss.
Noah Basden ’29 (nhbasden@college.harvard.edu) knows not a gift sweeter than love.