Someone else will sing your song
What does it mean to say that God is punishing someone for something? I see this in two different ways. The first is what I might call the naturalist's view; you know, things your mother probably told you: If you don't take care of yourself, you'll get sick. If you spend your time disobeying the rules, you'll die. To the naturalist, these are simply the laws of the universe, like gravity. To a religious person, since God created the natural world, these are God's laws. The second sort of punishment is personal. By this I don't mean personally directed at you , though it might be, I mean personally communicated to you by God. So, if you say something like, "God is punishing that person for doing that thing," then I assume that God told you that. If He didn't tell you that and you say that He did, you'd be guilty of a rather profane act and could find yourself on the receiving end of some punishment of your own. A more subtle version of this is