God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.

The line reframes divine judgment as largely unnecessary: human beings, given time, tend to generate their own suffering through choices, habits, and the long consequences of actions. It suggests a moral universe in which punishment is not primarily an external sentence handed down by God, but an internal and social process—guilt, regret, damaged relationships, and cumulative mistakes. The emphasis on “a long enough life” underscores duration: consequences may be delayed, but they arrive through ordinary living. The quote also carries a critique of punitive theology, implying that what people call “God’s punishment” may simply be life’s natural reckoning and the self-inflicted costs of human fallibility.