“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…”
Romans 3:23-24
The idea of “karma” has made inroads in Western thought for several decades now. It has a clear logic to it, and is echoed in the old cliché, “what goes around comes around.” Simply put, whatever great cosmic forces are out there will repay good behavior with good rewards, and bad behavior with punishment, often in a subsequent reincarnation. It is comforting in a way to think that we could have so much control over our own destinies!
But is what makes sense to us logically really what is best for us? The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV)
The man-made philosophy of karma has some serious shortfalls. For example, if something bad comes your way, you are supposed to accept it because you are being punished for something you did in a past life – something you can’t even remember!
Maybe life has been exceptionally good to you. Should you be smug because this is a sure indicator that you are being rewarded for your good behavior? When you witness the suffering of others around you, do you shrug it off because they are evidentially working off bad karma that has come their way through their own actions?
Clearly they deserve their suffering! And then when you do something to help someone, are you doing it out of love, or selfish motivation to gain good karma?
Taken to its logical conclusion, karma begins to look pretty grim.
As believers, we can be thankful that we have a better system: grace. It is provided through Jesus Christ by a God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways (See Isaiah 55:8). If we were to truly be held accountable for and punished for every sin we committed, we’d be in trouble: “If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3 NIV)
With karma, you basically get what you deserve. With grace, on the other hand, you get what you don’t deserve – the gift of forgiveness and eternal life. You get peace, comfort, joy, and countless second chances. While the doctrine of karma has been sold to us by an increasingly secular and celebrity-driven culture, grace comes to us from the increasingly downplayed and mocked word of God: the Bible.
Our gratitude to God for this superior plan should compel us to share it with others and live as lights in an otherwise dark world. (See Matthew 5:16)
Getting what we truly deserve would be a horrible way to live. If we’re honest, we would all see that we deserve a terrible life. If we wish karmic punishment on others, we only become more hardened and bitter in the process because the belief and practice of karma only results in promoting the uglier side of human nature.
For all our failings, we have received the greatest gift of all, one we should share all the days of our lives: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)