The karma I refer to here and throughout, is the karma that our society and culture uses, often incorrectly, to acknowledge that someone deserves bad things to happen to them when they have done bad things themselves. Karma teaches that there is a cause and effect to our actions, and that any negative we put out into the universe will have a negative impact on our future. Likewise, any positive we send out, reaps a positive impact. A little while back I wrote about villains, and how at any given moment we can be either the victim in our own story, or the villain of someone else’s. So how ironic is it, that so many of us turn to karma for those who have hurt us? Have you ever hurt anyone? Accidentally? In the heat of the moment? Maybe without even realizing it? My guess is, yes. I believe we all have. Yet we proclaim karma on everyone else, as though we can’t possibly be among the people deserving this.
Isn’t the very idea of wishing bad karma on someone else, in essence, a negative and vengeful thought? Think about that for a moment. By wishing bad karma onto another person, you are behaving in such a way as to reap negativity.
Jesus is not about karma.
But karma and Jesus actually teach us very different things.
First of all, if we just look at the world around us, we can tell that karma, the way our culture uses it, is false. Life doesn’t work that way. Some of the kindest, most thoughtful, most genuine people I have ever met, have had horrible things happen in their lives. Also, there are plenty of people at the top, who have hurt a lot of people in their lives to climb to the top of success.
The way in which we talk about karma is not Biblical. It is vengeful, and it does not align with forgiveness or love. This karma, fail us time and time again. Karma isn’t going to knock people down when you want it to. Karma isn’t going to fight your fights, and kick your enemies.
Neither is Jesus.
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I, for one, am so glad that Jesus doesn’t operate like karma. Jesus took that karma already, and He doesn’t want you to wish it on anyone.