Karma part 1

Karma 1 for paper                            Rev. Terry Goerz, Redeemer Lutheran Church

Because this topic is too long to deal with in one column, I will use two columns.

Buddhists believe in reincarnation, that after you die you come back as someone or something else. If you have lived a good life you come back has a higher being, if you have lived a bad life you come back as a lesser being. Buddhism teaches that all actions have consequences which they call karma. The consequences of acts or karma undertaken in this and earlier lifetimes will be felt in a next one. In this process of being reincarnated over and over, it is a Buddhist’s aim to escape from this cycle of rebirth via good karma and to enter Nirvana, a state of being of happiness and bliss roughly equivalent to heaven.

Recently Karma has become a word often used now in our English language. We also have an expression in our North American culture that is roughly equivalent. “What comes around goes around.” You are going to get what you deserve. A sort of law of cause and effect. Paul gives us an equivalent of karma in: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”  Galatians 6: 7, 8

Paul here is talking to people who are already Christians. If you sow evil, you will reap evil in the form of suffering and eternal damnation. You can lose your salvation. And if you sow goodness, you will reap goodness in the form of inner joy and you will receive the reward of your faith – eternal life. Every action, every thought, brings about its own corresponding rewards. We of course know that “good karma”, or good works will not earn us eternal life, but we are expected to do good works. Just one example from scripture – “Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” Ephesians 5: 8b – 11

So we are expected to do good works not because we have to, but because our changed nature through sanctification has us do them naturally. When secular society uses the expression “what comes around goes around” they are thinking only of their present lives. Christians may receive good karma back in this life, but we also are assured that we will carry a reward for our spirit inspired “good karma” in heaven. “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” Luke 12: 33  and  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”  Matthew 6: 19, 20  So for Christians our actions also have consequences, or karma.

In my next column I will deal with a section of scripture that asks a “karma” question. “’As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”’

I conclude this column expanding on the verses that follow the above quote. “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” John 9: 3, 4

What is the work of him who sent Jesus? The salvation of the world. God’s desire is that all men come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved. And who does this work. “We must do the work” Jesus said. That we includes Jesus and every Christian who has been saved. That’s all of us folks here today. We, that is us, with the help of Jesus, are to do that work of bringing salvation to the world. And Jesus has made plain how the work is to be accomplished.

‘Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”’ Matthew 28: 18 – 20

We are to teach and baptize, and from other texts we are to be Jesus’ witnesses to the ends of the earth. And don’t forget that the “we” includes Jesus. He is with us to the very end of the age. And there is an urgency in this command to do the work of God. Night is coming when no man can work.