How does one address comments about Karma?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Holly3278
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
H

Holly3278

Guest
Every now and then I see people on Facebook, including Christians, mentioning a belief in Karma. The most frequent type of comment I see goes like this, “What goes around comes around.” How does one address this belief?
 
The concept of Karma is a bit more complicated than “what goes around, comes around,” but that’s the general idea–that sooner or later, you’ll “get what you deserve.” 🙂

I know many Christians will disagree, but you can look at it like this: If you live a good, compassionate life, you will “get what you deserve” in Heaven. If you’re cruel and evil, you’ll “get what you deserve” in hell.

The concept is, that your choices today affect your future, either positively or negatively. You could consider the future to be “sometime later in my lifetme,” or you can consider it to be your afterlife.

Jala
 
Jesus said much the same thing: “Who lives by the sword will die by the sword.” Mt 26:52.

Reb Levi
 
Jala said:
The concept of Karma is a bit more complicated than “what goes around, comes around,” but that’s the general idea–that sooner or later, you’ll “get what you deserve.” 🙂

I know many Christians will disagree, but you can look at it like this: If you live a good, compassionate life, you will “get what you deserve” in Heaven. If you’re cruel and evil, you’ll “get what you deserve” in hell.

The concept is, that your choices today affect your future, either positively or negatively. You could consider the future to be “sometime later in my lifetme,” or you can consider it to be your afterlife.

Jala
Click to expand...
But like my Protestant friend once said while cleaning the coffee pot: “People think they deserve good coffee; but all anybody deserves is to go to Hell.”

Put another way; How can anybody deserve someone else hanging by his limbs and bleeding to death for them? Particularly someone WHO – unlike ourself – is fully innocent and good?

Christianity is not about deserving. We do not have karma; we have Grace.

ICXC NIKA
 
Just say, “If it wasn’t for bad karma, I’d have no karma at all.”

:):)🙂
 
GEddie said:
But like my Protestant friend once said while cleaning the coffee pot: “People think they deserve good coffee; but all anybody deserves is to go to Hell.”

Put another way; How can anybody deserve someone else hanging by his limbs and bleeding to death for them? Particularly someone WHO – unlike ourself – is fully innocent and good?

Christianity is not about deserving. We do not have karma; we have Grace.

ICXC NIKA
Click to expand...
^This.

(You beat me to it.)
 
Holly3278 said:
Every now and then I see people on Facebook, including Christians, mentioning a belief in Karma. The most frequent type of comment I see goes like this, “What goes around comes around.” How does one address this belief?
Click to expand...
It’s actually a fairly simple way of expressing what Jesus was so often telling us: that our actions have consequences. Store up treasure in heaven - good works result in good eternal outcomes, for instance. Bad works result in wailing and gnashing of teeth.

What goes around does come around. We don’t have an exclusive patent on the Truth.
 
GEddie said:
But like my Protestant friend once said while cleaning the coffee pot: “People think they deserve good coffee; but all anybody deserves is to go to Hell.”

Put another way; How can anybody deserve someone else hanging by his limbs and bleeding to death for them? Particularly someone WHO – unlike ourself – is fully innocent and good?

Christianity is not about deserving. We do not have karma; we have Grace.

ICXC NIKA
Click to expand...
This is exactly why the idea of karma is inconsistent with Christianity.

Christ got the death he didn’t deserve so that by his death we could get the heaven which we don’t deserve.

Karma is exactly 100% out of phase with Christiantity.

-Tim-
 
“What goes around, comes around” may be true when you get to the after life, but many people who say that are referring to our lives on earth. Karma is largely about getting what you deserve in this lifetime (good or bad). It is a fantasy to believe we all “get what we deserve” in this lifetime.
 
Holly3278 said:
Every now and then I see people on Facebook, including Christians, mentioning a belief in Karma. The most frequent type of comment I see goes like this, “What goes around comes around.” How does one address this belief?
Click to expand...
The popular use of the word “karma” is usually divorced from the meanings connected to it in Hinduism and closer to notion that “what you sow, you reap.”
 
JK8619 said:
“What goes around, comes around” may be true when you get to the after life, but many people who say that are referring to our lives on earth. Karma is largely about getting what you deserve in this lifetime (good or bad). It is a fantasy to believe we all “get what we deserve” in this lifetime.
Click to expand...
Which is why a proper “karmic theology” requires reincarnation and a caste system, as the original source has, to account for negative karma accrued prior to the current human life.

ICXC NIKA
 
Yeah, karma deals ultimately with reincarnation, while the Word of the Lord (Bible) tells us that it is appointed to a man once to die, then the judgement. Christians don’t believe in reincarnation.

People will associate the biblical concept “we reap what we sow” with karma, though reaping what we sow in the biblical sense speaks to our reward/punishment before the throne of God after this earthly life.

So “karma” in the eastern Hindu and Buddhist sense is something very different than “reaping what we sow” in the biblical sense.
 
As used by many people, expressing a belief in Karma is just a dodge to avoid an objective moral code and the need for God.

Biggest problem for Karma: What is the mechanism by which Karma works? Without a god or other supernatural agent, who or what determines how the negative or positive results of Karma are apportioned? To say “well, it just happens” or “well, it’s just a law of nature” is meaningless. One could argue that the Karmaist is seeing the hidden workings and divine beneficence and justice of a god or gods, in the same way that one could say, “I turn on the faucet, and water comes out!” without knowing about the infrastructure of plumbing and municipal water supplies and planning. Both ultimately are naive views of both morality and plumbing, however.

Also, how does Karma determine whether an action is good or bad? If an action may be good for one person but bad for another, how does Karma decide? If an action is a bad action done for a good cause, how does Karma decide if the action was right? Without a sentient, omniscient and just and good ultimate judge and lawgiver, a subjective nature of morality would make punishment or reward arbitrary.

Practically, a belief in Karma stinks of a lack of compassion and self-satisfaction - if someone is suffering, poor, or of a low caste, it must be because of their own fault or some wrong they did in their past or a past life. If I am successful, happy, and free of pain, it is because I have done good. In some cultures, belief in Karma encourages a lack of charity to lower castes, as they must have done something to deserve their low station in life. Like Calvinism’s view of the elect, it feels screwy and it is.
 
TimothyH said:
This is exactly why the idea of karma is inconsistent with Christianity.

Christ got the death he didn’t deserve so that by his death we could get the heaven which we don’t deserve.

Karma is exactly 100% out of phase with Christiantity.

-Tim-
Click to expand...
👍 God bless.
 
Here is what** Bono from the band U2** said on Karma and Grace..

Bono: Yes, I think that’s normal. It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Assayas: I haven’t heard you talk about that.

Bono: I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

Assayas: Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.

Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.

Yes I said Bono from U2 😉

This is a link to the full conversation! 👍

thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2010/09/bono-interview-grace-over-karma.html
 
onemangang said:
Here is what** Bono from the band U2** said on Karma and Grace..

Bono: Yes, I think that’s normal. It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Assayas: I haven’t heard you talk about that.

Bono: I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

Assayas: Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.

Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.

Yes I said Bono from U2 😉

This is a link to the full conversation! 👍

thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2010/09/bono-interview-grace-over-karma.html
Click to expand...
Wow. Very nice. Thanks for posting that.

The song “When Love Comes to Town” done by U2 with B.B. King, actually expounds on that idea:

youtube.com/watch?v=r3wgoaONzwo

After Bono and B.B. sing of love of women, love of music, I love when B.B. belts out the stanza about the ultimate love in the face of our own culpability:

I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide!
 
Yeah the whole U2 Bono Christian back story I had is interesting, so maybe this will help add to the thread on Karma, I hope.

A friend of mine, who at the time was part of Calvary Chapel, was talking about being a fruit inspector (meaning you will see people bear fruit if they have TRUE SAVING FAITH and you can know if they have “received the Spirit” or not by their actions, better than words)

Anyhow, at the time they had a book circulating the evangelical fundamentalist camp called, The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel, so I took his Idea of being a “fruit inspector” to build The Case for Christ, in a different kind of way!

I was trying to show my friend that if someone was an observer and tried to present a Case against him for being Christian, would he be convicted guilty of being Christian!

My case was that not all people at certain times in his life, would see his fruits and give him the label of Guilty of being Christian!

He was very evangelistic, but had a time where he said he was “backslidden” and lived a life crippled with drug addiction.

So I was saying, that if we are to be fruit inspectors, there are times where we deal with people uncharitably, and people would not see Christ reflected, and emulated in our lives!

I pointed to the fellow addicts and dealers he would hang with, might they declare you not guilty of being Christian, while some family members would see it otherwise, as you struggle as a Christian, with addiction!

We happened to be listening to the radio at the time and U2 came on, so I said, I bet one could make the case that Bono, is guilty of being Christian, by his criteria, (Bono has done a lot of Charity, so if bearing fruit is simply doing good, then Bono would fit the criteria my friend the “fruit inspector” had for being Christian) he disagreed, because one must profess with his lips Jesus is Lord and other Evangelical Fundamentalist criteria for SAVING FAITH, so we googled Bono Christian, and the discussion of Karma and Grace with Bono came up! I did not know much about Bono other than humanitarian efforts, and did not know he was a professing Christian, so I was happy to read Bono’s words of course!

The whole idea I was trying to espouse was that only God knows our hearts, and that to pass judgment so quickly, with the little knowledge is unhealthy, I just thought one should focus on who we are, as individuals in Christ, and let God handle the rest!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top