Riding the Karma Train

I have been renting episodes of "My Name Is Earl" from Blockbuster Online, and I have absolutely fallen in love with the show. I know, it's no "Office," but they are two completely different types of comedy.

Anyhow, the show's premise is all about Karma--do bad things, and bad things happen, and vice versa. The main character is trying to make up for all of the bad things he's done by helping and repaying the people he's wronged over the years.

It sounds great....at first. Honestly, I find myself wishing that life worked exactly like this. There are several problems, though. First, I find it interesting that in the show, every time Earl finds a way to cross something off his list of wrongs, he almost always wrongs someone in the process, thus, adding to his list. Basically, the list will never come to an end. Hmmm. So then, what happens when someone finishes life with an unfinished list of bad karma????

To be brief, the Bible teaches that there is a connection with sin and righteousness and consequences, but not an absolute connection, because A) no one is completely righteous and B) no one is completely sinful. Generally, everyone pays the consequences for their behaviors at some point of life.

Karma has yet to find a way to explain death and why good things happen to bad people, and the other way around. Why do all humans want to strive and think of themselves as "good" in some form, but everyone understands that they are not perfect. Something is wrong....we know that right exists....what's going on here?

Christianity can say that God's grace coexists with mankind's fallenness, and their interactions are sometimes mysterious to us. Why does God heal, feed, and bless people who will never acknowledge these things as coming from Him? Why do Christians experience pain and suffering?

Karma?

It's just not that easy....

I Woulda Gotten Away with It, Too...

Let me just say, I'm the kind of person that doesn't get away with anything. While I haven't seen the earth swallow anyone, or fiery hailstones, or poisonous snakes, I can still see a direct correlation between certain willful sins that I do and external events.

Don't get me wrong, I still like God. I don't see Him as some kind of "Soup-Nazi-esque" prison warden, waiting to smack me down whenever I mess up. There's another side to it. That is, when I deliberately disobey something basic to Christianity, God has to hold me accountable for my actions. What's weird is, my punishments can never make up for my mistakes and rebellions. Sometimes I wish God worked like a Catholic priest, where I could just do my penance and never worry about anymore consequences. But that's not how it works.

The thing is, even in discipline there is grace. Thus far, my punishments have never fit the crime. Even more, I still have too many blessings to count!

God's punishments should throw us back into repentance and dependence and trust in Jesus. Jesus makes us right with God, and keeps us right with God. The grace of God frees me to serve Him and others with clean hands and a pure heart.

So praise God when He holds you accountable, because, after all, it means that He still "holds you."