Instant Karma
As I get older, I find myself thinking about the idea of karma. It isn't a doctrine I hold, or a particular philosophical or theological ideology that I maintain, but it is one that tends to make me nervous. Having been brought up in the South, and in particular the Christian traditions of the South, karma was not something I was ever even aware of hearing about until the popularity of Culture Club's song "Karma Chameleon" in the early 1980s.
What I found was that Christians have their own way of speaking about Karma. "What goes around comes around." That's a popular phrase among Christians - usually when referring to some perceived nere-do-well who finally got in trouble the way the righteous persons always thought they would or should. "They got what was coming to them."
So we all have our ideas of karma. Jesus said, as found in the Gospel according to Mark, that "the measure you give will be the measure you get." (Mark 4:24a). The Beatles sang something similar at the end of Abby Road (discounting the lackluster and anticlimactic additional "Her Majesty" diddy at the very end), "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." So the point I seek to make is that this idea of 'what goes around comes around' is pretty pervasive in our world.
The reason I mention this is because as I get older I find that I am plagued with sudden flashes of paralyzing memories of moments from my childhood where I treated someone badly, said something terrible, or in some fashion made someone else's life miserable (if only for a short moment). I wonder when and if what goes around will come back around. Sometimes I find that I am in situations in church settings (of all places) where the past comes back at me like a bullet fired from an unseen weapon and I find myself on the opposite end of grace, which is hostility. I have been treated both good and bad by members of various congregations over the years. I have tried to do my best, but there are times I wonder if I am not paying for some long ago sin.
Or is it from an unknown slight, an insensitive remark? Am I to be like Job and offer sacrifices for sins both known and unknown? Or do I just need to live and learn?
I suppose for me the point of those painful memories is to grow from them. If I don't then they are likely to be actions and activities that I repeat to the detriment of others as well as myself. I may find myself paying for that which I have done, but perhaps the lesson is that as we pay off these our misdeeds, we learn how not to acquire such a debt in the future.
What I found was that Christians have their own way of speaking about Karma. "What goes around comes around." That's a popular phrase among Christians - usually when referring to some perceived nere-do-well who finally got in trouble the way the righteous persons always thought they would or should. "They got what was coming to them."
So we all have our ideas of karma. Jesus said, as found in the Gospel according to Mark, that "the measure you give will be the measure you get." (Mark 4:24a). The Beatles sang something similar at the end of Abby Road (discounting the lackluster and anticlimactic additional "Her Majesty" diddy at the very end), "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." So the point I seek to make is that this idea of 'what goes around comes around' is pretty pervasive in our world.
The reason I mention this is because as I get older I find that I am plagued with sudden flashes of paralyzing memories of moments from my childhood where I treated someone badly, said something terrible, or in some fashion made someone else's life miserable (if only for a short moment). I wonder when and if what goes around will come back around. Sometimes I find that I am in situations in church settings (of all places) where the past comes back at me like a bullet fired from an unseen weapon and I find myself on the opposite end of grace, which is hostility. I have been treated both good and bad by members of various congregations over the years. I have tried to do my best, but there are times I wonder if I am not paying for some long ago sin.
Or is it from an unknown slight, an insensitive remark? Am I to be like Job and offer sacrifices for sins both known and unknown? Or do I just need to live and learn?
I suppose for me the point of those painful memories is to grow from them. If I don't then they are likely to be actions and activities that I repeat to the detriment of others as well as myself. I may find myself paying for that which I have done, but perhaps the lesson is that as we pay off these our misdeeds, we learn how not to acquire such a debt in the future.
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