I guess karma is making a comeback. One of the most popular TV sitcoms, “My Name is Earl,” is about this guy who realizes that all the bad things he has done to people have started coming back to haunt him, and if he wants to be happy, he’d better fix his broken karma. (If you have a broken karma, do you take it to a karma-chanic?)
Then there is Alicia Keyes’ song of the same name, and I understand Motorola has a marketing campaign that is supposed to help people improve their karma, according to the LA Times. But here’s the kicker: Karma in a Can. A guy named Andrew Loren Klamer has “invented” a line of aromatherapy sprays that consist of a mixture of seven “good herbs for good karma.” What kind of herbs improve your karma? Well, three of them are ginseng, lavender and peppermint, but Klamer isn’t revealing the others.
Although Klamer is quick to admit that you can’t really improve your karma by spraying something, his marketing agent seems to think maybe you can. She is quoted as saying, “Just with a spritz, everything is OK again.” That’s what I call instant karma.
In a way, I guess it is comforting to know that our culture has become an equal opportunity abuser of religious principles, and it’s not just Christian ideas that are being kicked around anymore. Karma is a sacred Hindu principle of action and reaction which basically means that a person’s actions return to them, that we, in a sense, create our own future. If you do positive things, you find positive things coming your way, and vice versa. And, of course, karma is also related to the Hindu idea of reincarnation – our karma may not reward or punish us until another life.
We Christians are not strangers to this action-reaction principle. Paul writes in Galatians 6, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”
But that’s not the entire biblical teaching. The book of Job instructs us that sometimes bad things happen to us when we’ve done nothing to deserve them, and there isn’t always a direct line of cause-and-effect. But more than that, we have the good news that, because of Jesus’ willingness to take the effect of our sin upon himself, we do not have to suffer the ultimate consequences of our sin. Nor do we have to keep coming back to this world in repeated reincarnations until we “get it right.” Ultimately, we do not create our future, Jesus has created it for us.
We have been offered grace, the grace of a loving God who breaks the cause-and-effect, action-reaction cycle and removes our sin from us. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter what we do with our life, nor does it mean we are not responsible for the consequences of our actions. But, as Paul also says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No matter how well we live our lives, we cannot of our own right actions and thoughts earn or achieve eternal life. It is a gift, a free gift. It is grace, something you’ll never be able to buy… in a can or any other way.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Limbo in Limbo
The existence of Limbo is now, well, in limbo. According to Christian Century magazine (October 31, 2006), Pope Benedict XVI is expected to make an official disavowal of the idea first theorized by St. Augustine. Augustine, speculating on the ultimate destiny of unbaptized babies and those who lived before Christ, suggested that they might live “on the limbus (or border) of heaven.”
No word on whether the pope’s excommunication of Limbo will also be accompanied with an explanation of exactly where those poor babies and unfortunates born too soon to hear of Jesus might actually be. One can’t help but wonder how Augustine would react to hearing that his musings on mortality became official church doctrine for sixteen hundred years.
To determine that babies and those who lived before Christ are now anywhere but in the loving presence of God is to resort to a works righteousness that contradicts the basic biblical teaching of salvation by grace, which is certainly by faith for those who have been given the opportunity to believe, to accept the Good News. But to say that those who have not been given the opportunity to believe must therefore be outside the gates of heaven, whether on its border or anywhere else, is to deny the gracious power of God to save anyone God wishes to save.
And it hardly seems to reflect the will of the One who said, “Allow the children to come to me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” and, “Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
No word on whether the pope’s excommunication of Limbo will also be accompanied with an explanation of exactly where those poor babies and unfortunates born too soon to hear of Jesus might actually be. One can’t help but wonder how Augustine would react to hearing that his musings on mortality became official church doctrine for sixteen hundred years.
To determine that babies and those who lived before Christ are now anywhere but in the loving presence of God is to resort to a works righteousness that contradicts the basic biblical teaching of salvation by grace, which is certainly by faith for those who have been given the opportunity to believe, to accept the Good News. But to say that those who have not been given the opportunity to believe must therefore be outside the gates of heaven, whether on its border or anywhere else, is to deny the gracious power of God to save anyone God wishes to save.
And it hardly seems to reflect the will of the One who said, “Allow the children to come to me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” and, “Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Standing on the Side of the Road
There are several places in the New Testament where the Christian life is compared to running a race. Have you ever thought that part of running our race as Christians is standing on the sidelines for others as they run their race?
Back in the day, before my hips got old, I used to love to run. Well, jog, actually. Runners don’t have speed walkers passing them. But, still, I loved it, and for several years I enjoyed running, er, jogging, in races, from 5K’s to my longest, a thirteen mile mini-marathon. To my constant surprise, at every single race, people would show up along the route and cheer the runners on, cheer me on. People I never met would call out words of encouragement to me. Trust me, I was closer to the back than the front of the runners, and we’re not talking about the Boston marathon, these were just local races. But folks would stand along the road, applaud and call out, “Keep up the pace, you’re doing great!” “You’re almost there, don’t slow down!” “Looking good, keep going!” And you know what? It worked. Their cheers and applause lifted my spirits and my energy, and I found myself pushing a little harder.
I ran my race a little better because they cheered me on.
Nearly every one of Paul’s letters contains the word “encourage.” Either Paul is sending someone to his readers to encourage them, or he’s encouraging his readers to encourage one another. It is an important part of being a Christian to encourage those around us. An uplifting word, a hug, a pat on the back, or a compliment can do amazing things to someone for whom life seems to be an uphill run. It lifts their spirit, boosts their energy, and helps them run their race a little better.
So, it really is a part of the race we run, to stand along the road and encourage those we see working hard to run their race.
Back in the day, before my hips got old, I used to love to run. Well, jog, actually. Runners don’t have speed walkers passing them. But, still, I loved it, and for several years I enjoyed running, er, jogging, in races, from 5K’s to my longest, a thirteen mile mini-marathon. To my constant surprise, at every single race, people would show up along the route and cheer the runners on, cheer me on. People I never met would call out words of encouragement to me. Trust me, I was closer to the back than the front of the runners, and we’re not talking about the Boston marathon, these were just local races. But folks would stand along the road, applaud and call out, “Keep up the pace, you’re doing great!” “You’re almost there, don’t slow down!” “Looking good, keep going!” And you know what? It worked. Their cheers and applause lifted my spirits and my energy, and I found myself pushing a little harder.
I ran my race a little better because they cheered me on.
Nearly every one of Paul’s letters contains the word “encourage.” Either Paul is sending someone to his readers to encourage them, or he’s encouraging his readers to encourage one another. It is an important part of being a Christian to encourage those around us. An uplifting word, a hug, a pat on the back, or a compliment can do amazing things to someone for whom life seems to be an uphill run. It lifts their spirit, boosts their energy, and helps them run their race a little better.
So, it really is a part of the race we run, to stand along the road and encourage those we see working hard to run their race.
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