I hear quite a bit of talk about karma these days, from all different sorts of Christians.
Karma, of course, is the notion that the Universe (or God, or Satan, or someone cosmic) keeps score. That for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. It's a kind of "eye for an eye" logic writ rather large. In karma, we think folks get what they have coming to them. Somehow -- eventually -- so the logic goes -- folks who've been cruel or mean or unloving will find their cruelty coming back to roost.
In karma, atonement is written into the universe as a spiritual law of investment and return. It's a moral calculus of accounting that says pain is reaped by those, ultimately, who inflict it.
Thing is, my moral and theological imagination is honed by Jesus and the Scriptures. So I'm not so sure karma really is the law of the universe. The word I hear isn't karma but grace.
Grace turns karma on its head. Grace fills in the cracks. Grace is the divine smoothing over of the rough spots we create. Grace is the divine gift that says cruelty, meanness and the lack of love will never have the last word. And lest we think grace is another thing in the universe, it isn't. It's a person. Grace is Jesus (John 1.16).
We live off the very bountiful, graceful expression of Jesus. In the face of Jesus, karma just shrinks. It's too small. It bends and breaks. Because Jesus alone is the fullest expression of being human (Colossians 1.15-20). We look at Jesus and we see the God of the universe that isn't concerned with keeping score.
That isn't to say that wrongs don't matter. It is to say that all the brokenness we experience in the world finds it's healing in Jesus. That God, in divine patience, is waiting and quietly working in Jesus to set the universe to rights (2 Peter 3.8-9). That the universe, though now groaning for its redemption -- with us having taken our role as agents of God's redemption in Jesus -- will one day be put together as a whole (Romans 8.18-39).
Karma is too weak a word in the face of Jesus. Jesus is why I have a hard time speaking the language of karma.
Now, Jesus still goes around pointing out how often we screw up. He doesn't gloss over the brokenness, the cruelty, we inflict on God, on one another, on ourselves, on the world. Any cursory reading of the Gospels has to account for Jesus' confrontation and judgment of the brokenness.
Thing is, that judgment is itself the word of grace. Because Jesus is God's way of working out the kinks. On handling brokenness and sin. All of it -- not just mine, or the ones I'd rather he handle (like friends and family).
Jesus is God's Word that rules out karma. Grace enters the picture and says, "I'll take the blame; I'll carry the cross". Grace is power through brokenness. It is God sending the rain -- on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5.44-45).
Grace is God's interruption of karma.