When Good Actions Produce Bad Results (and Vice-versa)
It’s Bad Karma to Not Believe in Karma
Karma is not a soggy headed new-age cliché. It's a profound insight into how a good world can be created or destroyed.
The word “karma” comes from a Sanskrit word containing the meanings of “action”, “effect” (as in cause and effect) and “fate”. Actions create consequences - they cause effects. Our fates are inextricably shaped by actions - not just our own actions but also those of others who influence our lives (whether we know them or not).
The Law of Karma claims that the fruits of action are good if the action is good, and are bad if the action is bad. On first glance this seems blatantly false. “No good deed goes unpunished” could easily be the maxim for the ages. Assuming you're paying attention you've seen how commonly evil deeds are richly rewarded in this world. Such things would appear to violate the Law of Karma.
Sins of prior generations are visited upon subsequent generations. Individual acts of goodness cannot succeed if they are performed within the context of a vast history of evil acts. Proclaiming the sanctity of liberty, freedom and human rights is farcical and fruitless if you live in a world that routinely commits its energies to rapacious resource extraction, economic warfare, psychological warfare and overt/covert warfare. These things accomplish nothing except the degradation of human life. Many millions have suffered profound physical, emotional and spiritual damage merely to enrich the powerful (or those who aspire to power).
The Law of Karma functions beneficially if (and only if) a society believes in and enforces its law of reciprocal cause and effect: good deeds are rewarded and evil deeds are punished.
When good is rewarded and evil punished, people behave accordingly. Conversely, when authority fails to reward good and punish evil, society becomes corrupt. When the Law of Karma is systemically inverted, evil is rewarded, good is punished & yes, the Law of Karma is once again proven correct.
What goes around seems not to necessarily come around - but this is only a temporary condition. When the choice is between the lesser of two (or more) evils, the result is always an evil one. Eventually the Law of Karma asserts itself - like gravity does to a thrown ball.
Evil actions cause misery, anger, despair & fear. These effects take time to propagate (mercifully affording time for repentance and redemption). If evil overtakes everything, Good’s only remaining recourse is to leave this world to preserve its goodness (if it stayed it would no longer be good).
Leaving an evil world is a form of mercy - a good in itself. God’s love is the ultimate good, experienced by those who would rather die than knowingly commit evil.1
Generations which experience (for example) the horror of protracted total war lose many of their best. The remaining survivors may be incredibly tough and impressive but some who make it through the meat grinder become ruthlessly capable of anything with no concern about consequences to others. The ability to survive at any cost may cost one their soul.
Even in peacetime it’s pretty much impossible to know with certainty whether or not a given course of action will turn out well. One can have great intelligence, accurate wide-ranging information, the best intentions and still be traveling the road to hell. Ordinarily we are lucky to have moderate intelligence, halfway useful information and questionable intentions. Hence the road to hell has become a highway.
The effort to be good is a hopeful act of faith - with no guarantees.
When the world becomes completely evil, those who won their reward by evil acts find themselves surrounded by the fruits of evil: misery, cunning, violence, horror, betrayal, falsehood. They are imprisoned in the world they co-created and cannot escape.
Their actions sprang from a belief that the material world was all that mattered. They struggle to live no matter how miserable existence becomes2 . They cannot admit the possibility there might be something greater than the body to preserve. They are therefore condemned to experience the karma of the deeds that brought them to their fate. Ultimately what went around came around. It just took time.
These are the dark roots of Karma that illustrate the wisdom and practical necessity to observe the Law of Karma. From this perspective it is better to die than to violate this law. If the fruits of your efforts to survive leave the world more miserable/horrible/ugly then what have you done with your life except be party to the ruin of the world?
There are few ways to avoid hell on earth.
To be provocative we might call this the Rapture.
To live is to be, to survive is to exist. The word “exist” comes from “ex” + “ist”. “Ex” means “out of”, “ist” means “being”. When we exist outside of being we are separated from God. When we find our connection with God we experience Being. Being is a position of humility that expands our experience of the cosmos.
