The Lutheran Hour
-
"Bad Karma vs. Good Creator"
- Download MP3 Reflections
-
Text: John 9:3
-
No one knows the cause why. But Nick Vujicic was born without arms and legs; though he hasn’t let it stop him. In 2008, Nick, a native of Australia, was featured on the Australian version of the program, 60 Minutes. The program opens with film footage of the 25-year-old Nick, armless, legless, at a swimming pool, on a diving board in his swimming trunks. He shims his way out to the edge of the diving board, turns himself around, throws his head back, and flips into the water below. He bobs up from the surface of the pool, shakes the water out of his eyes, and then as he’s swimming over to the side of the pool where the ladder is, you’re thinking to yourself, “How in the world is he going to get out of there? He’s got no limbs.” But he was blessed with a little foot on his lower left side with two toes just below his hip bone. And Nick uses those two toes, his chin, and his shoulder blades to hoist himself out of the water. He stands up right on the deck with a big smile on his face and joy in his eyes, and the show’s interviewer says, “You really can do anything, can’t you?”
By the age of 25, Nick Vujicic, spelled V-U-J-I-C-I-C. Nick, as you can imagine, has struggled through a lot of bullying, feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and unanswered questions. But despite that, he has learned not only how to swim, but how to surf, how to fish, how to play golf and soccer. He went to university. He earned a double degree. He started a business and continues to manage it. He’s married and he has four beautiful children. And he uses the gift of those two little left toes to do all manner of things. Things you wouldn’t believe that he could do, like typing 53 words a minute. He can type. And people are drawn to Nick, partly because of his unique appearance, but also because he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He laughs easily. He tells a great story and he gives lots and lots of hugs. He says he’s the kind of person who likes to skip the handshake and go straight in for the hug. Nick often gets invited to schools to share his story with students. He says the kids, especially the younger ones, often have no filter. When they see him, they’re like, “Dude, what happened?” And Nick’s like “Cigarettes.” And they’re like, “Seriously?” And he says, “No, I’m just messing with you, mate.”
As for the cause of why Nick was born this way, he’s never gotten a good answer. He has, however, gotten some bad ones. When Nick was 12 years old, a woman came up to him and said, “Have you ever wondered why you were born this way?” And Nick’s like, “Uh-huh.” And she said, “Have you ever thought of reincarnation?” And Nick’s like, “What’s that?” And she says, “Well, you’re simply being punished for your previous life. But don’t worry now that you’re a good boy, you’re going to come back like a butterfly.” And Nick thought to himself, “This woman don’t know how many butterflies I ran over in my wheelchair.” See, the woman speaking with Nick was working with an idea that some call karma. In popular culture, karma could simply be stated as you get what you deserve. In formal religions such as Hinduism, karma is a principle of cause and effect. It means that good actions and good intentions cause good things to happen to you. Bad actions and bad intentions cause bad things to happen. And all this is said to determine the future, even future lives if reincarnation is part of the belief system.
But for a lot of people, they don’t believe in reincarnation, but they believe in some form of karma. There’s even evidence in the Bible that the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who’s called the Christ, it seems that they believed in something like karma, even though they didn’t believe in reincarnation. I’ll get to where the Bible talks about that in a moment, but let me give you a bit of background first. Jesus’ first followers were all Jewish. Now Jews and Hindus believe very different things about God and the universe. Hindus believe that the universe itself is God, not a personal God that you would pray to, but an eternal recycling system, a closed system, that is what it is, always has been, always will be.
Ancient Jewish belief in contrast says that the universe is not eternal. It didn’t always exist, but it was created by God who has always existed. And God, because He is wise and fair, made the world to work with an order that can look something like karma, where good actions produce good effects and evil actions produce bad effects. See, this is where Jewish and Hindu and Christian beliefs have some things in common. Much of the book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, Proverbs testifies to this principle of cause and effect. For example, Proverbs 26:20 says, “Without wood, the fire goes out; without gossip, a quarrel dies down.” This is a principle of cause and effect. Different causes would produce different effects. If you chop your firewood and tend your fire, it will cause your fire to keep going and you won’t get cold. If you gossip about people behind their backs, that will cause their anger to burn against you. And their anger will cause them to do bad things to you. Cause and effect, sin and punishment, right action and reward, that’s just how the world works, sometimes.
So we shouldn’t be too hard on these first followers of Jesus when they espouse a belief that sounds a little like karma. The scene that I’m talking about is recorded in the Gospel according to John 9. It says that Jesus was walking along and He sees a man, a man who was blind. He was born that way. Jesus would go on to heal him. He gave him new eyes as only the Creator of the universe can. But before this, His followers, His disciples asked him a question. Before they knew that Jesus was going to heal the man, they said, “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born this way?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents.” Jesus says that this man’s disability wasn’t his punishment. Now Jesus is echoing another side of biblical wisdom that complements and complicates the karma like wisdom of Proverbs.
This is the wisdom found in the Old Testament book of Job. The book of Job describes the suffering of a man called Job, and how Job was faced with the same question Jesus’ disciples asked, the same question Nick Vujicic has asked, the same question a lot of us have asked. Because when something bad happens, we want to know why. Why did all these bad things happen to Job? His friends thought it must be punishment for some sin Job had done. But the answer that we get from God in the book of Job is similar to the answer that Jesus gives to His disciples who asked about the man who was born blind. It wasn’t because this man sinned, Jesus says. And if Jesus is any kind of an authority for you, then His wisdom makes you stop and think before making any pronouncements about someone’s karma.
Jesus complicates the wisdom of Proverbs, but He doesn’t erase it. See, cause and effect, it’s still a real thing. We’re responsible for our actions. Our conduct does have consequences, and this may sound like karma, but there is a big difference. Because with a principle of karma, we can make comparisons. We can class people; we can rank them in order, successful and unsuccessful, celebrities and nobodies, good karma and bad. But the universe is more complicated than that. It’s impossible for us to trace out every cause and effect, to map out all the chains of reactions, because the Bible reveals that the universe is not a closed system. Because God, the Creator, is outside the system and isn’t limited by it. And even within the creation there is a supernatural realm, a spiritual dimension with spiritual beings who have their own influence on the system. Read the conversation between God and the fallen spiritual being called Satan in the book of Job chapters 1 and 2.
And so, because we are finite creatures, because the creation is incalculably complex and because it’s under attack by incomprehensible spiritual forces of darkness and evil—unless God tells us so specifically, we can’t know whether any suffering is punishment for a certain sin. We can’t know whether any success is a reward for something good we did. So, what can you know? In Jesus, you can be sure that through all temporary success or suffering, God is doing a greater work. God’s plan, God’s will, God’s desire is not to give you what you deserve. In love God wants to give you what Jesus deserves. And when you entrust yourself to Jesus, you can stop asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” And start asking, “How is God working through this?”
Listen again to what Jesus said to His disciples in John 9. He tells them, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God would be displayed in him.” The works of God displayed in him. Jesus response, see, it’s not backward looking but forward looking. He isn’t talking about the cause of this man’s blindness in the past. Does God permit blindness to happen? Does God allow bad things to happen? Yes. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about. He’s not answering the question why did God let this happen? He’s answering the more important question, which is, given the fact that this bad thing happened, what good work will God do through it? Jesus is more interested in that question, the forward-looking question because the backward-looking question leaves us with our bad karma and our false comparisons. But the forward-looking question turns us toward God and His promises. We don’t always know why bad things happen, but with Jesus, we can always look forward to how God will work through it. There is sin and there is evil, and they cause much brokenness and pain in the world.
God is not the cause of sin and evil. Fallen humans and rebel spiritual beings are the cause. And for a time, God permits sin and evil and the suffering and the punishment that result. God doesn’t explain why He allows suffering to go on in one case or why He puts a limit on it in another. He doesn’t explain why He says yes to one prayer but says no or not yet to another. God doesn’t explain. And even if He did, we couldn’t comprehend it. He doesn’t explain, but He extends Himself in Jesus. He embraces us in Jesus. See, God is a Father who sent His only Son into the world, not to look back on all the reasons that we deserve to be condemned, but to take what we deserved, to take our bad karma into Himself, and destroy it by His death on the cross.
God did this because He is a loving Father. He always has been and always will be. From eternity, He loves His Son in the joy and in the life of His Holy Spirit. And above all else, God values loving, life-giving relationships. That’s why He created the universe, to make us His adopted children, to bring us into this eternal life-giving relationship. But humankind rejected God. We tried to create good karma on our own apart from God. But there is nothing good apart from God. Only empty comparisons and the pain that they cause. And this pain, this suffering that we experience now in time, it cannot compare to the everlasting suffering of hell, which is the consequence of continuing to reject God. And so, God ever since has been working to save humanity from this hell. That’s the work Jesus Christ the Son of God came to do. And by His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, He did it completely.
And now by His spirit, he lets us share in that work. That’s what Jesus was doing with the man who was born blind mentioned in John 9. Jesus let him share in the work, God’s work to turn us to faith in Jesus, into a life-giving relationship with God. Jesus restored the man’s physical sight, but not so that he could have better karma. After the man was healed, things actually got worse for him. He starts telling his story. He starts talking about Jesus, but his neighbors don’t believe him. He keeps telling his story, but this gets him in trouble with the religious authorities. And then his parents abandon him, and he gets kicked out of the community. It’s like “anti-karma.” “No good deed goes unpunished,” as it’s said. And you get the sense that the universe is way more complicated than we suspected; that it’s not a machine we can manipulate, but that there’s an enemy trying to keep people in the dark, blinding them to the truth about Jesus. But this man just keeps telling his story about Jesus: who He is and what He did. And the more he tells the story, the more he starts to truly see, the closer he gets to the true miracle, to a life of faith in Jesus and sharing in God’s plan and purpose in Jesus.
Nick Vujicic, the man I mentioned at the beginning, born without arms and legs, is a man with a story—a story that’s all about Jesus. Nick says that reading John 9, the account of the man born blind, changed his life. He says that it wasn’t that the man got to see with his eyes, but that he got to see Jesus with the eyes of faith. To see that Jesus loves him and has a plan for him. Nick has asked Jesus to give him arms and legs. He says he keeps a pair of shoes in the closet just in case Jesus answers that prayer. He knows that Jesus can heal him, and one day Jesus will heal him completely when He returns to raise the dead and make all things new. But before that day comes, Jesus loves Nick as he is now, and He has work to do through Nick as he is now, so that others would know Jesus and have life in His Name.
So, like the man who had been blind, Nick just keeps telling his story. Life is hard for him. His condition comes with suffering. But somehow with his bright eyes, his big smile, his Aussie accent, his unique appearance, his ability to laugh at himself has made Nick Vujicic one of the most requested speakers in the world. Maybe you saw him in the 2010 short film, The Butterfly Circus. He’s the main character named Will. He was named best actor in that performance. Nick has visited 65 countries, met with 16 presidents, addressed 9 governments, authored 5 books and spoken to 6.5 million people in person. And wherever he goes, he tells people about Jesus.
And just like you and me, sometimes Nick wakes up and feels hopeless. He feels worthless, like he has no purpose. And it’s because what we are up against is much worse than bad karma. It’s an enemy. It’s an adversary who’s trying to separate us from God and destroy us forever. One time Nick was speaking at a church, and he saw in the crowd in the back, a two-year-old boy with no arms or legs. He had a little foot just like Nick’s. Later he found out that the boy’s name is Daniel. Nick asked Daniel’s father to bring him up to the front of the church. Nick says, “I couldn’t give him a high five, so I just put my little foot on his foot.” Nick looks down at him; Daniel looks up and he smiles. And Nick says, “In a blink of an eye, my whole life passed before me in a flash. All the bullying, all the suicide attempts, me now being married, having four kids.”
And he realizes that at Daniel’s age, he had no idea how Jesus was going to work through him. And he knows that Daniel is going to go through all that fear, all that darkness, all of the devil’s lies. But Jesus is working for Daniel, and he sent Nick to do what no one else could do in that moment, to show him the truth, to tell him the truth, to tell us the truth. God loves me and has a plan for me. God loves you, and He has a plan for you. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
Reflections for March 19, 2023
Title: Bad Karma vs. Good Creator
Mark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour, and we’re back with our Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Hello, Mark.
Mark Eischer: We were talking about karma in the message today. Isn’t it true that the goal of karma is not to keep coming back as something better, but to keep from coming back at all?
Mike Zeigler: Well, that’s a good point. Before I answer, I would want to say first, as with most things related to world religions that have been practiced over thousands of years, it’s complicated. So, there’s no simple answer. But I think we could say in a religion like Buddhism, which also has a principle of karma, and again, karma is just a moral cause and effect, so that you would say moral actions result in more wholesome rebirths, and immoral actions result in less wholesome rebirths. Like you said, in Buddhism, the goal isn’t better and better rebirths. It’s freedom from that endless cycle of rebirths. That’s what this concept of Nirvana or the state of Nirvana is. It’s freedom from the cycle.
Mark Eischer: If you were to compare then Buddhism and Christianity—both are pointing toward a future salvation of freedom from sin and death. In Buddhism, however, the end state of karma is to be free by achieving nothingness, almost a permanent death?
Mike Zeigler: Yes.
Mark Eischer: We contrast that with Christianity in which the end state is really not the end at all, but it’s the beginning of a new creation, free of sin by receiving permanent life.
Mike Zeigler: Yes, and what you’re talking about here is how Buddhism and Christianity have two fundamentally different views of time. Buddhism views time like a wheel, an ever-turning wheel, no beginning, no end; it’s just an endless cycle of the same. The problem from the Buddhist perspective is that human beings wish that things could be different. We wish that we could make things better. We wish that we could make some forward progress and take control of our lives and make the world a better place, and not just be stuck on this treadmill of disappointment and suffering. Buddhism says that the wish for this to be different is the source of all our problems. So, there is some commonality here with Buddhism and Christianity, or the biblical faith, because if you read the book of Ecclesiastes, it sounds very Buddhist in some places. It is true that part of our problem is that we wish that we could control the world. We wish that we could make it better on our terms, but we can’t. In time, everybody has to surrender to this sad fact.
The biblical hope is completely different than the Buddhists’ because the Buddhist doesn’t believe in a wise, loving, personal creator. So, the best hope is just for individuals to escape into nothingness, like dizzy children diving off of spinning merry-go-round or something. But the Bible reveals through Jesus that the universe has a Creator who wants to be our Father, who wants to adopt us as His children. So, the problem isn’t just that we want to control the world. The deeper problem is a broken relationship with the One who created and does control the world. The Creator sends His Son into the world to win back our trust and to restore His broken creation. So for the Christian, time isn’t a spinning wheel. It’s like an arrow shot forward from the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus from the dead, moving toward the day when Jesus returns to raise the dead and make all things new.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“God Moves in a Mysterious Way” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“I Trust, O Christ, in You Alone” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.