Have you ever heard that what goes around comes around? You know, that if you put good stuff out into the universe, you’ll get good stuff back; same for bad? You reap what you sow and all that? Well, this is the basic idea of karma. But there’s a problem.
Haven’t you also heard that one of the great flaws in this world is the fact that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people? Innocent children get terrible diseases, whole groups of people are the victims of oppression and genocide, and many of the most wicked people imaginable seem to live fairly cushy lives. This is the basic argument in what philosophers call “the problem of evil and suffering.”
So which is it? Do people always get what they deserve or do people sometimes (perhaps often) get precisely what they don’t deserve?
Now, my purpose for today isn’t to pick or resolve any of this. I just want you to be aware that you can’t hold both. That way the next time you hear someone use the problem of evil to discount God and then talk about karma, you’ll know what to say.
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