Sometimes coffee counters, deli counters and pizza counters will sport a little jar. Taped to it a strip of paper reads "TIPS" with smiley faces and often an urging phrase, "Good Karma." Here's how this little boutique spirituality works.

If you give a tip, regardless of their pizza or sandwich or coffee service, you are building good karma. How? You throw good into the universe, it will throw good back at you. It's a principle somewhat like sowing and reaping, you get what you give.

But karma is less relational. For instance, even if you get terrible service at a restaurant, the soup is cold, the waitress forgets to refill all your drinks, the bill is inaccurate and you still tip big then you’ve got more karma points. The tipping is not related to the service, it's related to your desire to build karma. If you build up your Karma Account, then you are told to expect good things to happen to you, like someone might help you out when you’re in need. The energy of the mindless, impersonal universe is poised to give you a boost up, cause you did good. 

This is supposedly how karma works.

The way karma is believed and practiced today is inherently egocentric. Tipping becomes a way for you to help yourself. So you’re not really giving up money you’re investing in your Karma Bank. And there is the added problem that karma is an idea that the universe just automatically balances itself out. How does that work? Since Buddhism claims no personal God, only a mindless, impersonal force, how does this force know what is good and what is bad? Since there's no Judge or Person to decide, what decides that a good deed is 'good'? If I believe rewarding poor service with a tip is good, does that give me karma credit? What if my idea of good is actually not so good? Who decides what counts as good karma?

Christ gives us other reasons to do good unto others. As Christians we tip at restaurants, for instance, because of the satisfaction of knowing you encouraged a good job with monetary praise. When we tip we are inviting others to share in our resources, just like our Father in heaven invites us into his resources. Jesus asks us to do good because this is what an appropriate human does; we were made to do good unto others, for their benefit, inviting them into the goodness of God.

The idea of karma isn't just on tipping jars, I've seen it in commercials and overheard it in conversations, like, "I don't want her to stay mad at me cause, you know, karma, it'll come back." I've noticed people use karma as their motivation to make things right with me, like when a handyman in town left us hanging on a home improvement project. For five months we called and wondered at his unresponsiveness. Then one day he showed up on our front porch with an apology because as he said, "I didn’t want the bad karma." I wanted to be thankful, but I could not see his actions as anything but a selfish desire to soothe his own guilty conscience.

Now let me be perfectly clear, when we do good to others, we also get rewarded, but not with karma points. God has built into every virtue a natural reward that fits the good we do. 

The virtue of love, for instance, rewards you with intimacy. Intimacy, not good karma, is the proper reward of love. But if a man were to woo and marry a wealthy woman for the reward of her money, then we would call him mercenary, seeking an improper end of love. The proper reward of love is not money, not karma, but intimacy. 

Courage has a proper reward too; courage gives us expanded opportunities. For instance, if you are in high school and muster up the courage before a Winter Formal to ask the person you want, then you have an expanded opportunity to go with someone you like. Courage rewarded you with this opportunity. Courage on the battlefield gives you more opportunity for victory. Courage with God gives you expanded opportunities to know his will. But courage has some improper rewards, too. We don’t think a courageous woman should be rewarded with a fancy mansion or an attractive male escort. And we don’t find it courageous when someone jumps into freezing water to rescue a stray dog in hopes that they will get a hefty reward from the owner.

Hard work and persistence in our occupation has its proper rewards. When you do a job well God rewards us with satisfaction, not good karma, that we’ve served the work at hand (be it a research paper, an Algebra assignment, an application, a presentation or an interview). But hard work has improper rewards, too, like fame. We would all agree that if the reason I am an author is "for the fame" or "for the karma," then I am writing for the wrong reasons. I strive to write in order to write well, to write accurately, persuasively, powerfully, to help others, but I do not write merely to get famous or increase my Karma Account.

So while karma gets it half right when it says "do good," it gets it wrong when it says that the main reason to do good is to "get good." Karma encourages us to become fearful about our own karmic debt, constantly keeping tabs on how much good we have acquired and prevents us from enjoying God's natural rewards, different for different things we do.
For instance, what is the natural reward of tipping? For the good of the other, not for my own future ends. We may feel satisfied that we helped another afterwards, but we cannot expect God to rack up brownie points for our kindness. Whereas karma turns our attention inward, the kingdom of our God turns us outward into the inclusive, community-oriented type of motivation that is the basis of good relationships.

Recently, I read the popular book, The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book which despite some rather obvious self-help ("tell the truth," "don't take things too personally") is full of terrible motivation and Buddhistic ideas ("Everything is God"). The author, Don Miguel Ruiz, writes that telling the truth or "Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself" (italics mine, 36). According to Ruiz we tell the truth because it's good for us and us alone. 

But the teaching of Jesus is quite the reverse. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matt 5:16). He grounds our good deeds in the relationship we have with our Father and the relationship we have with those who watch us. Then Jesus breaks down karmic ideas with these words,

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. - Matt 5:44-45.

God does not play favorites, he is not going to automatically give you blessing because you did good things, but he will always be with us, through rain, storm, pain and laughter. 

Karma may be the way the world operates without Jesus. But now, as followers of this God-man, we can live in the knowledge that he has put an end to karma. In the next fledge, I'll talk about how Jesus broke down the karmic system, how karma like an old moldy document, disintegrates in the light of God's grace.

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© 2008 Dale & Jonalyn Fincher