Cards, Karma, and Justice

You know that moment when you're playing UNO and you play a Draw Two card on somebody, and then someone plays a Reverse and the person you played a Draw Two on plays a Draw Two on you, saying "guess when I drew that card"? Some people would call that karma or poetic justice. Some people call it statistically influenced probability (or luck, mingled with a slightly increased likelihood of getting that kind of luck). Some might say that it was destined to happen, while others may say that it only happened because you (and possibly the other guy(s)) made it happen. I don't know the laws of the universe well enough to say exactly why things happened that way, but I do know that there will be a frightening amount of justice on Judgement Day, and it might look an awful lot like karma.

Now, I'm not saying that any bad thing that you do will come back to bite you during the same lifetime, or even the next one, if you believe that there's life after death. I believe that you can repent and have sins taken off of the list of things you need to be punished for before the punishment actually happens, allowing you to avoid punishment altogether. But part of repentance is changing your behavior, which will require at least a few good deeds, so it might be argued that by doing good deeds, you generated enough good karma to counterbalance the bad karma you generated by doing bad things. But once again, I don't know the laws of the universe well enough to say whether karma is really a thing that actually happens or not. I'd guess not, because it's mostly only promoted by non-Christian religions, but it still could be true, especially since it so closely resembles justice, which I know is a true principle. Maybe karma is mostly true, perhaps even entirely true. Like I said, I don't know the rules well enough to say.

However, I do know that for every act, there is going to be an appropriate amount of justice. If we sin and don't repent of that sin, sooner or later we're going to suffer the consequences. On the other hand, whenever we do something good, God blesses us for it, either in this life or the next. That sounds a lot like karma, too. So maybe those Buddhists and Hindus know what they're talking about. After all, both they and Christians have reason to believe that you reap what you sow. [Link: Karma] [Link: Christianity]