Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Karmic Justice

In the adventuring franchise in a D&D game I'm playing, my character's role is the Karmaccountant. (The official job title is Occultant, but the position seems to have been designed for Necromancers and/or Warlocks, which my character is not.) His job in this position is to track the franchise's karmic balance to keep track of whether they're due for good karma or bad karma.

I only partially agree with the concept of karma. I believe that God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked, but I also know that it's not that simple. Sometimes, God allows good people to experience afflictions they don't deserve, and sometimes God allows bad people to enjoy blessings they don't deserve. It's not fair, but that's life. Life isn't always fair, though it will eventually be made fair through the Final Judgment and the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, everyone will get what they deserve (with exceptions made for those who repent of their wrongdoings). In that sense, there is such a thing as karmic justice. However, we shouldn't necessarily expect to see karmic justice play out in this life, so, unless you're thinking about the long game, it doesn't usually make sense to track your own karmic balance. Life doesn't owe people good things just for doing good things, and people can't "pay off" evil deeds by doing good ones. Karmic justice may work like that in fiction, but in real life, God's justice works very differently.

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