When Everything Doesn't Work Together for Good...
What life has shown me about my Christianized version of "Karma"
Karma is a complex topic, one I wouldn’t dare delve into without spending time learning the Hindu or Buddhist perspective of. (Also, contrary to popular opinion, I’m pretty sure it has little to do with any direct, immediate consequences of our actions in this life.)
However, for the purposes of this, my letter to you, friend, when I mention “karma,” I am talking about the idea that if you do good things, then good things will be done to/for you.
Five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years ago, if you’d told me that much of my Christian faith was built on this premise, I would’ve argued with you.
“I don’t believe in any sort of ‘prosperity gospel,’” I would explain. “It’s all grace. Everything from God is a free gift, based on Jesus’ merit, not mine.”
Though I had that concept squared away, settled in my mind, deemed true, true, always true, I lived my life according to a different set of principles.
I would give my last dollar to someone in need— and expect God to pay me back for it. (Guess what? I’d sometimes *cough, cough* end up broke.)
I’d bend over backwards for the people I served— and expect that, when I was in need, someone would magically appear to care for me (I can’t count the number of times in my life I was sick and, simultaneously, completely alone).
Heck, I’d toil extra, from dry reserves even— and assume the energy would be poured into me in return. I operated on the principle that as long as I was exhausting myself for good causes, God would hold sickness and weariness at bay. (Guess what? I got sick. Once I even ended up in the hospital, paralyzed from exhaustion.)
When I applied for jobs, I felt God would give them to me— as long as my motives were from a genuine heart of care for others. (After all these “God-given” jobs turned out to be massively stressful, I started to wonder about this one…)
This carried over into the people side of my life, too.
With my spouse, I figured if I just loved him hard enough, he’d love me back, just the way I needed. (This doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. You’re gonna have to tell your love how you wanna be loved…)
Or when it came to friends, I figured if I just focused on being a good friend, then I’d gain quality friends in return. (And guess what? I always ended up having needy people cling to me until I’d have to shake them off by ghosting ‘em.)
Now before you say, “Oh, you’re just an enneagram 2 (if you’re into the enneagram),” let me level with you, “Nope. I’m not a 2. I’m just a gal who was raised an evangelical Christian”— and this thought pattern ensured that I’d spend a lifetime giving and giving and giving, seeing as that’s how I was supposed to get my own needs met, by none other than God “himself.”
Y’all, let’s pause a minute here, catch our breath. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Who would/did this internal conditioning (be a good girl, never ask for anything, give and give, and someone/God will take care of you) benefit? (Cause it certainly didn’t benefit me, right?)
I used to feel like a ghost. “Who even am I?” I’d wonder. Once, I wrote a poem about how I could only see my own outline when it bounced off someone else.
The first time I came into conflict with this notion (Christian Karma, that is) was when my eldest child was born at 32 weeks and a pastor told the me who was devastated at having to go home without my babe, “God works all things together for good.”
“How was it possibly God’s good to leave my baby at the hospital?” I thought. “To not hold him in my arms and snuggle him? Weren’t babies supposed to be held, kissed, and sung to? Why would a God who could make things otherwise (for I believed God was involved in everything) not do so (and not just for me, but for every parent of every NICU baby)?”
Even when I brought my little boy home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe God didn’t always “work all things together for good.”
The next time my Christian Karma and I stared each other in the face was when that same eldest babe was diagnosed with cancer at just 10 years of age. When, nearing the end of my son’s treatments, the mom in the hospital room next to ours let out that keening wail of hopeless despair and loss, all, and I mean all, of my ideas about “God working all things together for good” ran out the door, and never came back. I mean, she prayed too, I’m sure of it. She believed, hard, as any mom would.
Even after I shook the notion of God caring for me because I was good and I was “God’s,” I still had this embedded idea that being giving would always come back around to bless me— until, one day I woke up so fatigued and in such pain I could not get out of bed. (Hadn’t I been good, though?)
On another day, I awoke and thought, “You know, I don’t feel loved. Like, at all. Why don’t I feel loved? Haven’t I loved so hard?”
Then the church my spouse and I had served for years, hard, turned its back on us, right when we were most in need. Hadn’t we poured our hearts out for them, though?
And there were these people I craved parent-love from, whom I loved wholeheartedly, and I just wanted them to see what I’d done for them for years, what I’d sacrificed, and shine their goodwill on me; but instead, they turned against me for loving someone whom they’d deemed a “sinner.” “Was this love’s return,” I wondered?
I sat in my lonely, broken state for a long time, silent tears streaming at random intervals daily, a regular old Job. I was angry. Hadn’t I been good? Hadn’t I loved God?
After I “sat” like this (or in this?) for a long while, a realization startled me. I was nothing more than a child wrapped up in my own magical thinking. I pinched my skin and got up, catching a glimpse of my wrinkled eyes in the mirror.
“If God is truly a God of love,” I considered, “then God wouldn’t make everything turn out good for some people and not for others (or for some people sometimes, but not always).” I mean, that’d make God pretty inconsistent, mean, and honestly, bitchy.
Nowadays when I hear, “all things work together for good for those who love God,” I spend a lot of time wondering what it might mean.
First, I wonder why Paul wrote it (in Romans 8:28)? Was he trying to convince people to keep holding to the Jewish/Christian faith even though they were suffering and Jesus wasn’t coming back like he’d promised? Did Paul maybe go a little too far with this promise? Or, horrors, was he saying “God works everything for good”— so stick around— to manipulate people? Or was he penning those words because he was trying to convince himself to believe them?
Second, I wonder about words such as “things” and “good” and “those who love God.”
What about those who don’t “love God?” Are they excluded from goodness? Hmm… this doesn’t seem to be true to life, does it? I mean, sometimes a greedy, power-hungry, money-lovin’ person’s child recovers from cancer and a God-loving person’s child doesn’t.
Maybe I’m looking at “good” in all the wrong ways, though. What is “good?” And doesn’t good indicate something that’s “good” for someone? For whom is the “all things working together” “good,” then? For God? Me? You? Humanity in general? For animals? The planet?
What does it mean to “love God?” How do you know if you’re loving God? How do you know if you’re loving God in the right way? Doesn’t this seem a little Santa-Claus’y of God? “Love me, be a good little girl, and you’ll get presents for Christmas,” yada yada.
If this verse breaks down so much when held up to the light of life experience, then what might it mean? Is there a way it could be read where it might ring “true-to-real-life”?
I wonder if I am looking at this verse from too personal a perspective. Since it wouldn’t make sense for a loving God to reward some of God’s kiddos sometimes when they’re really good, and ignore them other times, to the point where they’re traumatized and sick…, I wonder…
What if the “good” that all things are working together for is actually God’s good? And I’m not talking about God’s good for me personally, but God’s good for all of humanity? What if Paul was whispering (maybe without even knowing it) about a greater plan afoot? What if God’s goodness and good plan are like a mighty rushing river, one which, if you stepped into it, you would not only fall into, but become a particpant of and a part of?
At any rate, it’s something to ponder, isn’t it?
I’ve pondered many of these things too having grown up with the overt prosperity gospel. I like how you described the more subtle Christian karma, which is basically codependency (where someone takes care of everyone else’s needs and then gets upset when their own needs aren’t taken care of.)
I find the second footnote in NIV version as viewed in Biblegateway.com to be a most thoughtful translation......
Rom 8:28 NIV
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.
Footnote:
Romans 8:28 Or that all things work together for good to those who love God, who;
or “that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good.....” Somehow, this speaks to me in a new and very helpful way. 😘