The difficulty with it all is that there is a thread of truth to it. And the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that a huge percentage of Christians subconsciously believe it too. Maybe even you.

It's true that you reap what you sow. In fact, the Bible talks about this a lot. Job 4:8 says it pretty plainly: "...those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it." There are consequences to our actions. If you do something bad to someone, chances are it will come back to haunt you. And if you're really nice to someone, that person will often be very nice to you. It's a general rule of thumb that being a jerk will probably cause problems in your life and being really nice may make things a little easier.

But not always.

Sometimes jerks get the royal treatment. And nice guys finish last. It's "unfair." So if you believe in karma, you end up having to find a way to excuse this away (i.e. "reincarnation"...things may not make sense right now, but your punishment/reward will be seen in your next life, so it's really okay). This is not all that much different from Christianity. While we don't believe in reincarnation, we do believe in life after death. And we believe that while bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, God is still God and He'll act justly and take care of it all in the end.

When you add God into the mix, things get really confusing. When you're trying so hard to just be a good person do good things and still nothing seems to go right, who do you blame? God appears to be incredibly unfair and you may not like Him very much...at least until things go your way again. Then He's okay. Maybe. It's hard to tell.

But this isn't how God works. If this is your view of God, it's understandable that you're at odds with Him. But really, you're only upset with your version of God, not with the true God.

I think the real problem is that a lot of people (including many Christians) still view God as some obscure impersonal cosmic force. Things go wrong and people assume that "God" must be punishing them. If they do enough good things, they assume "God" will be appeased.

But God is very real. And very, very personal. He acts out of pure love, not out of mere rewards and punishments as if we're puppies. Chances are, God did not open up that front row parking space just for you because you've been good. It's much more likely that someone happened to pull out right before you got there...all without God's involvement in the matter.

Jesus didn't say "If you treat others nicely, they'll treat you nicely in return." Instead He guaranteed we'd have problems. In fact, He made it pretty clear that the more devoted we are to Him, the more the world may hate us. Most of the disciples and Jesus Himself ended up being murdered for doing the right thing.

God doesn't promise to make our life easy or to take away bad circumstances. But He did promise something most of us do not appreciate enough: To walk with us through the "unfairness"...if we'll let Him. This is a far greater gift than we realize. We don't hold on to this truth as tightly as we should because we're so preoccupied with the fact that we'd just rather have Him take away the bad stuff.

I'm convinced that some of you reading this are still secretly grasping onto part of the theory of karma. You feel like you have to earn God's love and acceptance, even though you may even know better. But you can't earn your way into God's favor. It really doesn't matter how many good things you do, how many people you help or how often you go to church.

Grace isn't earned. It's given. Freely. The beauty of the Gospel is that it is precisely contrary to the idea of karma. The thrust of it's message is that we can get what we don't deserve. Forgiveness. Hope. Peace. Eternal life.

God certainly doesn't love you because you've done enough good things to impress Him. He loves you simply because you're His kid. Maybe that's the harder thing for you to believe and maybe that's why you still feel like you're on a point system with Him. How could His grace really be FREE? I don't know. But it is.

Give up the fight to earn His love. You already have it. All you have to do is embrace it.

And that, my friends, is your motivation to go out and do good things and avoid the bad. Not because it earns points, but because His undeserved grace compels you to do so. After what He's done for you, how could you live any other way than in the freedom of following His lead?

You don't have to live your life hoping that some impersonal cosmic force is happy with you. Just accept your Father's grace and rest in it.