And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. –Galatians 6:9
While most people in our culture don’t ascribe to a holistic, religious karma worldview, the mentality that people who do good things will get repaid with a good life is everywhere. And there’s a problem with a karma-way of thinking: we grow weary of doing good.
Three ways that karma creates weariness:
Karma can’t explain the random, chaotic nature of human suffering in the world. (Ecclesiastes 8:14; Luke 13)
Karma leads to believing things about God that He never actually said about Himself. God never promises to keep everything bad from happening to his people. What he does promise is to be with His people in the midst of anything they go through and He promises that someday He will do away with all brokenness in this world once and forever.
- Karma fuels a sense of entitlement in us.
What does the gospel offer that is different?
We get something way better than karma; We get grace.
Through the gospel, we are called and motivated to do good because underserved good has already been done to us. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
God will return to remake the world and do away with all suffering. We look back to the cross and we look forward to that promise that God will do away with all weariness and all pain and all suffering.