Judge Karma

“I will deal with them according to their own conduct, and I will judge them by their own standards.” (Ezekiel 7:27)

In the last part of that verse the Lord adds, “Then they will know that I am the Lord.”

The Golden Rule is the positive framing of this idea, but neither expression is new. There is something in all of us, unless evil has ground it out, that knows ‘what goes around comes around’. The saints of the New Covenant do not demand justice for we know too well what that means. The Seldom Scene sing, “Oh, Lord, have mercy on my soul. I don’t want to reap what I’ve sown.”

Though man is made in the image and likeness of God, a reflection of the Divine, he is fallen or separated, out of sync with his Creator. There is something in us that is rebellious, that bristles against God. You might not like to call it evil, but it can certainly lead to evil. Samuel told Saul, “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.”

What is witchcraft? Basically it is manipulation. I’ve met a lot of witches in the pews of churches. We are encouraged to pray for our own needs and to intercede on behalf of others, but prayer is a function of trust and an understanding of God goodness. Religious manipulators seek, as I have said before, to obligate God. Like rebels, religious witches want to enhance their egos and feed the self. They do not realize that self is the wolf that will gnaw their guts in hell.

I wonder if worldly people realize the benefits of living in a western culture shaped by Judeo-Christian values. It is perhaps easier in this age, in this part of the world, to think that people are good and noble, innately kind and generous. Sure, every once in a while we get the wake-up call when some filthy barbarians kill a few thousand of us, but by and large we are lulled by the comfort of our lifestyle into thinking that man is good by nature -- by his animal nature. .

Moral behavior is not innate. It does not arise from the masses to be codified. The great moral principles that govern us come from single points, individual moral geniuses. It almost seems as if they received this insight from somewhere else, and the basic principles are parallel enough that one might think it was from the same place. If the argument is that remote tribe X has a prohibition against murder the same as the Israelites led by Moses, then it is likely that there was a Moses-like leader among the X at some point in their history. In fact the proscription of murder did not come to Moses first but to Noah – or, one might say, to the first murderer, Cain.

The great truths revealed in religious teachings have been incorporated into our culture and we inoculate our children with it. One only has to go to those places in the West infected by some of the more viral strains of Islam to realize how important that vaccination is. But, as a fish does not know it is in water until it is caught, many do not understand that they draw their very lives from the godly values of Western Civilization.