Suffering

Try to remember the old law: selfishness begets evil and generosity begets good.

Let your good outweigh your bad.
Love to get love.
Is this not the basis of most religion?

Job’s friends understood the appeal
Of such an orderly universe.
So when evil befell him, they knew who to blame:

Job. He must have done wrong,
And now is reaping what he sowed.
It sounds so true.

Except it isn’t.
Job reaps pain where he sowed righteousness.
His actions had no correlation with his receipts.

This carries over: “Love your neighbor as yourself,”
Said the one who was tortured and killed
By the enemies he loved.

They were stoned,
They were sawn asunder,
Were tempted, were slain with the sword:

They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins;
Being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
(Of whom the world was not worthy:)

It seems to me that followers of Christ both affirm and deny
This idea of karma,
Of spiritual cause and effect.

The good that you do has cosmic significance.
And yet the good that you do may have
No rewards now.

And, indeed, no more reward later than that
Available to all:
Eternal life.