Karma and Tina Turner
I read somewhere that the singer, Tina Turner, was a firm believer in karma. The term is usually associated with Hinduism and Buddhism. It carries with it the notion that one’s response to life in a former existence determines one’s present and future states. Do a lousy job in this present life and you slip down the "social" scale in the next one. For serious believers it is a "way of salvation" and "salvation" (for those who can bear it without shaping it better to their liking) is the loss of individual existence. The "nirvana" sought for is to be absorbed into the universe as a drop of water is absorbed into the ocean. The word "nirvana" itself gives the image of a candle "snuffed out". It’s the loss of all desire, therefore the end of all suffering. The "heaven" that goes with this religious perspective is the loss of individual being. It would be hard to find a religious view so diametrically at odds with the Christian faith.I understand that Tina Turner is no stranger to hardship and as hard as she has worked to make her mark in her chosen profession who could hold a grudge? But there are undesirable ramifications to convictions like these. Look, if atheism’s true, it’s true and that’s all there is to it but you can’t profess atheism without saying something about the countless poor souls that entered the world in torment, lived in torment and went out tortured. A caring atheist reflects on all these, shakes his or her head—hopeless. They have no hope that even for themselves all wrongs will be righted. And that might not matter much to them; they might feel that life has been satisfying to them and that they have no complaints. But their convictions relate not only to themselves—atheism proclaims "unyielding despair" for the entire tormented fellowship of humans. And it proclaims exemption from justice for all those that made life hell for the vulnerable.
Karma does something similar. Karma’s beautiful people; the healthy, wealthy, jet-setters whose lives are one long holiday are blessed in all these ways because they have earned their blessings, don’t you see. They have struggled their way through many previous existences and have responded nobly so that what we now see—when we see their blessed state—is the proof of their moral grandeur. Fair enough (if you can believe it) but their Karma convictions imply something about the tens of millions that live in hovels all over the world, the hundreds of millions that live in stink and squalor that defies description. The Karma doctrine of these beautiful people says that all the oppressed are getting what they’ve earned because of how they must have lived in previous existences. "They deserve their filth and squalor. They're getting paid for their moral failure."
Now I don’t think that people like Tina Turner are filled with the arrogance that would claim they were morally superior to all these tormented and abused souls. I don’t deny that they could be arrogant and make such claims, but I know no reason to believe it of anyone I've met or ever heard of. I do think that people are gullible and that some of the time their gullibility is the result of their refusal to think things through. A Christian that doesn’t look at his or her faith and what it should mean relative to others is shallow at best. An atheist that isn’t saddened by what his or her faith means for the entire human family in its tortured existence has no heart. The beautiful people who like the Karma notion (if they have a heart or mind at all) cannot have thought what they’re saying about the world’s great sufferers. The implications of Karma devalue the worth of all the suffering of all the ages.
What an awful doctrine.
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