karma

• men reap what they sow

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

• principle close to truth of Supreme

94:3.5The karma prin­ci­ple of causal­ity con­ti­nu­ity is, again, very close to the truth of the reper­cus­sional syn­the­sis of all time-space ac­tions in the De­ity pres­ence of the Su­preme; but this pos­tu­late never pro­vided for the co-or­di­nate per­sonal at­tain­ment of De­ity by the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist, only for the ul­ti­mate en­gulf­ment of all per­son­al­ity by the Uni­ver­sal Over­soul.

• men reap what they sow

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

131:2.9“The Lord is near all who call upon him in sin­cer­ity and in truth. Weep­ing may en­dure for a night, but joy comes in the morn­ing. A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine. No good thing will God with­hold from those who walk up­rightly. Fear God and keep his com­mand­ments, for this is the whole duty of man. Thus says the Lord who cre­ated the heav­ens and who formed the earth: ‘There is no God be­side me, a just God and a sav­ior. Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. If you seek me, you shall find me if you search for me with all your heart.’ The meek shall in­herit the earth and shall de­light them­selves in the abun­dance of peace. Who­ever sows in­iq­uity shall reap calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirl­wind.

• every act shall receive its reward

131:3.5“No re­li­gion­ist may hope to at­tain the en­light­en­ment of im­mor­tal wis­dom who per­sists in be­ing sloth­ful, in­do­lent, fee­ble, idle, shame­less, and self­ish. But whoso is thought­ful, pru­dent, re­flec­tive, fer­vent, and earnest—even while he yet lives on earth—may at­tain the su­preme en­light­en­ment of the peace and lib­erty of di­vine wis­dom. Re­mem­ber, ev­ery act shall re­ceive its re­ward. Evil re­sults in sor­row and sin ends in pain. Joy and hap­pi­ness are the out­come of a good life. Even the evil­doer en­joys a sea­son of grace be­fore the time of the full ripen­ing of his evil deeds, but in­evitably there must come the full har­vest of evil-do­ing. Let no man think lightly of sin, say­ing in his heart: ‘The penalty of wrong­do­ing shall not come near me.’ What you do shall be done to you, in the judg­ment of wis­dom. In­jus­tice done to your fel­lows shall come back upon you. The crea­ture can­not es­cape the des­tiny of his deeds.

• men reap what they sow

131:9.4“A wise man is oc­cu­pied with the search for truth, not in seek­ing for a mere liv­ing. To at­tain the per­fec­tion of Heaven is the goal of man. The su­pe­rior man is given to self-ad­just­ment, and he is free from anx­i­ety and fear. God is with you; have no doubt in your heart. Ev­ery good deed has its rec­om­pense. The su­pe­rior man mur­murs not against Heaven nor holds a grudge against men. What you do not like when done to your­self, do not to oth­ers. Let com­pas­sion be a part of all pun­ish­ment; in ev­ery way en­deavor to make pun­ish­ment a bless­ing. Such is the way of Great Heaven. While all crea­tures must die and re­turn to the earth, the spirit of the no­ble man goes forth to be dis­played on high and to as­cend to the glo­ri­ous light of fi­nal bright­ness.”

• men reap what they sow

148:6.3“Al­though trans­gres­sion of di­vine law is sooner or later fol­lowed by the har­vest of pun­ish­ment, while men cer­tainly even­tu­ally do reap what they sow, still you should know that hu­man suf­fer­ing is not al­ways a pun­ish­ment for an­te­ced­ent sin. Both Job and his friends failed to find the true an­swer for their per­plex­i­ties. And with the light you now en­joy you would hardly as­sign to ei­ther Sa­tan or God the parts they play in this unique para­ble. While Job did not, through suf­fer­ing, find the res­o­lu­tion of his in­tel­lec­tual trou­bles or the so­lu­tion of his phil­o­soph­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, he did achieve great vic­to­ries; even in the very face of the break­down of his the­o­log­i­cal de­fenses he as­cended to those spir­i­tual heights where he could sin­cerely say, ‘I ab­hor my­self’; then was there granted him the sal­va­tion of a vi­sion of God. So even through mis­un­der­stood suf­fer­ing, Job as­cended to the super­hu­man plane of moral un­der­stand­ing and spir­i­tual in­sight. When the suf­fer­ing ser­vant ob­tains a vi­sion of God, there fol­lows a soul peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing.

• men reap what they sow

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”