Actually, I don’t believe trees fall in moral judgment. But the question lingered. It revealed something deeper—an ancient, almost instinctive impulse to connect what happens to us with what we have done. Cause and effect. Guilt and consequence. Karma.
In its various guises, karma is said to be the law of cause and effect—or, more casually, what goes around comes around. In popular speech it often takes a superstitious form, as when a friend faces a hard time and says, “I must have done something wrong to deserve this!” Sometimes karma is understood impersonally, as a principle of the universe, like Newton’s third law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is just the way the world works. In religious traditions across the globe, karma also appears in theistic form—where divine agency delivers the effects. Think of the stern parent who tells their child, “If you keep doing bad things, G*d will punish you.”
But there are more refined theological versions. Trito-Isaiah (many scholars understand that the book of Isaiah is the work of at least three distinct voices) offers a poetic and profound vision:
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
Notice the “if-then” structure. If you live in a certain way—lifting burdens, feeding the hungry—then the light will rise for you. All versions of karma seem to share this logic: if X, then Y.
Some popular Christianities adopt this framework too. “If you give to the church/mission/healer,” the message goes, “then G*d will bless you—make you happy, healthy, or rich.” At its worst, this becomes little more than spiritualized capitalism. Someone always profits.
Other versions postpone the payout. You will not be rich now, but in heaven. Karl Marx, among others, noted how convenient this theology was for the wealthy. Promise the poor their reward in the afterlife, and you can secure a great deal of labor in this one. Marx famously called religion the opiate of the people—pain relief for a hard life, with dreams of a better world someday. Another social thinker, Max Weber, examined how religious ideas could shape economic behavior in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He argued that early Protestantism, especially Calvinism, fostered a sense of inner anxiety about salvation. Since one could not know if one was among the elect, outward signs of diligence, discipline, and worldly success became markers of grace. The result, Weber said, was a religiously motivated work ethic that unintentionally gave rise to modern capitalism. Both Marx and Weber saw how religious ideas—especially those shaped by karmic-style thinking—could support powerful economic systems. One by promising rewards in the next life. The other by making prosperity in this life a sign of divine favor.
There is truth, of course, in natural consequences. Children learn from experience. Parents use the logic of karma to teach life’s lessons. Behavioral psychologists—now less fashionable—once relied on rewards and punishments to shape behavior. The state encodes karmic logic into law: do this, get that; break this, suffer that. We would be foolish to ignore this pattern. But karma is not the highest road.
The ancients said that “virtue is its own reward.” The Chinese sages described living with the grain of the universe as walking the Dao. One does not follow the Dao simply to get what one wants or avoid what one fears. The Dao is a good in itself. You seek truth, love goodness, appreciate beauty—not because doing so brings reward, but because they are worthy of love in their own right. You love G*d not to receive blessings, but because G*d is the supreme good.
And then—sometimes—there is grace. The unearned kindness. The help you did not seek. The joy you did not expect. The gift you did not earn. In Christian theology, that is grace. It runs counter to karma. It cannot be bought or deserved. And yet it, too, seems to be woven into the way the universe works. Can grace and karma exist together? It seems they do. How? I honestly do not know. That is something to ponder another day.
So back to that tree on the house. Cause? A random, massive windstorm that brought down many trees in the neighborhood. Why our house? It was simply in the path of the tree. Did we deserve it? That is the wrong question. Nature is simply nature. Yet, what we have known since the incident is grace—unmerited kindness from friends, neighbors, and strangers. That is the higher road. Whether we deserved it or not, it is what what we received. And we are thankful.
+Ab. Andy