Daniel Larison writes at The American Conservative:
The Christian equivalent of [the Hindu concept of Karma] is not a work ethic, but rather the conviction that the righteous will receive their reward in the kingdom of heaven and that the wicked will suffer damnation. … To put it a bit crudely, it is the Santellis of the world who make people want to believe that there is some higher moral law or some divinely-instituted justice that holds everyone accountable, because in this world it is so very clear that there are two sets of rules: one for the powerful and wealthy, and another for the rest.
Unfortunately too many Christians believe there are no truly powerful or wealthy in this country or mistakenly place themselves on par with this group, if not within this group. For a people that maintain that we are in a shining city on the hill, denial of this is of course denial of a precept. We are after all the creators of the health and wellness gospel. We are people that treat solidarity with the poor as a corrupting ideal. We are a people that join Facebook groups titled “If you can afford beer and cigarettes, you shouldn’t be on food stamps.” We are a people when prompted to envision a person on welfare see an overweight black woman in the ghetto driving a Cadillac. We are a people that envision a national health care scheme as a means to waste our national wealth on people that eat too many french fries or enjoy a libertine sex life. We then complain that the people we perceive as parasites on society aren’t gracious for what they receive from the government or from charity.
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