Growing up, when someone mistreated, abused, or cheated another person, I remember the old people saying, “Every dog has its day.” When I experienced the unkindness of others, I came to hope that they were right and that whoever wronged me or anyone else would suffer some kind of awful experience in return. Some refer to this as karma. In my Buddhism classes, I learned there was good karma and bad karma, and how you lived your life, whether in the past or present, would determine which you received. The belief was that poverty in the present derived from bad deeds in a past life.
As a survivor of domestic abuse, I subscribed to the notion that batterers would one day pay a heavy price for the pain they inflicted on others. Maybe I even hoped that there was a special area in Hell for them, and that God would avenge my suffering. I certainly did not want them to have a good life, with all the destruction of others’ self-esteem and bodies they leave behind.
But as a Christian, I learned to forgive, not wishing bad on the people who hurt me. Yet I still believe that the way you treat others can impact your life outcomes. I want to believe that you can’t injure other people spiritually, physically, financially, or emotionally and have your best life with no consequences. However, Matthew 5:45 states that God sends rain on the just and the unjust, and the sun rises on the evil and the good.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I hope that every dog that hurts another person has its day, when trials so awful come that they stop and reflect on how they have treated others and strive to change. You want to believe that good karma results from following the Golden Rule and treating people the way you want to be treated, and that bad karma repays the debt of hurt. But now that I am older and it seems as if I have a different pain every day, I recognize that not every pain or hardship occurs because we have sinned; it’s just life. And much of what I experience today, I wouldn’t wish on anyone else.
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