Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Good things come to good people. Bad things

come to bad. The universe always writes itself. Manifest your desires, and they'll become a reality.

Those are a few of the truisms you'll hear from modern-day spiritualists. It's the idea of

karma, of animal magnetism, the idea that like comes to like, good to the good, bad to the

bad, and what goes around comes around. It's a pleasant idea because

it's a neat and tidy idea. It explains away evil by saying that evil will fall back on evil-doers,

and it explains away suffering by saying that it's a consequence of evil and wrongdoing or

manifesting the wrong things. Of course, the neatness of the idea is precisely its problem.

I doubt you tell someone suffering from pancreatic cancer, well, evil comes to those who do evil

and good to those who do good. Nor would you tell that person to manifest their own healing

by positive thinking. Nor would you tell a billionaire who lied, cheated, deceived,

and betrayed his way to the top. Ah, well, see, good comes to those who are good, just like you.

Nor would you congratulate that person on manifesting their wealth by their own positivity.

With a little thought, so many of the truisms we hear about spiritual reality today are vacuous and empty.

That doesn't stop them from being potent.

It doesn't stop us Christians from sometimes drinking the Kool-Aid.

But the Bible gives us a very different picture of reality.

And the biblical picture of reality, the world is not in a state of order where good things

come to the good and bad things come to the bad, quite the opposite.

Human sin has broken the cosmos.

It's vandalized the cosmos.

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