The one notable difference between the Way of GOD and the way of karma is that the former is personal. If we were to recast the decrees and judgements of GOD as a mechanical system, it would look very much like karma. In both cases, personal or impersonal, on a Day of Judgement or by ongoing and automatic moral law, one receives the just consequences of one’s deeds.
Karma could be described as how the Divine Will is perceived when one regards GOD as absent or non-existent. The prospect of a happy or unhappy rebirth reminds us that the natural moral order is in effect, if not visible, and guidance and misguidance are like two signposts pointing in opposite directions, to and from salvation (moksha) or extinction of the self (nirvana). The attractiveness of this system is precisely its lack of a personal element; we can accept it matter-of-factly, in the same way we accept gravity and inertia.
But AL-LAH is not absent, and His Personality pervades the universe more completely, whole-heartedly, and minutely than our personalities direct and inform our physical bodies. Pleasure and suffering are His to dispense at will, usually as reinforcements or correctives to our deeds. Guidance and misguidance are the ethical correlates to reward and punishment, marking the effects our judgements, along with their consequent intentions and subsequent actions, have upon our souls. Unlike in karma, however, where the system’s chains of cause and effect envelop and consume the wills of individuals, the Freedom of GOD is not bound to follow any law – hence the importance of Compassion, Forgiveness, and unlimited reward:
Verily the wage of those who persevere is rendered without measure. (Q39:10)
إِنَّمَا يُوَفَّى الصَّابِرُونَ أَجْرَهُمْ بِغَيْرِ حِسَابٍ
It should be clear, therefore, that impersonal karmic law and Divine Qur’anic Judgement are two ways of describing the same course of cosmic justice, but at different levels of appreciation. If we have no time or use for GOD, then His Justice will still apply. What we feel to be its positive or negative outcomes will be construed as the workings of karma, while AL-LAH characterizes its effects upon our souls as guidance or misguidance, depending on whether those outcomes move us closer to or farther from Him.
If, on the other hand, we attribute Personal Agency to those outcomes, we will, as believers do, consider them as His rewards and tribulations. If we welcome GOD’s involvement in our lives, it counts as Divine Guidance as well. But if we resent His Decrees, which for the believer are always good, and instead regard Him as an arbitrary limit on our personal freedom, then we are having a firsthand experience of Divine Misguidance.
When we speak of GOD’s Will or His Approval, we are applying our experiences and interpretations of what these mean to One for Whom these actions and attitudes are ultimately inappropriate. Discussing them is, however, effective if they help us develop spiritual faculties of truth, love, peace, and goodness in us. To us, His Will and His Approval operate at different levels of meaning, and so we can speak of acts that occur by His Will and Approval and others that occur by His Will, as all events do, but without His Approval. The Light of GOD that we receive with His Approval becomes less distinct, more contaminated by our own desires, when we contend with our wills against His.
What we call it or how we experience it does not change what it is. And even when the Qur’an uses different terms and explains the same thing in ways that seem to be contradictory, we need to remember that AL-LAH, Who is Unchanging, is nevertheless somehow able to cater to the contradictions and limitations within and among ourselves and describe one phenomenon at various levels and in light of the various perspectives we bring to His Revelation. Ultimately, it is He Who is the One and Only Phenomenon, and His Names and actions, related to us in the Qur’an, are but so many means of getting us to relate to Him.
The GOD You Already Know 