In the western world, orthodox thinking on spiritual matters, typically limits people to believing that there is just this one material life and then there is judgment from it. This type of thinking flies in the face of the natural order of things, of which, we see on a daily basis, that the sun rises, the sun sets, and then the next day that the sun rises again. So too, do we see this in the four seasons of spring birth, summer flowering, autumn's turning of the leaves, and winter's white death, followed by the next season's re-birth. Yet, many people don't associate these things with spiritual reincarnation, because of their incorrect fixation on the body, believing that what is mortal, can never be reborn again. The correct viewpoint, is to recognize that while our body is indeed mortal but our soul is immortal and if we hope and if we desire to get right with God, there will come a recognition or an acknowledgment, sooner or later, that in order to have a proper seat with God at his table, we must be without the darkness of sin, which precludes us from being restored to the bright clarity of God's love and justice.
Many people, see karma as being the give and take of right and wrong, that is to say, if you lie to someone about something of fundamental importance, that they or someone else will lie to you under similar circumstances so that you will "meet" your karma, and in recognition of such, you will change, by not lying under similar circumstances in the future, signifying that you have overcome that sin of dishonesty. While that is one way of looking at karma, there are others that upon reflection, allows us to understand karma better.
For instance, karma should not be described as literally an eye for an eye, as it should be seen more for what it really is, which is that everything that happens has a cause, and that cause has an effect on you, on others, and on society. These things that we do or even fail to do, have ramifications, which may not be apparent to us at the time, or may be somewhat apparent, but the consequences of those failures, of those mistakes, are typically not recognized in their entirety. It is these consequences that we must meet again and again and again, in order to correct our wrong behavior and to replace that error with the corrected behavior.
A wonderful way of looking at karma, is to understand empathy, that is, to feel what the other feels, and knowing this feeling, allows you to understand more comprehensively how your actions really do have tangible consequences, for good or for bad. The mistake that so many people make, is to feed their own ego or selfishness to the exclusion of others, rather than recognizing that looking upon the world as a "zero-sum" society, makes the world a worse place, rather than seeing that by helping others, by working together, by teamwork, sacrifice, and collaboration, in which each party gives a little, there ultimately is more to gain.
The way out of our karmic trials is in recognition and enactment of what the Christ stated: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31). This means that we should be more thoughtful before we act, more considerate before we do the things that we do, and more humble in all that we do, in acknowledgment that that there is a wisdom that far exceeds our finite mind. For every action, there is a reaction; for every deed, there are consequences; through it all we are always children of God, who continually lights brightly the straight path that lies before us, we need only to mindfully find the wherewithal to walk it.