Gangsters in the 1920s were notorious for rubbing out their enemies during the week and then tithing significant sums to the Catholic Church on Sunday. To an onlooker, this seems like the highest of follies—was it? What is the divine perspective on this kind of overt hypocrisy? Did this behavior have some mitigating value?

We understand many people will expect a large "no" response here, but we can tell you that karma is dispassionate. What will happen though is that the actions they take and the reasons behind them will factor in how karma parses the events in question and assigns responsibility or benefit accordingly. So what we would say is, the donating of funds to a charitable organization will count as a positive karmic contribution because that, in a sense, is a separate act in and of itself. However, the expectation they hold, that this will be a mitigating factor in their karmic misdeeds, causing deaths of others and other acts of criminality, will not stand. They will not be off the hook simply because they have been a nice person one day a week. They will get some benefit from being that nice person, even though it might be done in a cynical fashion, they are still carrying it out and, in that respect, they are fulfilling the role they seek to be a part of and even though done with a mixed motive, it still counts. So in the sense that not being wanting to cause harm, but being involved in harmful events incurs a karmic penalty, wanting to do good for personal gain to some extent, if it still does good, will accrue a karmic benefit to the individual. It might not be of the same quality in total impact as one done with a clear conscience and through a strong heartfelt desire to be compassionate and giving, and beyond that, if done on the part of someone who is making a personal sacrifice to maybe give away something of great value because it will help others and they incur a self‑sacrifice in the doing, that will have a greater karmic benefit for them in the future. So we are simply saying that karma will sort all of this out and it will lie as a benefit somewhere on the potential spectrum of good deeds, but they will not gain what they cynically seek in getting a pass from Creator to overlook their misdeeds. They will have the full karmic consequences of every act of wrongdoing to answer for in their future.