Christianity and Reincarnation
These may seem like two completely and utterly irreconcilable notions. Religions tend to condemn whatever does not fit their doctrines and view of the world. But, if you take the time and look closely, with new eyes somehow, you will realise that religions share a substantial proportion of ideas between them. However, the way in which these ideas are express, the particular words, images and references that are used may differ as cultures differ from one another.
Some cultures may talk about God and, others talk about Brahman; some talk about spirit or soul others talk about jiva; some talk about ‘the flesh’, others talk about ego… There are plenty of examples like this, where you get almost a 1:1 correlation between notions in different religions, but there are plenty others where there isn’t such a clear equivalence between concepts or ideas.
Aaaand the idea of reincarnation is NOT one of them. The idea of reincarnation is one that is deeply despised in most Christian circles because — in their minds — reincarnation is somehow contrary to the idea of heaven or hell as an afterlife.
What’s more, perhaps, Christians believe that the idea of reincarnation somehow invalidates Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection as a unique and ultimate act of God’s love. Not to mention that this extremely convoluted idea kinda’ makes no sense, but whatever. Somehow, to be forgiven for your sins, you have to believe that:
- Jesus is the one and only son of God
- Jesus’ death by crucifixion somehow appeased God to forgive your sins
- The fact that Jesus was resurrected proves that he is the son of God, and only he has the special power to resurrect
- Your body will also be resurrected, at some point, at the end of time
(see my article Jesus and His Sacrifice)
It’s quite easy to understand reincarnation as a form of resurrection. And if everybody, — or every living thing — reincarnates then… everybody can resurrect. This is a big no-no for the popular four-item belief system because it almost outright says that everybody is a son of God; that everybody can do what Jesus did. Even though, Jesus said, “greater things than me shall you do”(John: 14:12)…
Aaaanyway, let’s leave this for a bit and let’s look at reincarnation for a bit. The belief in reincarnation is — popularly — the belief that a person or the soul of a person gets transferred to a new body when his current body dies; and the new body can be any thing whatsoever: it can be another human being, a locust, a cat, fly, penguin, swallow, worm, rat, etc., each according to how well they’ve done in their previous life. However, the more mature way to interpret reincarnation is that your particular life energy joins the totality of the cosmos (more on this in here).
Now, the popular conception in Christian circles of the idea of resurrection is that one (a human being) comes back to life in the same body, or a body identical to his previous one. Moreover, nobody except Jesus has achieved this.
However, if we look closely in the Bible, in the passages that refer to Jesus’ appearances after resurrection we see a very funny thing. Nobody recognises him! Mary thought he was the gardener when she saw him at his grave(John 20:11–18). In Luke 24:16 it says that Jesus started walking with two of his disciples after his resurrection and that “they were kept from recognising him”. At another time, at the sea of Galilee, the disciples only recognised Jesus after he performed a miracle. This all implies that he did not look like Jesus the son of the carpenter, but like somebody else.
I don’t see these two commonly-thought irreconcilable ideas as so different from one another. I see them as differing in language. Added to this was the almost diametrically opposed cultures in which they arose and their tendency to interpret these ideas in a way that’s beneficent to the continuation and expansion of their philosophy. Or, perhaps, it simply wasn’t the time (until now) to unify human beings into the new world view of which the greatest sages and masters were ambassadors.
