Simple reflections on reincarnation from a biblical perspective.

More than it seemed

A well-known actress, not long ago, declared in an interview given to a magazine: “I am Catholic, but I believe in reincarnation. I have already discovered that this is my third life. First I was an Egyptian princess. Then, a matron of the Roman Empire. And now I have reincarnated as an actress”.

It is truly astonishing to see how the number of those who, even while being Catholics, accept reincarnation is constantly growing. A survey carried out in Argentina by the Gallup company revealed that 33% of those surveyed believe in it. In Europe, 40% of the population willingly adheres to this belief. And in Brazil, no less than 70% of its inhabitants are reincarnationists.

For their part, 34% of Catholics, 29% of Protestants, and 20% of non-believers profess it today.

Faith in reincarnation, then, constitutes a worldwide phenomenon. And, because it is a highly marketable item, radio and television, newspapers, magazines and, lately, the cinema, are constantly taking care to include it among their offerings. But why does this doctrine seduce people?

What reincarnation is

Reincarnation is the belief according to which, when a person dies, his soul separates momentarily from the body and, after some time, takes another different body in order to be born again on earth. Therefore, human beings would pass through many lives in this world.

And why does the soul need to reincarnate? Because in a new existence it must pay for the sins committed in the present life, or receive the reward for having lived honestly. The soul, they say, is in continual evolution. And successive reincarnations allow it to progress until it reaches perfection. Then it becomes a pure spirit, no longer needs further reincarnations, and sinks forever into the infinity of eternity.

This blind law, which obliges one to reincarnate in an inevitable destiny, is called the law of “karma” (=act).

For this doctrine, the body would be nothing more than a perishable and disposable tunic that the immortal soul weaves out of necessity, and which, once worn out, it leaves aside in order to weave another.

There is an even more chilling form of reincarnationism, called “metempsychosis”, according to which, if someone has been very sinful, his soul may end up reincarnating in an animal, and even in a plant!

The advantages it offers

Those who believe in reincarnation think that it offers advantages. In the first place, it grants us a second (or third, or fourth) opportunity. It would be unjust to risk our whole future only once. Besides, it would be distressing to have to be satisfied with a single existence, sometimes largely sad and painful. Reincarnation, on the other hand, allows one to begin again.

Moreover, the time of a single human life is not sufficient to achieve the necessary perfection. This requires a long apprenticeship, acquired little by little. Not even the best of men, at the moment of death, are in such a state of perfection. Reincarnation, on the other hand, allows that perfection to be reached in other bodies.

Finally, reincarnation helps to explain certain incomprehensible facts: for example, that some people are more intelligent than others, that suffering is so unequally distributed among men, sympathies or antipathies between people, that some marriages are unhappy, or the early death of children. All this is better understood if they are paying debts or reaping merits from previous lives.

When it did not yet exist

Reincarnation, then, is a seductive and captivating doctrine, because it claims to “resolve” intricate questions of human life. Besides, it is exciting for ordinary curiosity to discover what famous person one once was in antiquity. This expectation helps, in some way, to forget our insignificant life and to escape from the gray and routine existence in which we are sometimes submerged. But how did belief in reincarnation arise?

The most ancient civilizations that existed, such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese and Persian, did not know it. The enormous effort they devoted to the building of pyramids, tombs and other funerary constructions shows that they believed in a single earthly existence. If they had thought that the deceased would return to reincarnate in another, they would not have made the colossal expenditure on temples and other decorative objects with which they prepared him for his life in the hereafter.

Why it appeared

The first time the idea of reincarnation appears is in India, in the seventh century B.C. Those primitive men, still very much linked to an agricultural mentality, saw that all things in nature, after completing their cycle, returned. Thus, the sun rose in the morning, set in the afternoon, and then rose again. The full moon waned, but always returned to its full roundness. The stars repeated the same phases and stages each year. The seasons of summer and winter went away and returned punctually. Fields, flowers, floods—everything had a circular movement, an eternal return. All life seemed to be made of cycles that repeated eternally.

This observation led them to think that man too, when he died, must return again to the earth. But since they saw that the body of the deceased decomposed, they imagined that it was the soul that returned to take a new body in order to go on living.

In time, they used this belief also to clarify certain vital questions (such as the human inequalities mentioned above), which otherwise were inexplicable to the incipient and precarious mentality of that age.

When Buddhism appeared in India in the fifth century B.C., it adopted belief in reincarnation. And through it this belief spread to China, Japan, Tibet, and later to Greece and Rome. Thus it also penetrated other religions, which assumed it among the basic elements of their faith.

Job already did not believe it

But the Jews never wanted to accept the idea of reincarnation, and in their writings they rejected it absolutely. For example, Psalm 39, which is a meditation on the brevity of life, says: “Lord, do not look upon me with anger, so that I may rejoice before I go away and exist no more” (v.14).

Poor Job too, in the midst of his terrible illness, begs God, whom he believed guilty of his suffering: “Turn away from me. Then I shall be able to smile a little, before I go away and do not return, to the land of darkness and shadow” (10,21-22).

And a more recent book, Wisdom, teaches: “Man, in his wickedness, can take life, it is true; but he cannot bring back the spirit that has gone, nor free the soul seized by death” (16,14).

Nor did King David

The belief that we are born only once appears likewise in two episodes from the life of King David. The first, when a woman, in an audience granted to her, makes him reflect: “We must all die, and we shall be like water poured out that cannot be gathered up again” (2 Sm 14,14).

The second, when, at the death of the monarch’s son, he exclaims: “While the child was alive, I fasted and wept. But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sm 12,22-23).

We see, then, that in the Old Testament, even when the idea of the resurrection was not yet known, it was already known at least that from death one never returns to the earth again.

The irruption of the new

But it was in the year 200 B.C. that the question of the hereafter was illuminated forever. At that time faith in the resurrection entered the Jewish people, and the possibility of reincarnation was definitively ruled out.

According to this new belief, when a person dies, he immediately recovers life. But not on earth; rather, in another dimension called “eternity”. And he begins to live a different life, without limits of time or space. A life that can no longer die. It is called Eternal Life.

This teaching appears for the first time in the Bible in the book of Daniel. There an angel reveals this great secret: “The multitude of those who sleep in the tomb shall awake, some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting horror” (12,2). Therefore, it is clear that the step immediately following death is Eternal Life, which will be blessed for the good and painful for sinners. But it will be eternal.

The second time we find it is in an account in which King Antiochus IV of Syria tortures seven Jewish brothers to force them to abandon their faith. As the second was dying, he said to the king: “You deprive us of the present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to eternal life” (2 Mac 7,9). And when the seventh died, he exclaimed: “My brothers, after having endured a brief suffering, now enjoy eternal life” (2 Mac 7,36).

For the Old Testament, then, it is impossible to return to earthly life after death. However brief and painful human existence may have been, after death the resurrection begins.

Now Jesus says it

Jesus Christ, with his authority as Son of God, officially confirmed this doctrine. With the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16,19-31), he told how, when a poor beggar named Lazarus died, the angels immediately carried him to heaven. In those days a rich and insensitive man also died, and he was taken to hell to be tormented by the fire of the flames.

Jesus did not say that this rich man had to reincarnate in order to purge his many sins on earth. On the contrary, the parable explains that, because he had unjustly used the many goods he had received on earth, he had to pay for his faults “now” (that is, in the hereafter, in eternal life, and not on earth) (v.25). The rich man, desperate, begs that Lazarus be allowed to return to earth (that is, to reincarnate), because he has five brothers as sinful as he, in order to warn them of what awaits them if they do not change their lives (v.27-28). But he is told that this is not possible, because between this world and the other there is a chasm that no one can cross (v.26).

The anguish of the condemned rich man comes precisely from confirming that his brothers also have only one life to live, one single possibility, one single opportunity to give meaning to existence.

The fate of the good thief

When Jesus was dying on the cross, the Gospel tells us that one of the thieves crucified beside him asked: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. If Jesus had admitted the possibility of reincarnation, he would have had to say to him: “Be patient; your crimes are many. You must pass through several reincarnations until you are completely purified”. But his answer was: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23,43).

If “today” he was to be in Paradise, it is because he could never again be born in this world. Saint Paul also rejects reincarnation. Indeed, when writing to the Philippians he tells them: “I am hard pressed between the two. On the one hand, I desire to die and be already with Christ. But on the other, it is more necessary for you that I remain still in this world” (1,23-24). If he had believed reincarnation possible, his desire to die would have been useless, since he would again find himself with the frustration of a new earthly life. A total incoherence

And, explaining to the Corinthians what happens on the day of our death, he says: “In the resurrection of the dead, a corruptible body is sown and an incorruptible one is raised; a humiliated body is sown and a glorious one is raised; a weak body is sown and a strong one is raised; a material body is sown and a spiritual body is raised” (1 Cor 15,42-44).

Can a Christian, then, believe in reincarnation? It is clear that he cannot. The idea of taking another body and returning to the earth after death is absolutely incompatible with the teachings of the Bible. The most forceful and crushing biblical statement that reincarnation is untenable is found in the Letter to the Hebrews: “It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (9,27).

An invitation to irresponsibility

But it is not only the Sacred Scriptures that prevent belief in reincarnation, but also common sense. Indeed, that it explains sympathies and antipathies between people, misunderstandings in marriages, inequalities in people’s intelligence, or early deaths is no longer seriously accepted by anyone. Modern psychology has helped to clarify, in a scientific and conclusive way, the reasons for these and other strange manifestations of the human personality, without imposing belief in reincarnation on anyone.

Reincarnation, therefore, is a sterile doctrine, incompatible with the Christian faith, proper to a primitive mentality, destructive of hope in the other life, useless for giving answers to the enigmas of life, and, what is worse, dangerous because it is an invitation to irresponsibility. Indeed, if one believes that he will have several more lives besides this one, he will not worry much about the present life, nor put great effort into what he does, nor care too much about his actions. After all, he will always think that other reincarnations await him in which to improve the negligence of this one.

Only once

But if one knows that the miracle of existing will not be repeated, that he has only this life to fulfill his dreams, only these years to realize himself, only these days and nights to be happy with the people he loves, then he will take great care not to mistreat time, not to lose it in trivialities, not to waste opportunities. He will live every minute intensely, put the best of himself into every encounter, and not allow any occasion that life offers him to escape. He knows that they will not return.

Man, throughout his life, works an average of 136,000 hours; sleeps another 210,000; eats 3,360 kilos of bread, 24,360 eggs and 8,900 kilos of vegetables; uses 507 tubes of toothpaste; undergoes 3 surgical operations; shaves 18,250 times; washes his hands another 89,000; blows his nose 14,080 times; ties his tie on 52,000 occasions; and breathes some 500 million times.

But absolutely every man, believer or not, dies once and only once. Before the curtain of life falls, God gives us the only time we will have, to fill it with the best works of love of each day.

Author: Fr. Ariel Álvarez Valdés

Source: Apologetica.org