Advantages of Rebirth

2005-1-22 05:42:00

The Question:

DK says: "The doctrine or theory of reincarnation strikes the orthodox Christian with horror."

Why do you suppose this is the case and what can be done to assuage those fears?

Good comments from the group on this.

There were a number of good reasons presented. Two strike at the heart of the resistance.

The second reason someone presented was that many view life as an extreme hardship and a dreary experience and feel they have had all they want of mortality with its challenges. These people do not want another life. Instead, they want to believe that they will spend the rest of eternity with God in painless peace.

The path of enlightenment for this person lies in the realization that that the present is all there is and if one cannot be happy and content in the here and now then he doesn't have much chance of having any fullness of joy in the great beyond. You are the same person after you pass on as you were before you died.

Does this person believe that he will instantly be transformed at death from a grumpy pessimist to an eternal optimist? For this to happen he would no longer be who he is, but someone else.

When the seeker realizes that true happiness consists not of death, but life in the here and now and making the best of where we are then this obstacle is passed.

There are a number of lesser roadblocks to seeing the truth of reincarnation. Another is the fact that we lose our memories between lives and will be born with a new identity and not recognize family and friends.

"I want to always be me," is one statement I have heard.

If you always want to be you then you will not want to be transformed to some perfect person in heaven who is not you, but would much rather continue to be you with a new name and face.

When you have a new name and body in a new life you are still you, just as you are still you at age forty as you were at age twenty. During this time period you have shed your old body and replaced it with new elements. You also look different, sound different and think different. But you are still you.

Reincarnation guarantees the continuation of identity much more than the orthodox religious view that makes saved sinners into instant saints at death.

Theblackmoclips gave four additional reasons for resistance:

(1) A warped view of what the word reincarnation means.

(2) The atonement of Christ.

(3) Scripture

(4) The doctrine has not come from a recognized authority.

In addition Arit and others emphasized people's attachment to their belief systems and the reluctance to let them go.

Overall, there are many reasons people resist this teaching, but there are many more reasons to accept it. Perhaps the strongest appeal to me in first considering it was the fairness of the doctrine.

DK says:

If the goal of right human relations will be taught universally by the Christ, the emphasis of His teaching must be laid upon the Law of Rebirth. This is inevitably so, because in the recognition of this law will be found the solution of all the problems of humanity, and the answer to much of human questioning.

Question:

How does a knowledge of reincarnation lead to right human relations and "the solution of all the problems of humanity?"

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966)