Are Judaism and Christianity based upon Reincarnation?

By Joseph R. Myers

    It is the ideal of any follower of Christ to be patient, to be kind, to be gentle, long-suffering, forgiving of one another and to be joyous. We find these concepts as ideals in the Bible. The Bible affirms that God is infinitely merciful and just, omniscient and omnipresent. It also affirms that "There is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

    Then we have, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me." Another scripture says, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Still another scripture says, "God hath not willed that any soul should perish," and Jesus said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me." But in another place He says, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

    Then we have the passage where the Christians are chided for showing special attention toward the person who appears well off and discrimination against the individual who is poorly dressed and appears powerless in his social position. Christians are admonished that "God is no respecter of persons." Christians are to strive to be God-like, to imitate Christ, to be led by the Christ Spirit in all their words and deeds. To further compound all of the above, Christians are admonished, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

    How are we expected to put all this together? What kind of God do we each, as individuals, choose to find in the Bible? Is He infinitely just? Then how are we to understand His description of Himself, as we find it in a passage where He presents an incredible exception to mankind’s most elementary concept of justice? Consider this Old Testament passage found in the thirty fourth chapter of Exodus; "And the LORD passed by before him (Moses), and proclaimed, the LORD, THE LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."

    Possibly one of the most wonderful aspects of the Bible is its presentation of God in a way that allows each person to choose as just or as unjust a God as suits his own needs! In the days of slavery in America, the slave owners and their families, along with their ministers, had no problem with identifying themselves as Christians. They found justification, even a command that Ham’s offspring should be enslaved. If this seems an inconsistency, it is trivial, perhaps, in comparison with that of teaching children that God Almighty, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, folds His hands and says, "Too bad, I don’t interfere when the world’s children are subjected individually or collectively to cruel mistreatment. It’s just up to the Christians to straighten this world out."

    We all know that the circumstances of a child’s birth are the chief factor in the kind of adult he will become. Of course, there are those great exceptions to the rule who do overcome poverty and mistreatment to become balanced and constructive citizens. Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum are those whose fortunate birth and hereditary gifts catapult them into a life which provides every opportunity and the predisposition to achieve greatness.

    Again we are faced with the vast, rather we should say inconceivably vast, inequities that are characteristic of the circumstances of a child’s birth anywhere on earth. So what is the basis for accepting the words in scriptures which say, God is just and is no respecter of persons? Now, possible, we have come to the reason that more and more Christians are reexaming what they were told is Christian Doctrine.

Does the Bible Teach Reincarnation?

    If one assumes that God has the same standards and moral values that a good Christian should have, then the Bible’s teachings from Adam and Eve and the story of Cain and Abel down through the Book of Revelation, must hinge upon the very ancient Hebrew and early Christian teachings of reincarnation and Karma. This clarifies the meaning of the scripture which says that he who takes a life by the sword shall die by the sword. Generally speaking, this kind of retribution will only occur through reincarnation. The spiritual leaders of the Israelites were trying to graphically imprint this elementary understanding of Natural Law on the souls of their people. To improve the character of the people was the basis for carefully enforcing the Law of Moses, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The unconscious mind retains the record and stimulates self-discipline in following lives.

    The new testament plainly gives the Law of Karma in the scripture, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The teaching of reincarnation was actually part and parcel of both Old and New Testaments of the Bible until its excision by Rome some five hundred years A.D. This is on record historically as the time when the writings of Origen, a Gnostic theologian, were declared anathema. All of the incomprehensible injustices on the earth, from the circumstances of a child’s birth and hereditary characteristics to the terrible atrocities perpetrated on ethnic groups, can be understood in the light of the actual early teachings of the Gnostic Christians. Each and every soul receives a body and meets the circumstances it has created by its thoughts and deeds of previous lives, according to these teachings.

    It is an inconceivably priceless gift from God, or Creative Force, Natural Law, or whatever name one chooses for the Creator, to experience reincarnation. Each existence on earth is an opportunity for the individual soul-entity to strive for progress toward atonement with the Creator or choose to continue to experiment with its separation from God as symbolized for each of us in the story of Adam and Eve. In other words, the Adam and Eve story indicates the choice that marks how each one of us began our series of lives on earth. It is out of the question to portray God as perfectly just, and then ascribe to Him the astonishing injustice of the human race being collectively punished for Adam’s sin.

    However, all of the old superstitious and authoritative statements by scholars and "scientists" affirming that we can never know the facts about life and death no longer prevail. Modern science has given us the tools to establish the pattern of the Natural Laws that govern the return of individuals. The Natural Laws governing the return of individuals can easily be shown to be as consistent and understandable as those which apply to birth and death of physical bodies.

    The key to establishing reincarnation as a fact of life lies in modern photography, historical records, handwriting samples and other means of preserving records that document the remarkable uniqueness of each individual. When the comparison can be made with one or more previous lives of an outstanding individual soul-entity, a musician, poet, writer, politician, scientist, religious leader, soldier or athlete, the parallels are so dramatic that the possibility of coincidence or chance is ruled out in every case by astronomical odds. Science is based upon probabilities. Science has become the very means by which the perennial philosophy of the continuity of life, and of perfect justice for each individual is now established. Science has fulfilled the prophecy that; "There shall be no more death." Of course, physical bodies shall continue to die but the actual concept of really dying on the part of any individual soul-entity is no longer valid. The scripture where God says, "Let us make man in our own image," refers to that deathless reality, the individual soul-entity, and its ability to create its own destiny.

    Now we must decide what is the meaning of the Virgin Birth, the Life, the Crucifixion, the Death and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. What is the meaning of being "Saved by the Blood of the Lamb" in this world where souls reappear again and again, century after century, age after age, changing only a little from one existence to the next? Saved from what?

    While science can easily show that the soul-entity reappears in all its uniqueness with a body whose configurations and overall make-up delineate its character, yet the meaning of the Christ life is a mystery. It is a mystery from the standpoint of the material mind which all of our physics and chemistry are powerless to unravel. The Mystery is summed up in the scripture which refers to the "Lamb slain before the foundation of the world." The great Christian mystic, Rudolf Steiner, once said that to seek to understand the meaning of the Christ Life by studying the historical data is like trying to understand the functioning of the mind of a genius by dissecting his brain.

    With any language, the way of life of the people is the source of their idioms. Idioms are generated by descriptive parallels from their daily lives. Unless recognized as such, these idioms are incomprehensible to the intellectual mind in translation to another language centuries later. There are a series of such idioms that are crucially important to an understanding of Judaism and Christianity that were common speech in Hebrew. Perhaps the most beautiful and effective of these is "the blood of the lamb." This ancient Hebrew idiom referred to "the will to do the will of God." Our use of the word, "conscience" is close but does not have the depth of that idiom. The idiom, of course, arose from the nature of the lamb and its submission without resistance to being slaughtered. "Shedding the blood of the lamb," simply stated, meant going against the will to do the will of God. In our own English language, we have idioms which associate the will with our blood. Examples are such terms as, "cold blooded," "hot blooded," "warm blooded," and "bad blood."

    Now consider the great mystery which we have here. How can an ancient Hebrew language idiom be the very foundation of modern Christianity? How are we to be "saved by the Blood of the Lamb?" Anyone who has experienced it knows the great rush of emotion brought on by a conversion experience. If we are just talking about an idiom arising from the way of life of an ancient people who lived on the flesh of grazing sheep, then from whence comes the resolve to set out upon a new way of life, to lead a Godly life, to express "The fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance?"

    Here is where the physical sciences, which deal only in that which can be measured and defined in terms of the five senses, come to a great impasse with all religions that espouse a belief in the continuity of the life of the individual. Such is the only basis for the existence of any religion, no matter how primitive or how enlightened. The very special place and the very special power of Christianity lies in its presentation in terms of the five senses of the relationship of the individual soul-entity with his God-Self. The story of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the man, Jesus, presents a description of the Way that the spiritual reality we call the soul can be reconnected with its higher nature. Every great religion has taught the same Way but the life of Jesus translated it into terms which would become part of the race memory, the Universal Mind of the race, and be thus available to the unconscious mind of every living soul in a flesh body.

    The great surge of joy and hope that each one experiences who accepts Jesus as his savior arises from the inner recognition, the unconscious mind level understanding of the sacrifice by his own personal God-Self, the Christ which is in the heart of every individual soul-entity. All of the symbology of the Bible suddenly becomes the personal story of the individual, from his separation into male-female bodies to experience sensuality in the earth, as Adam and Eve, down through the story of the life of the man, Jesus. As the word "Name" is used in the scripture which seems to exclude all but Christians from being "Saved," its meaning was the Spiritual Essence, the Universal Christ Spirit of the Race, which is the true source of every religion that has taught that God is One and that all men are brothers.

    The oneness of the Race was recognized and expressed by Apostle Paul in these words; "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

    At the unconscious mind level, there are no language barriers, no idioms to be translated, and no separation into the "saved and unsaved," and a recognition of oneself as a corpuscle in the one great Body, the Body of Christ. The whole basis for a constructive moral life is simply a matter of recognizing that every act or thought directed at another is actually creating our own destiny. This is reflected in the words of Jesus, expressing the Christ-Mind of each of us, "Inasmuch as ye do it to the least of these, ye do it unto Me," your Ideal, your very own Self.

    In the Old Testament scripture which affirmed that the iniquity of the fathers would be visited upon the children and the children’s children to the third and to the fourth generation, we have evidence of the recognition that the soul-entity with unresolved character flaws would return to meet them again and again. The way the scripture is given makes it plain that there was no hint of injustice but that the belief in reincarnation was part of their culture in ancient Israel.