There’s a certain attraction one could feel about the concept of reincarnation. It’s that feeling of being able to start again, that thought that you can just leave everything and become another person.
This is more tempting when one is undergoing a difficult time in life. When you feel so tired and hopeless, and when there’s nothing in your life that seems to be working well, it’s so tempting to dream of another life, a fuller life, the kind of life that reincarnation may offer you.
But if we go back to the Christian faith, we could clearly see how the concept of reincarnation could never fully satisfy our hunger for a happy life. It is not one that could give us true freedom and satisfaction of heart. If we compare this concept to the kind of life God has made for us, both here and the one after, it would fall short of God’s goodness and generosity.
In the end, the concept of reincarnation falls short of the Mercy of God. And here are just some of the reasons why:
1. The concept of reincarnation leads to a certain longing to escape from ourselves. It also leads to our failure to recognize God’s unique purpose for our lives. Why? Because with reincarnation, we lose our identity and our core gifts. We shift from one kind of person to another that we don’t know anymore who we really are.
Here is an excerpt from the New World Encyclopedia:
Rebirth refers to a process whereby beings go through a succession of lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, each running from conception to death. In Buddhist thought, this rebirth does not involve any soul, because of its doctrine of anatta (Sanskrit: anatman, no-self doctrine) which rejects the concepts of a permanent self or an unchanging, eternal soul, as it is called in Hinduism and Christianity.
Paul Williams, a Buddhist who converted to Catholicism has this to say:
“It seems to me patently obvious that if I am reborn the person I am now in this life ceases to exist. This is blindingly obvious if I am reborn as a cockroach in South America… Could we anymore say I would be the same person if my rebirth involved a human embryo in Africa? Or in Bristol, in my own family? And the standard Buddhist position (correctly) explicitly denies that the rebirth is the same person as the one who died. Thus rebirth is incompatible with the infinite value of the person.
But Christianity is the religion of the infinite value of the person. The person we are, or can become, is not accidental to us, and is not unimportant. Each person is an individual creation of God, as such infinitely loved and valued by God.”
2. Living over and over again is short of God’s mercy that only wills for us to live this painful life once.
If we already feel tired just living this life, how much more if we live over and over again? This is different from the perfect eternal life in heaven Christians look forward to after living one lifetime on earth.
3. Considering the final goal of reincarnation, which is nirvana, it leads only to the extinction of self instead of the redemption of the person.
Here is a definition of Nirvana per Catholic Encyclopedia:
To obtain deliverance from birth, all forms of desire must be absolutely quenched, not only very wicked craving, but also the desire of such pleasures and comforts as are deemed innocent and lawful, the desire even to preserve one’s conscious existence. It was through this extinction of every desire that cessation of misery was to be obtained. This state of absence of desire and pain was known as Nirvana (Nibbana). This word was not coined by Buddha, but in his teaching, it assumed a new shade of meaning. Nirvana means primarily a “blowing out”, and hence the extinction of the fire of desire, ill-will, delusion, of all, in short, that binds the individual to rebirth and misery. It was in the living Buddhist saint a state of calm repose, of indifference to life and death, to pleasure and pain, a state of imperturbable tranquility, where the sense of freedom from the bonds of rebirth caused the discomforts as well as the joys of life to sink into insignificance.
Following is an excerpt taken from Wikipedia:
Nirvana literally means “blowing out, quenching, becoming extinguished”. In early Buddhist texts, it is the state of restraint and self-control that leads to the “blowing out” and the ending of the cycles of sufferings associated with rebirths and redeaths. Many later Buddhist texts describe nirvana as identical with anatta with complete “emptiness, nothingness”. In some texts, the state is described with greater detail, such as passing through the gate of emptiness (sunyata)—realising that there is no soul or self in any living being, then passing through the gate of signlessness (animitta)—realising that nirvana cannot be perceived, and finally passing through the gate of wishlessness (apranihita)—realising that nirvana is the state of not even wishing for nirvana.
In Christianity, what we hope for is a blessed eternal life with God, a life filled with incomparable happiness where we remain as the person we are and we recognize the people we love. It is not the dissolution of the self but the salvation of the person with an eternal soul that is one’s goal.
“Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgement, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”?—?Hebrews 9:27–28, WEBBE
4. Reincarnation seeks our attraction on the satisfaction of our desires in this life rather than in the perfect life God wills for us in the new heaven and earth. With reincarnation, the concept of karma also comes into play. I can compare it to a game with many levels. The more you gain experience, and the better you perform, the better also will your status be in life. You will be richer, stronger and more talented. Those things will become your reward.
Here is a relevant excerpt from Wikipedia:
While Buddhism considers the liberation from samsara as the ultimate spiritual goal, in traditional practice, the primary focus of a vast majority of lay Buddhists has been to seek and accumulate merit through good deeds, donations to monks and various Buddhist rituals in order to gain better rebirths rather than nirvana.
In Christianity, on the other hand, man looks for God Himself as his eternal reward. We look forward to something that even our wildest dreams and imaginings could never contain.
5. It deceives us into believing we can overcome the weakness of the flesh and of our fallen nature on our own.
With reincarnation, we are made to believe that we can save ourselves, and that it is within our power to overcome our sinful nature. But the truth revealed in Christianity is that it is God Himself who gives us grace to do so. It is true that it will always require cooperation on our part, but we could never do it on our own. It is not a certain number of repeated lives that we need, but faith in Jesus Christ who came to do what we could never accomplish on our own.
6. It eradicates the existence of a loving personal God in whom alone we can find happiness.
Reincarnation for me is a lonely concept. Isn’t it lonely to always be separated from the people you meet and love in life? The movies make this more attractive when it suggests that we’d still meet those people again and again in other lives. But when we really think about it, would it still be them? And would it still be us? It would be a very lonely journey that never seems to end.
7. It makes us believe that all our current sufferings is a just punishment and a result of karma.
If you believe in karma, how would you see the people around you? And how would you see yourself? When you see suffering people, won’t you be tempted to simply assume they are just paying the price for their previous sins?
It also ignores the wisdom and truth that even the innocent can suffer and that their suffering is not their due punishment.
“The Buddhist views karma as a way to explain why one person is born into luxury and another is homeless or why one man is a genius and another has severe mental challenges. According to the law of karma, none of these inequalities is accidental, but each is the result of something the person did either in this or a past life for which he or she is being punished or rewarded.”
— Susan Brinkmann, A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness
8. Belief in reincarnation brings danger of the occult and influence of deceiving spirits that can make people imagine an illusion of a past life.
Curiosity for their past lives may lead some people to consult hypnotists or those who can help them recall their past lives. This method puts the person at risk of being open to deceiving spirits.
9. The concept of reincarnation fails to help the person correct one’s mistakes for the simple reason that it makes him forget his previous life.
If reincarnation was meant to help people become better until one reaches nirvana, how can we ever succeed and get out of the cycle when a new life only breeds more and more mistakes?
‘When the single course of our earthly life is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives’ (CCC 1013).
But someone will say, “How are the dead raised?” and, “With what kind of body do they come?”…The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power…Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must become imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable body will have become imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then what is written will happen: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “Death, where is your sting? Hades, where is your victory?”- 1 Corinthians 15, WEBBE
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"