I'm sure that it freaks a lot of people out to think about reincarnation and the possibility that you, as a soul, likely existed before your physical birth into this lifetime. Within the context of modern-day Christianity, the church teaches pretty clearly that you get one life, so you better make the most of it by accepting certain truths and following a prescribed moral code, which of course varies based on the specific denomination you belong to. It doesn't seem possible to be a Christian AND believe in reincarnation. From a more personal viewpoint, it's also difficult to accept this broader definition of the self because the "YOU" that is experiencing this lifetime right now wants to consider itself the most important element of its existence. Even though, at least for me personally, it's a comfort to believe that physical death is not the end, it's still hard to grasp the possibility that the "I" who I think of as "me" might have actually been someone else, and will possibly be someone else in the future. I'm starting to sound crazy again, but hear me out.
I've talked before about the theory that you as a soul are part of a larger consciousness. The more I turn this idea around in my mind, the more things have been starting to "click" for me. What I have cautiously started to believe is that the being who we think of as ourself only exists in this lifetime. I can reconcile this with what I've been taught in the past because in a literal sense, you really do only get to be this exact version of yourself only once. That being said, I think that when our soul returns to the spiritual world (more on that later) we rejoin the more complete being that is actually us as a soul. We still keep these pieces of our soul that have each had different experiences, which is where a lot of our personality comes from, but I don't believe that we cycle through an endless rotation of bodies with the exact same portion of our greater consciousness. Fascinatingly, from what I have read I have learned that early Christianity DID actually acknowledge reincarnation long ago, and it may have at one time been such a widely accepted truth that it was simply a given observation about life. Let me explain.
Another Biblical passage that has greater spiritual implications than the obvious lesson is found in John 9 (hey, I really was paying attention in church way back when!) To summarize, Jesus and his disciples encounter a blind man, who he promptly heals as an educational demonstration of sorts. (That guy sure knew how to get creative in the classroom!) His disciples ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus tells them that neither of them did; but that he was born blind so that "the works of God could be seen in him." Christians often use this story as a metaphor for spiritual darkness: the blind man represents the Pharisees, who were too concerned with following Biblical law to the letter to understand the greater purpose behind the instructions they were given. Again, this really is a useful interpretation! We see this happen every day in our culture. There are people from many different religions- not just Christianity- who act hatefully towards the LGBT community based on a handful of obsolete historical laws. They care more about imposing their personal beliefs on others than demonstrating the love that we should be focusing on, instead. So already, we are being taught a valuable lesson.
But I think there's more to the story.
The knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion that this passage supports the theory of reincarnation is to zoom in too far and use its exact words to refute the claim. The church would argue that Jesus is clearly stating that people don't experience past lives, so logically this man's blindness can't have been a consequence for something that he or anyone else did in a past life. (Then they would start to talk about original sin, but more on that later). What I want to do here instead is think like a historian. I realize that many people think of the Bible as holy and I always want to be respectful of that. However, I want to point out that just like any historical document, it's seen a lot of editing since it was written. Whether or not you believe it was inspired by God, it was still recorded by man, and I think there are a lot of spiritual concepts that no human language is fully equipped to explain. It was also written a really long time ago, so the audience that it was originally intended for came from a completely different culture. All of these factors make it difficult to decipher the story's intended meaning. I mentioned before that historians believe that reincarnation was once a widely accepted belief. If we consider that this was likely the case at the time the Bible was written and put the same words in this context, maybe what Jesus was really saying here was not that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a sin committed in a past life to affect a future life, but that IN THIS CASE that's not why the guy was blind. Not convinced? Remember, Jesus also says that the man was blind so that the works of God could be seen in him. Jesus isn't trying to be a show-off, or even trying to specifically help this blind man, although of course the miracle itself is still meaningful. He is simply trying to get people's attention, and to preach love and empathy towards others. The disciples assumed that the man had somehow accumulated negative karma because it was common knowledge at the time that this was how life worked, but maybe what Jesus was trying to say was simply that for this particular man, his blindness was not karmic, but actually part of that soul's divine purpose to contribute to the gospel of love that Jesus is credited with spreading.
Just wait. It gets even better. I'm dead exhausted from all of this writing today, but I'm already excited to talk about what happens in between lives, and how that relates to karma and significant life events when I pick back up again tomorrow.
L
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