EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND REINCARNATION

The early Christians were familiar with the principle of reincarnation. Before forming part of the Roman Empire, the Palestine had belonged to the Greeks. It was Alexander the Great who united a huge empire that brought the followers of different religions in contact with each other. This, for instance, enabled Buddhist monks to proselytize as far as Greece and Egypt. Therefore, the Jews and later also the first Christians were without any doubt familiar with the principle of reincarnation.

The fact that Jesus associates John the Baptist with Elijah demonstrates that He considered that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Eliah.(Mt17:11-13) That Jesus believed in reincarnation becomes also obvious by the story of the man who had been blind from birth.(Jn9:1-3) This story clearly demonstrates that the disciples tried to get familiar with how the principle of karma works.

The Christian belief in heaven, purgatory and hell has a lot in common with the belief in reincarnation. Catholics believe that those who behave well go to heaven; that those who behave evil go to hell; and that those who either don’t behave completely well or bad go to purgatory where they receive a new opportunity. Therefore, they as well clearly associate how we behave in this life with what happens after our death.

The concept of a purgatory has a lot in common with how our karma works. What happens after purgatory? When we have neither behaved completely well nor completely bad during this new opportunity that we got, do we then afterwards go to yet another purgatory? If so, there must then be a lot of purgatories. History teaches us that mankind tends to make the same mistakes again and again. Where are all those purgatories supposed to be? When we reflect upon these questions we see that it’s more likely that we always return to the same world.

Most Protestants don’t believe in purgatory. They believe that people either go to heaven or hell. When we study history – or simply observe our society – we however see that most people neither behave completely well nor completely bad. How can Protestants then believe that after death people either go to heaven or to hell? Why should one get rewarded forever if he hasn’t completely behaved well during his life? And why should one get doomed forever if he hasn’t completely behaved bad during his life? Protestants are therefore not clear about what happens to the vast majority of people who neither behaved completely well nor completely bad.

Christians consider that heaven is a pleasant place and hell a terrible place. But what makes heaven pleasant and hell terrible isn’t the place itself, but the people that we encounter there. Whereas in heaven we only find those who have learned to live in harmony with the other people and with their environment, in hell we find those who haven’t yet done so.

The concept of hell has a lot in common with that of purgatory: whereas those who have learned to respect the others and their environment are ready for a harmonious society, all the others aren’t. They still have to learn how important it is to live in harmony by suffering the consequences of not doing so.