Here is yet another question on reincarnation answered by Dr. Graham in his column! Once again I'll duplicate the column and then respond.
DEAR DR. GRAHAM: Why don't Christians believe in reincarnation? Personally, I think it's kind of exciting to think that death isn't the end, and we'll get to come back and experience another life on this earth (or perhaps on some other planet). -- A.N.
DEAR A.N.: One reason Christians don't believe in reincarnation -- the belief that we come back to life over and over again -- is because they believe in heaven.
After all, if heaven is real (as Christians believe), there isn't any need for an endless cycle of dying and coming back to Earth. In fact, why would we want to return time and time again to the pain and insecurities of this life? Ahead of us is the glory of heaven! As the Bible says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).
There is, however, another reason why Christians reject the idea of reincarnation. It is this: No matter how long we lived -- or how many lives we had -- we could never erase the stain of sin that keeps us from God. In other words, we could never reach perfection. But God loves us and has provided the way for all our sins to be forgiven. That way is Jesus Christ, who died as the one final sacrifice for our sins.
Don't be misled by false hopes or deceptive dreams that will only take you down the wrong path. Instead, face your own need of God and by faith commit yourself to Jesus Christ. In Him we have hope -- hope for this life and hope for life with Him in heaven forever.
Once again Dr. Graham has quoted Paul, citing "The Bible" as though it is one seamless, uncorrupted work, all portions of which are of equal weight and spiritual authority.
Heaven is the temporary state between incarnations, experienced for most of us in the astral plane. It is not the goal of Jesus's original teachings. The glory of heaven is not remotely comparable to the glory of God-Realization, which is the true goal.
The reason we need to come back is to achieve God-Realization. Reincarnation is not an endless cycle.
The only sense in which we are already perfect is the sense in which the soul of every person, saint and sinner, is immortal and pre-existing, as taught by early church fathers like Origen, and as made "anathema" along with reincarnation. Although we have always been perfect in our essence, we are most certainly not conscious of this inherent perfection. Attaining this conscious awareness is called God-Realization. It is extremely rare, and it is the "pearl of great price" that Jesus referred to by analogy.
It is true that we cannot reach this kind of consciousness of our perfection merely by incarnating. Eventually we need the assistance of a God-Realized being (man become God) or the Avatar (God become man). Jesus was an Incarnation of the Avatar, and as such, Jesus can give God-Realization, which is not obtainable simply by reincarnating or by our own efforts, like good works, yoga or meditation.(1)
Reincarnation is the necessary but not the sufficient condition. A necessary condition is something that is necessary for the end result, but not sufficient in and of itself. Help from a God-Realized master, such as Jesus, is also necessary. The two, reincarnation and the master's help, taken together, are necessary and sufficient.
Jesus as the Avatar took on a great burden of our karma, individually and collectively (the other incarnations of the Avatar did likewise for their time). He also forgives us. However, our karma remains with us until we achieve God-Realization. The experience of God-Realization is assured for every person, Christian or non-Christian, in one lifetime or another. But it makes a mockery of Jesus's teaching to state that all our sins are wiped out, when it is quite clear that they are still with us. It becomes mere poetry at that point to be saved, because the Christian who has been saved knows very well that he is fallible and not without sin.
So unless it is mere poetry, as atheists assume it is, the meaning must be something else. Does it mean that as soon as Christians die the sin will be gone? In actuality, dying doesn't change the personality at all (except for the special case noted in the footnote for my comments on the first column).
Again, our karma remains with us until God-Realization, after something like eight and a half million incarnations. Each time the Christ incarnates, He takes on a huge burden of our collective karma, making it possible for us to bear and to learn from. The logic of our experience over a vast number of lifetimes gradually turns us towards the Goal, while the universal Christ draws us toward God, taking the greater part of our burden through compassion. As we start on the inward journey Home, the karmic burden lightens until we are finally prepared, through conscious discipleship to a God-Realized master or the Avatar, to be brought over the threshold by the master. We cannot take the final step on our own efforts. This is the meaning of these teachings which have become shells and slogans. The original teachings were so powerful that even the slogans retain some of the power, but most of it is "short-circuited" by the distortions, including distortions which, I suspect, began with Paul.
Despite the fact that a typical sermon in a Protestant church today is more likely to quote Paul than Jesus,(2) the spiritual authority of Paul's teaching doesn't even begin to compare with the spiritual authority of Jesus's teaching, and should never have been considered scripture. If my hunch is right, where Paul's teaching seems most powerful is where he "borrowed," creating the paradox of someone who sounds wise at times, and metaphysically ignorant at other times. Mainstream Christianity is primarily filtering Jesus through Paul, and is in a position where it dare not admit the mistakes for fear of losing the entire religion, because the mistakes are so deeply embedded. I could be wrong, but 30 years of studying the best Eastern sources, plus intuition, tells me that Paul pulled off the biggest con job in history, an "inside job," and traditional Christianity is still enthralled and confused by it. I think the conclusion was if you can't beat 'em from the outside, infiltrate. It's also possible that it was well-intentioned and that he himself was confused; but I have made a personal study of sociopathic personalities, and I think the con-artist interpretation is plausible. Keep in mind that by stealing language from genuine mystics, and by claiming spiritual authority in association with them, many contemporary teachers have fooled large numbers of people (as, for example, Satya Sai Baba, who claims to be the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi, but who has recently been charged with child molestation). If you run the scenario against known sociopathic traits, it works, including the claim of a dramatic conversion experience (sociopaths love drama) which would give Paul instant claim to authority in the Community, one that would be readily embraced by the naive and difficult for the wiser members to counter.(3)
Is it possible that the person who wrote the oft-quoted Corinthians 13 was a con-artist? It's consistent. Because what the sociopathic personality excels at is projecting the opposite of the truth to create a deflecting shield. In effect, they tacitly acknowledge their state by taking on the cloak of its opposite. The immense degree of this hypocrisy is so unthinkable, that the size of the lie itself makes it impossible for ordinary people to question it. But the sociopath's secret weapon which makes him successful is that he is, in fact, willing to do it, because he does not have a functioning conscience. So he can go to extremes of hypocrisy that no-one else would think of doing or believe is possible. What makes the case of Corinthians 13 consistent with this scenario is that the particular direction of the quote is geared toward criticizing (denying) the exact description of a sociopath, i.e., someone who has tremendous gifts and talents but no love. Note that this is done in the first person. The sociopath has to be read backwards by his denials.
Understand this is a theory, but one that has been nagging at me for a long time. I have heard Corinthians 13 quoted in scores of weddings that I videotaped. It's beautiful, and when I hear it, with all my heart I want to feel intuitively that it's inspired. But I never do, I always feel uncomfortable on an intuitive level, and then immediately I feel guilty for feeling that.
One would also expect a mixture of profound wisdom and "filler." The wisdom would have been borrowed, say, from the direct disciples, and the filler supplied. The filler, once you can identify it, is the portion you want to examine, to see what mind-set it's coming from. For example, that love (in some translations, charity) "...believeth all things, hopeth all things..." is incorrect. Naivete might believe all things and hope all things--naivete being what the sociopath preys upon, secretly ridicules as weakness and wishes to encourage in his prey.(4) But spiritual love requires discernment, and eschews hope "of all things" in favor of equanimity in the face of any eventuality, and reliance on God. Spiritual discernment is something a sociopath would wish to discourage, because those who practice it would catch on to him. If my theory is correct, this small portion of Corinthians 13 is like seeing a tuft of wolf hair poking out from the sheep-skin coat. Where you see a tuft, if indeed it is a tuft, you can be sure there is a whole wolf in there. That would mean that Saul/Paul was never converted as he claimed, and that he continued his work of persecuting the Christians by infiltrating and sowing a mixed teaching of borrowed truth and distortion, so as to cripple it (compare this story by Rumi). Being persecuted and killed at the end would have put the seal on it. We see today the phenomenon of people who die for a cause to take something they disagree with along with them, who are obviously not saints, as with the 9/11 airplane hijackers.
The fact that Paul preached against reincarnation is a small clue that all is not well here(5), once we understand that reincarnation was taken for granted by Jesus, the disciples, and the more esoterically-knowledgeable followers like the Gnostics. It continued to be taught by prominent Church fathers like Origen for several centuries after Jesus (until it was declared anathema along with the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul at a meeting convened by Emperor Justinian, which was boycotted by the Pope). Once the proof for reincarnation, as presented elsewhere in this website, is faced and accepted, then you have two options: 1) Paul was sincere but mistaken, or 2) he was a con-artist. If you are a Christian reader you may see me as an enemy of Christianity. Far from it. Here's the dilemma: reincarnation is true, and it is being proven. Origen was right after all. Do you want people to think that Jesus's teachings were substantially wrong (which is impossible if He was an Incarnation of God), or would you rather face that Paul didn't know what he was talking about but that Jesus did teach reincarnation, and that we have ample hints of it in the New Testament?
To put this bluntly (speaking now to the Church), with reincarnation proven as a fact, are you going to cut Paul loose, or are you going to allow society to downgrade its assessment of Jesus by association as reincarnation becomes accepted? The fact that Dr. Graham has recently published two questions and answers on this topic suggests that it is already becoming a serious challenge. Going into dogmatic denial, as he is doing, won't help, because sooner or later the assessment of the Church, Paul and Jesus will simply be downgraded, which is to say, taken less seriously, in the face of the obvious mistake.
As a starting point, let Christians who believe that "reincarnation is not in the Bible" try this experiment: put Paul's writings aside for a minute, weigh the evidence in the scriptures pro and con (including John 9:1) without this source and see how it stacks up.
1) These things are not bad, but they are not sufficient in and of themselves to achieve God-Realization. (They may be sufficient to reach the heaven state between lives, or occasionally even higher states, but if that distracts you from the true goal of life, God-Realization, it ends up being trouble in the long run.) So you can see that the teaching that good works are not sufficient to get you to heaven, that grace is required, is true in a sense and false in a sense, because heaven, as it is generally interpreted, is not the goal that Jesus taught. You can also see that the teaching that only Jesus can get you to heaven is right in a sense, and wrong in a sense. Only the God-Realized master can get you to God-Realization. All sorts of people can help you get to the heaven state in the astral world between lifetimes. Jesus as a historical person was not the only Incarnation of the Avatar, and he is not the only God-Realized master who can give you God-Realization. But, there are precious few of them. Only a handful of the popularly-known ones are genuine. From this you can get some sense of the delicate surgery required to lift out the ignorant teachings from the true teachings in traditional Christianity, and why it is basically impossible to clarify anything in an argumentative context with a person who clings to this preset belief system.
2) The next time you are in church, observe from the standpoint of energy instead of content. Watch to see when the energy is "spiritually juicy," and when it lags and gets tiresome. I think you will find a very close correlation between when there is a focus on the words and actions of Jesus, and when there is a focus on Paul. When the focus is on Paul, it's like a fire that almost starts to catch and then dies out. I have seen church services which would put you to sleep all the way through until the end, when the Lord's Prayer is recited, and suddenly with Jesus's words you can feel the place come alive for that brief instant.
3) Regarding Paul's conversion, remember the old adage, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." Without having made a scholarly study of this, I am guessing that at least some of the early Church voiced this opinion, and I am guessing there is a historical record of it somewhere.
4) To a sociopath, anyone who "believeth all things" is a "sucker," one of which is "born every minute," and a potential target. To a spiritual seeker, anyone who "believeth all things" is lacking spiritual wisdom and discernment and, sadly, is likely to be led astray despite the best efforts of wiser persons to warn them. It is true that in the naive state of the heart, like that of a child, one tends to believe all things. However, such a reference would be out of context in this quote, because in this context Paul is not talking about the heart per se; he is talking about the mature state of spiritual love. In the mature state of spiritual love, the quality of childlike innocence goes hand-in-hand with discernment, i.e., "as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove." Were Paul a sociopath, as I suggest here, he would have discouraged the former quality in his Christian audience (lest he be found out)--while encouraging the latter. Again, we have a mixture of wisdom and error in this passage. It could simply indicate someone trying to teach at a level beyond his understanding--but if this theory I've advanced is correct, it was indicative of a sociopathic perspective.
5) According to a documentary entitled "The Grand Invention: Christianity", Paul accused Peter of being "a corruptor of the gospel and cursed by God." If Paul was sociopathic, this would be a typical use of the psychological defense mechanism of projection. If one is to decide, today, who had more credibility--Peter or Paul--one must logically side with Peter, as the man who Jesus personally chose. Therefore if Paul really did denegrate Peter in this vein, Paul's credibility, not Peter's, should be questioned--and that means that Paul was projecting. If Paul was projecting, that means that he, not Peter, was a "corrupter of the gospel...", and furthermore, that he knew he was. Because you cannot deny and project something you don't know. This tiny but extremely significant little piece of history supports my intuitive feeling that the disciples of Jesus and some of the wisest people in the early Church did not support Paul. The documentary also confirms that fact, but places the crux of the disagreements around whether to uphold or abandon Jewish law. My gut feeling is that it went deeper, to the issue of making a kind of "fast food" version of the faith which obscured the deeper teachings of Jesus.