One Life Or Many? (a meditation on the implications of both possibilities)

I often find myself thinking about life. Well, my life in particular. Thinking about what has happened to me that brought me to this point in my life, and wondering also what it will be from here out. Do I have a month left, or is it a day? Maybe it is an hour, or perhaps fifty years. The Bible says, "So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).

I just got done listening to the book of Acts today on my audio Bible as I was setting up a baseball field for the home game tonight (I work at a high school), and one thing (out of a few) that stuck out to me was the emphasis that Paul put on the resurrection of the dead as he explained, to person after person, why the Jews were do angry with him. I kept saying that he was being judged for his hope in the resurrection that was preached and believe in by the prophets and fathers; that is, those who are written about in the Hebrew scriptures. What does it mean that we have this hope?

There seems to be a philosophy afoot these days. One which some people that I know of preach, and that is this idea of multiple lives, or incarnations. I guess the idea is that the soul is eternal, and that we simply go through bodies like dirty socks in a seemingly endless regress of lives until some point of enlightenment is reached. As I pondered this view in contrast to my hope in the resurrection of my body and soul from the dead to live with Christ forever, and the implications of believing either view it seemed to me that belief in reincarnation would produce a careless attitude about life. I mean, if you get a do over in the next one, then what is the point of making this one matter? Wouldn't that just encourage suicide? I mean, if you believed that you would just reincarnate into someone else, how much do you put up with until you just hit the reset button?

It seems to me that this idea has arisen to its prominence because of the scientific theory of evolution. Namely that through time nature is perfecting itself by sight modifications to living organisms over long periods of time eventually becoming something better than what previously existed by successive deaths. Thus it seems that we take this idea, and apply it to the spiritual. I will just call it soul evolution for the sake of argument. An interesting point to observe about soul evolution as well as physical evolution is that the process does not have a specific end, and likewise the way to this perfection is equally skewed in that it is almost completely ambiguous.

The Bible views this issue very specifically. "And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment," (Hebrews 9:27). There is a definite beginning and definite end of this life, and the perfection to which we are to attain to is clearly stated. The Bible teaches that we don't become perfected by many lives and experiences, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That through faith in the Lord Jesus we are perfected positionally before God, and that through the sanctifying work of the Spirit we are being changed into what we will become in heaven.

I is evident to me by contrast that while soul evolution would cultivate a complacency with life, Christianity would cultivate a deep sobriety and serious focus in life to know what is most important and to do it before death traditions us from here into eternity and "receive the things done in the body, according to what [we have] done, whether good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Human life, in the view of soul evolution, would be cheap, and with little value given to life (when you can just get another one) who's to say that mass murders or suicides aren't merely doing some people a favor? On the other hand, if indeed the testimony of the Bible is true, and our bodies aren't arbitrary shells that house some kind of eternal evolving soul, but created by God in His image, then God cares for both our body and soul. Human life is therefore very important, and valuable. We aren't just here to learn something that we don't know what it is, to get no one really knows where, but beings of great value and worth that are deeply complex and amazingly profound.

Our entire justice system is based on the reality of human value. For there must be value to enact a punishment or for there to even be crime. Maybe what we would consider a crime is just evolutions way of progressing our species, and we are just getting in the way of it. Who'e to say that anything we are doing is helping or hurting in the end. Oh yeah, there is no definite end. In that case evil is dead, relativism reigns, and things just are.

Consider the following video commentary: