Reincarnation and resurrection have some things in common as ways of thinking. Both are affirmations that death is not decisive. B...oth presuppose a life, a Godward life-energy which, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, "does not die when the body dies." Both address the mystery of that ongoing, irrepressible life that cannot be done in by death. But there are critical differences as well. Reincarnation is not what I as a Christian mean by resur rection. Reincarnation has to do with a wide understanding of life, one that includes both birth and death. Resurrection has to do with the meaning of life itself, no matter how long its trajectory might be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For many people religion is a rigid concept, somewhat like a stone that is passed from generation to generation. We don't add to i...t, change it, or challenge it; we just pass it along. But even the most cursory study of the history of religions would undermine such a view. Religious traditions are far more like rivers than stones. Like the Ganges or the Gallatin, they are flowing or changing. Sometimes they dry up in arid land; sometimes they radically change course and move out to water new territory. All of us contribute to the river of our traditions. We do not know how we will change the river or be changed as we experience its currents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »