Christian And Buddhist Understanding Of Life After Death

Life after death Buddhist Point Christian Buddhism teaches that humans are trapped in a repetitive cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Reincarnation (many lives) vs. one single life (Contrast/difference) Or, Both teach life after this one (compare/same) CHRISTIANITY stimulus 5d, I believe that when the body dies, the soul lives on in a new life . Christianity has historically taught that everyone has only a single life on earth. Each successive rebirth may be into a better, a worse life, or a similar life, depending upon the person's Karma -- the sins and merits that have accumulated during their present and previous lives. Deed affect next life (Compare/same) Both lives after this one are affected by how you act and live your current

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Life After Death

It is truly important to consider, and if possible, to know, what happens to us after we die. Some, who believe we are just accidental physical systems in an ultimately meaningless universe would have us believe that we have no existence after we die. Our personhood is finished as we become dead, rotting meat. This view generally equates mind with brain, and denies the existence of the spiritual world. In this view, your brain activity is just a product of physical laws. "Your" decisions are outcomes of the laws of physics. Don't congratulate yourself if you have this view. If you are right, you only have this view because of the way certain particles just happen to react with each other. Two main theories are proposed in the modern world as alternatives to this view. One is reincarnation - the other is spiritual existence and eventual resurrection. There are also those who believe in physical resurrection but do not believe that human beings have a spirit that can exist apart from their body. I have written a few remarks on this view here. An interesting note: A great book to read on this subject is by Dr Maurice Rawlings, and is called "To Hell and Back". He is a heart surgeon who resuscitated a number of clinically dead people whose experiences were ... interesting. He discusses a lot of interesting things related to Near Death Experiences (NDEs) in that book. Rawlings noted that a lot of people had hellish NDEs. Actually these people were clinically dead, not just "nearly dead". Secular psychologists have tried to downplay the importance of these hellish NDEs and instead like to focus on the NDEs which are all sweetness and light. I personally think that an NDE which teaches that the "Supreme Being" accepts all people without judgment is just a lie from Satan. Its a clear contradiction of the teaching of Scripture for a start. Maybe you do not believe in the existence of Satan or hell, but Jesus Christ taught something very different. I mistrust spirits which teach a different doctrine to what Jesus taught. Jesus was in a better position to tell us the truth than people are today. Christians are exhorted by God to test the spirits, to see if they are from God. Not every spiritual experience is true. Some of them can be the "good" side of the "tree

of knowledge of good and evil" - which is still as deadly and poisonous as anything else the devil offers.

Do the Dead ever rise?

We will leave aside for the moment the many reports of people being raised from the dead in Christ's name. I believe that this can and does happen, but you'd probably have to actually meet people who saw it or to whom it happened, as I have, before you would consider the possibility of such a thing. Let us go instead to the matter of Christ's resurrection. The evidence for the physical resurrection of Christ is far more powerful than most people realise. The link above outlines just a few of the basic arguments that help us see this. Christians claim that Jesus Christ not only died for our sins, but also rose physically from death as proof that God had truly accepted His sacrifice. According to the Christian teaching, we too will all rise from death one day. Some to everlasting life, and others to everlasting shame and contempt. (Daniel 12:2). If there is good historical and testimonial evidence for the resurrection of Christ, then we have powerful reasons for accepting it over the popular theories of reincarnation. It also provides evidence of the possibility that we too will rise from death at the end of the age.

Reincarnation
Reincarnation appeals to us because it offers another chance. It is often associated with the socalled "law of karma". That law basically teaches that what you experience in this life - whether good or evil - is a result of the good or bad deeds in a previous life. There are many contradictory versions of reincarnation. Some say we come back as animals, or used to be animals. Others ignore that aspect of traditional Hindu teaching and lead people to believe we go from one human incarnation to the next. But there was a time when human beings, even life itself, did not exist on the planet! So where did we all come from then? And how does an animal or a micro-organism for that matter earn "good karma" so that it can come back as something more advanced in the "next life"? There are a lot of unanswered questions here. Perhaps someone well-versed in Hinduism can give me the teaching on some of these issues. I encourage you to read my article above on this subject by following the link. Michael

A note on the Issue of the Immortality of the Soul (more correctly, of the spirit).
The Bible declares however that we are spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23) and that, for a Christian, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8. In Philippians 1:23 Paul says he had a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. He did not say that he had a desire to die and be non-existent until the resurrection. He had a desire to be with Christ, not to lose time. This Scriptural information harmonizes with hundreds of testimonies from Christians of being outside their body or seeing paradise. It may not fit with the words of Ecclesiastes "The dead know nothing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5), but then again, Ecclesiastes was written only from the perspective of what may be known "under the sun". The rest of the verse says, "and they [the dead] have no more reward" (which denies the doctrine of eternal rewards for God's people). Try building your doctrines on that! Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon in his later years as a backslider, and like the Book of Job, contains the sayings of men with less than perfect knowledge. Ecclesiastes also says that "All is vanity" and "Money is the answer for everything" things which are only true when you take God out of the picture. I'd prefer to give the teachings of Paul priority when forming my theology, actually.

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