To many of us in the Western world, we believe that reincarnation is an Eastern construct that has unfortunately morphed its way into becoming a corruption of Christianity and what Christianity properly stands for. The Western Christian belief through most mainstream churches is that we are born into sin, as fallen human beings, and that we can only be redeemed by the blood of Christ, and through the grace of God himself. Further to this point, it is not by our good works or deeds that we get to Heaven, but again only through the redemptive spirit of Christ, who took our burdens and sins upon Himself, to redeem us from our sins. Our admission and submission to the fact that Christ is our savior, allows our symbolic rebirth and to become a new creation, saved and redeemed by Christ's blood, and thereby Heaven bound.
One significant issue with the above thinking is that the theme of reincarnation runs quite prevalently throughout the entire Bible. In fact, there is a multitude of Biblical passages that make it all too clear that reincarnation was no foreign agent to the people of God, that it was believed on, and acted upon. For instance we have:
For all the prophets and the law have prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who was to come. (Matthew 11:13-14)
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?( John 9:2)
But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. (Matthew 17:12)
Our God is a God of both love and of justice, and the one thing that we do know for a certainty on this planet, is that we are not all born under the same circumstances and conditions. The conditions of our birth, and of our environment, can vary from absolute destitution, poverty, and abuse, to the height of prosperity, fortune, and love, with everything in-between. This means that in aggregate our birth situations are both unequal and unfair, which necessitates the obvious conclusion that many people, do not have the fair opportunity to appreciate, to inherit, or to adhere to mainstream Christianity and its beliefs.
There is the belief, wrongly, that we go to Heaven upon our physical death, but reincarnation states it differently, that we "grow" our way to Heaven. Further that our lives are often a process of hit and misses; of a few steps forward, and several back; that in some lives we progress well and in other lives we sadly regress. We have, all of us, been here before, and we will continue to come back until we achieve the growth and evolution needed to arrive back at the point that we began as spiritual beings with no need or desire to incarnate into a physical form.
Shakespeare said it all so well: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…" That too is our destiny, how much more meaningful for us is it to really experience over many lifetimes the incarnation of many different characters, people of different color, religion, job, education, opportunity, family, or whether we are either male or female. Isn't it true justice to find yourself, switched from serf to land baron, from slave to master, from ill health to good health, and the incumbent challenges that are thereby presented to you, to overcome, to conquer and to learn from?
Life hasn't been fair to you, but it is. Do the best that you can under your circumstances, live your life fully, become the things that bring justice, light, liberty, and love to not only yourself but also to your fellow sojourners on this earthly plane and remember always, you are an eternal soul encased in a physical body for a while, made in the image of God for all eternity.