One of the most attractive aspects of reincarnation is that it removes the possibility of eternal damnation in hell. It attempts to solve the problem of evil with the logic of karma. If Sikhism teaches anything of hell, it is more a type of purgatory, not an eternal hell.
When children are born with deformities, it seems unjust for God to punish children for sins of a previous life as an adult. This is especially unjust when those children do not remember their sins, nor are able to grasp the meaning and cause of suffering. It is one of the cardinal earmarks of God’s righteous punishment that the sufferer should be fully informed and conscious of the cause, and justification of the chastisement meted out to him. Take, for example, Hitler.
Say he reincarnates as a crippled baby Edgar Jones in 1947 in New York.
He has no idea he was Hitler and that he is suffering for the crimes of Hitler. This is where justice breaks down totally.
Because only Hitler alone can work off his karma and be punished for his evil deeds. But he is dead and gone since his personality actually ceased to exist in 1945, and a new personality, baby Edgar Jones, now bears the massive burden of Hitler’s karmic debt.
Hitler thus cheats justice while Edgar is victimized.
When Edgar dies, another person is born to pay off the balance of Hitler’s karmic debt, and in addition, his own! This creates an unending chain reaction perhaps producing more Hitlers.
If the individual cannot be identified (by identity of body, memory, and or intellectual awareness), then can we make sense of the notion of continuation of the individual in successive lives? If it is not the individual that is reborn, then why should someone pay for the karmic debt left by someone else? It is not just!
This impersonal god of karma is
without justice, intelligence, empathy or mercy—the attributes of a lesser god whose arms are too short to pick us up when we fall.
Karma has no standards whatsoever and is tied to no knowable guidelines for human conduct, no rules, patterns, or principles.
Karma is ultimately anti-humanitarian. The fatalism it produces implants a lack of concern for suffering of others and general inaction for humanitarian causes.
Karma is automatic, inexorable, and unalterable. It cannot allow for forgiveness.
Sikhism teaches both reincarnation controlled by the law of karma and the contradictory doctrine of forgiveness and rescue from transmigration by the grace of God. Sikh scholar Surinder Singh Kohli says that “Great emphasis is thus laid on the grace of the Lord. Karam and grace, the two opposing factors have been reconciled” (Philosophy of Guru Nanak, p173). In Sikhism the teaching is that God’s grace is greater than the law of karma, but then in what sense is it a “law?” It is no longer an inexorable law and God becomes capricious in not meting out the justice of the law of karma. Furthermore, what happens to the karma that is overlooked? A just God, who is the moral ruler of the universe cannot merely overlook and wink at sin.
According to this system, just look within yourself and decide what you think is right, and when you die it will be decided whether or not you made good choices to work off your karma. And if you made bad choices, then you suffer in the next rebirth.
Even the Constitution of America, made by mere men, prohibits the passing of legislation which results in criminal liability ex post facto, i.e., after the fact.
Karma gives no notice of the causes whose effects we will have to suffer in future lives.
It is ex post facto moral judgment without clear standards by which to judge.
Even if there were a standard, since we know we couldn’t reach perfection in one lifetime, there’s no reason to believe we could do it over a million lifetimes. Time doesn’t solve problems inherent within the system.
Karma says our tragedy is simply part of a cosmic system of higher education. It’s an alluring explanation because it shifts any immediate blame to past lives, which we can’t even remember!
The law of karma only postpones the solution to the problem of evil and suffering eternally without ever confronting or solving the root of the dilemma.
It only pushes the problem back into earlier lives without coming any closer to the solution.
What if none of us has ever had a prior life in which to accumulate bad karma and it’s all a deception?
If our bad karma from prior lives is responsible for suffering now, and our present life is, say, our one hundredth life and the suffering is from our ninety-ninth life; and the bad karma in our ninety-ninth life is from our ninety-eighth life, etc. etc., until you come to life number two where the bad karma is from our very first life, but there was no prior life to the first life, so where did the first life get its bad karma from?
If it had none, then it should have been at one with the universal soul, but if it was at one and merged into the Brahman, why go backwards and take birth?
And if it did have bad karma, where did it come from?
Even Bhagat Nam Dev poses this very same question in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib:
swsqu n hoqw bydu n hoqw krmu khW qy AwieAw ]
“Saasat no hotaa Bed naa hotaa karam kahaan te aa-i-aa.”
“When there was no Shastras, and no Vedas, whence did the good and bad deeds come then?” (SGGS p973 Nam Dev).
Reincarnation cannot explain the origin of evil and how or why it entered the world, specifically at the very first birth of the soul.
Karma may be an easy explanation of the existence of suffering and evil, but it is certainly not the right one.
In fact, karmic law and successive reincarnations are more of a motivation for complacency, apathy, and irresponsibility in this lifetime. Given the prospects of many chances and an inevitable absorption of every soul into the divine consciousness, there would be no compelling rush to get it right.
Sikhism does depart from Hinduism.
Sikhism claims that one can escape rebirths by earning God’s favor. But as we have seen, no one is able to do so for we all fall short of the perfection God requires.
It does not explain how the karmic debt is taken care of or how it got there in the first place.
CONCLUSION:
Underneath the sugar coating of reincarnation is the bitter pill of error.
There is no real forgiveness and no real love, and no real justice.
It perpetuates evil, e.g., If one murders, he himself will be murdered in a future life. It is a never-ending cycle of hopelessness and does not explain the origin of, existence of, or the final eradication of evil.
The concept of grace is not reconcilable with karma. And I ask the question, what happens to that karma when God forgives? If the law of karma is merely set aside, then it cannot be an inexorable law, and there is no real justice!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ makes reincarnation redundant. If we are to be resurrected, which body will we get if we had thousands of lives?
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