I recently had a thought-provoking chat on a cab ride to church.
The subject of spirituality came up, and it turned out that my driver was an earnest believer in reincarnation. He was adamant that we each have a personal soul that continues life in a new earthly body after death—replanted in materially better or worse circumstances according to prior behavior. He agreed with me that life is eternal, but saw this eternality as an ongoing cycle of rebirth in changing physical forms.
I certainly respected his right to hold these views. But when the driver dropped me off at the Christian Science church, I was grateful to hear a different view of life and death. The subject of reincarnation wasn’t directly addressed in the Lesson-Sermon that day, made up of citations read from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. But the ideas shared explained that God is Life and All, and that death is the opposite of this allness of infinite, spiritual Life—therefore an unreality, in light of Life’s eternal reality.
