"Mistakes" and Reincarnation

7/19/2014                         Dexter                          about 40

I reached out to a fellow customer at Home Depot named Dexter with a question about his beliefs about eternity.  He responded with a puzzled look, then said “You know it’s, funny, I was just talking to my mother about that.  She’s 67 and has been talking a lot about it lately.  She believes we will all came back to live as many lives as we need to fix our mistakes.  That doesn’t sound right to me, but I don’t know what to tell her.”  Somehow he knew that one can’t just arbitrarily construct a valid belief system in their own imagination, that we need an outside authority, and he respected the Bible, but didn’t know where to begin with it.  “Would you like a brief summary of the Christian faith?” I asked.  He did, gladly, so there in an aisle in Home Depot I had the privilege of un uninterrupted opportunity to share the Gospel.

A particular “aha” moment for him came when I explained why a hundred reincarnations can’t “fix” our basic problem, our guilt for our sinful rebellion against God.  Our sins aren’t “mistakes” similar to a math problem, they are moral decisions of rebellion against God, and no amount of self-improvement can erase them.  I explained to Dexter why only Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross would be a worthy substitute for the penalty we owe.  When it came down to it, Dexter wasn’t only concerned about what to tell his mother, he knew he needs a faith of his own as well, and was very grateful I had “broken into his world” there at Home Depot.