Born Again

October 9, 2018

One of the banes of American Christianity is the culture that has been Christianized to the point where those who aren’t atheist, agnostic, or a member of some other faith system see themselves as basically OK and heaven bound when they die. I have no desire to condemn anyone to hell; my understanding of Scripture in this regard is actually somewhat different than traditional Evangelical Christian teaching. But the belief that we are Christian because we were born and baptized into a particular branch of the Church has created lots of “Christians” who have never genuinely encountered Jesus Christ. They are good people, may worship regularly and give generously, but genuine faith in Christ doesn’t come through osmosis and isn’t genetically transmitted through family lines. 

In John’s Gospel, Jesus told Nicodemus, who was a very pious man, that one has to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. Although trained in the law, Nicodemus had no frame of reference for such talk, and didn’t understand what Jesus was trying to communicate. 

I was only present for the birth of one of my children. Nathan was born in the middle of a flood. They took Linda in and didn’t even give me the option of being with her. We suspect the attending physician wasn’t even there because at one point he was evacuating his house. Jessie was born during the Annual Conference session where I was to be ordained. Linda kept telling me she was coming, right up until about ten minutes before she was born. I tried to get there in time, but couldn’t. I was however, there for Matt’s entry into this world, and I can say with absolute certainty that birth is not a gentle and innocuous process. It is painful, bloody, and after much labor, sudden. There is no question about what happened.

New birth into the Kingdom of God isn’t much different. People who think they can gently slip into Christian faith don’t understand what it’s all about. It is a transformation from one mode of existence to another, a sudden and often violent transition. I suspect that much of the weakness and flaccidity of modern American Christianity is due to a deficient understanding of the New Birth. I am grateful tonight that the people who brought me into this New Life understood what being born again was all about. They left nothing out, nothing to chance, and no room for uncertainty. I can even today nearly sixty years later, point you to the exact spot where I was born again. It was the beginning of a whole new life that continues to this day, and into eternity.