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Of all the many arrogances of Evangelicals,their claim to be alone the "born again" is one of the most disgusting.As if that were not enough,the media uses it to denote just those particular christians who fit a very tight,narrow,blind-sided profile which does not match that of most of we christians let alone the rest of the population of God-seekers. They talk,act as if they have a patent on the experience and the term itself even. That requires a new look.The term comes from the Gospel of John,Chap3,verses3ff. Jesus is telling the Jewish teacher,Nicodemus what is necessary to be united with him and to walk a true spiritual life. Now that eliminates right there any notion of one sect having a patent!He repeats the injunction that a person MUST be born again twice to emphasize that it is not an option.vs3:"...except anyone is born again,he cannot see the kingdom of God." The translation "born again" to which Evangelicals cling so mightily as though the translation itself was from God's lips to our ears is misleading. The Greek words are "gennethe(is born)anothen (literally "FROM ABOVE)" The root "then" is "theo"-Greek for "God" or,by implication,"from above" which is where people of that time thought God resided.Best to translate it "Born of God." Later he elaborates as does John himself in his First Epistle that this rebirth is accomplished by the Divine Spirit of God,the Hebrew "Ruach",the Greek"Pneuma","Sophia".In the Aramaic that Jesus spoke,the Spirit was feminine and stayed that way,at least in the Syrian Church and its missions,e.g.India, until the 7th century.Once one simply reads the original text without doctrinal/denominational bias/preconceptions,it becomes obvious that anyone who has had a spiritual awakening,a personal encounter with the Divine Being has had a true "born again" life-changing experience. NOBODY has an exclusive on it. It is an event which is ,at once,onetime and yet also an ongoing process.But,for the sake of discussion,let's narrow it down from here to a specifically christian interpretation.What is this born again experience? Well,in the early church adults were usually the only people baptized. There ARE exceptions even in The Book of Acts which may imply a whole household being baptized at once. But normal practice was a period of instruction following a conversion experience of an individual. NOW THERE IS THE KEY! The born again experience is a personal event that takes place between a person and God.Many of us can even recall a date on which that event happened. One is never the same after that. It transforms our view of God,world and ourselves. We may have had a belief system before,an intellectual assent -form but the Born Again experience is a totally transforming EVENT of which any futher action like Baptism is a signing and sealing and,in some systems and experiences,a heightening and reinforcing of that initial conversion. In the Born Again event,the person encounters Spirit in an "I-Thou" manner that utterly reconfigures his/her entire life from then onward. That is what being "Born Again" means. It DOES NOT make us a bunch of chapter/verse- spouting,condemnatory,Jesus-peddlars! All that is cultural,more specifically sub-cultural. What too often happens is that people who have the experience begin to seek and end up in sects which then pervert and corrupt the beauty of the Spirit-given experience. Too many buy it.And THAT is what has created this perverse,power-wielding.homophobic,moralizing travesty that we see acted out in the press daily.The experience itself is imperative. The rest is a twist and corruption! |
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