{"id":1152,"date":"2005-02-23T07:58:14","date_gmt":"2005-02-23T11:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/02\/23\/born-again\/"},"modified":"2005-02-23T07:58:14","modified_gmt":"2005-02-23T11:58:14","slug":"born-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/02\/23\/born-again\/","title":{"rendered":"“Born Again”"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

This week’s lectionary reading from the Gospel was the famous passage
\ncontaining the phrase “born again” and John 3.16 (which is the verse
\nthat guy at sporting events is always holding up a sign for).<\/p>\n

The phrase comes, of
\ncourse, from a scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus tells a Pharisee named
\nNicodemus that he will never see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again. 
\nSomewhat testily prodded by Nicodemus to make himself clearer, Jesus says, “That
\nwhich is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
\nspirit.”? In other words, spiritual rebirth by the power of the Holy Spirit is
\nwhat Jesus is talking about. <\/p>\n

He then goes one step
\nfurther, playing on the word pneuma<\/i>, which means both “spirit” and “wind” in Greek.  “The wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you
\ndo not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is
\nborn of the Spirit,”? he says (John 3:1-8).  The implication seems to be that the
\nkind of rebirth he has in mind is (a) elusive and mysterious and (b) entirely
\nGod’s doing.  There’s no telling when it will happen or to whom. <\/p>\n

Presumably those to whom it does happen feel themselves
\nfilled, as a sheer gift, with that love, joy, peace which Saint Paul singles out
\nas the principal fruits of the experience.  In some measure, however fleetingly,
\nit is to be hoped that most Christians have had at least a taste of them. <\/p>\n

Some of those who specifically refer to themselves as “Born Again
\nChristians,”? however, seem to use the term in a different sense. 
\nYou get the feeling that to them it means Super Christians.  They
\nare apt to have the relentless cheerfulness of car salesmen.  They
\ntend to be a little too friendly a little too soon and the women to
\nwear more make-up than they need.  You can’t imagine any of them
\never having had a bad moment or a lascivious thought or used a nasty
\nword when they bumped their head getting out of the car.  They
\nspeak a great deal about “the Lord”? as if they have him in their hip
\npocket and seem to feel that it’s no harder to figure out what he wants
\nthem to do in any given situation than to look up in Fanny Farmer<\/span> how to make
\nbrownies.  The whole shadow side of human existence– the suffering, the doubt,
\nthe frustration, the ambiguity– appears as absent from their view of things as
\nlitter from the streets of Disneyland.  To hear them speak of God, he seems
\nabout as elusive and mysterious as a Billy Graham rally at Madison Square
\nGarden, and on their lips the Born Again experience often sounds like something
\nwe can all make happen any time we want to, like fudge, if only we follow their
\nrecipe. <\/p>\n

It is not for anybody to judge the authenticity
\nof the Born Again’s spiritual rebirth or anybody else’s, but my guess is that by
\nthe style and substance of their witnessing to it, the souls they turn on to
\nChrist are apt to be fewer in number than the ones they turn off. <\/p>\n

[This
\nmeditation is taken from Frederick Buechner’s Whistling in the Dark:  A
\nDoubter’s Dictionary<\/i>, p. 23-24] \n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not willing to judge the authenticity of the “born again”
\nexperience–I’d even hesitantly say that I have had this experience
\nmyself–but I think that Buechner may be right, in one sense.  For
\ntoo many people, religion is a comfort, a palliative, an “opiate” as
\nMarx described it.  True religion tries one’s soul, and while it
\nmay offer a bulwark in life, it is probably more unsettling than it is
\nnot.<\/p>\n

Buechner’s criticism can apply equally to born-agains, Buddhists, or
\nliturgical people.  But we probably see it and hear it and have it
\noffered as justification most often from those who claim to be
\n“born-again.”  They are, after all, numerous, influential, and “loud” in our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s lectionary reading from the Gospel was the famous passage containing the phrase “born again” and John 3.16 (which is the verse that guy at sporting events is always holding up a sign for). The phrase comes, of course, from a scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus tells a Pharisee named Nicodemus that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-iA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}