BORN AGAIN? I HOPE SO, BUT DOUBT IT

Many Christians, mainly Evangelicals, claim to be “born again”. In my experience, the great majority of them don’t have a clue what that means. This is not a judgement or even criticism. They operate on what they think they know. Most have had some degree of emotional experience in their acceptance of Christianity and confuse that with “being born again”. To join the club and call yourself Christian, is not to be “born again”.

To be “born again” requires that you first die. “You”, the ego and all you think you are. Who you think you are must first “die” in order to be reborn. This is a pretty rare experience. Some find it tough to die to ego, and survive physically.

So, why do I write? Why do I care? Because the true born again experience such that transformed Saul to Paul is among the most powerful, important events in human life, and I find it disturbing to see it unintentionally denigrated into a common, non-transformative experience of temporary emotional content.

So, in my “vast knowledge others don’t have”, what do I think born again means? In my 84 chronological years, I’ve met one person I know to be truly born again. I saw him die, curl up in fetal position on his mother’s couch, clutching his bible, and then through the transformative power of love for his wife and children, he slowly awakened to do all he could for them, not thinking of the self he no longer was, he lived and lives only for his beloved.

Yes, he truly became a new personality, a new man, although not yet grown, not yet…