An (In)famous Turn-off Line – Part II

 

We began Part I by referring to the old saying, “Ye must be born again.” We need to recognize here that for many who call themselves followers of Jesus, the Christ, this phrase is very important to them. I am certainly not intending to belittle that. To them this statement refers to a critical experience in their lives. Remember, I said there was still more to say about dating? These individuals can give you the precise date when this occurred. Their very faith seems to hang on to the ability to do this. They can point to the date, maybe even time when they made a conscious decision to follow Christ. From then on, they identified as Christians, even ‘born again’ Christians. Unfortunately, that has sometimes been accompanied by a bit of a holier-than-thou attitude to those who also claim to be Christians but don’t make the claim of being ‘born again’ in the same date-related experiential manner. 

 

Some comments are in order here then as to why I am then referring to this saying as an “infamous turn-off line.” It has caused some who can claim that ‘born again’ date to question those who cannot provide such information. Maybe they are not really a Christian. Such individuals are actually made to feel guilty for claiming to be Christin with no date and time proof of when they were ‘born again’ into the faith. They are made to feel they are lacking somehow, because they cannot make this ‘born again’ claim. Some have grown so tired of this challenge that they have become sick of the phrase. Sadly, some of these have gone on to lose their faith entirely. If you hear often enough that you can’t be a Christian without making that claim, well maybe I am not a Christian. Would you not agree that a saying that causes people to lose faith in Christ can also be infamous? To these erstwhile believers, it certainly is. 

 

Let’s a closer look at the origins of this saying. I know, some of you will say, well, that is what Jesus said to the night-visiting Pharisee Nicodemus as recorded in The Gospel According to St. John chapter 3. Indeed, verse 7 is the actual quote. However, Jesus has introduced the concept and begun to expand on it in verse 3. 

 

But what is Jesus talking about? He is certainly not talking about human birth. He makes that clear to Nicodemus when this guest asks (3:4) how anyone as an adult can be reborn. Jesus tells him he is talking about “being born of water and Spirit (3:5).” Elaborating on the last Jesus compares it to the wind, “you do not know where it comes form or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Doesn’t that sound a bit nebulous? Does it sound like something you could hang your hat on as to a date? Maybe there is even a bit of a caution here about being too specific about your Spirit birth. You can say with reason why you know it has happened, but much of it is humanly unexplainable. More of that later.

 

Jesus is obviously, it seems to me, using birth as a figure of speech. This opens the way to look further about how birth, being born, is used in such a way. We talk about something being ‘born out of a need.’ We talk about things ‘in the process of being born.’ We understand that in both of these expressions we are talking about something that took place over a period of time. It did not happen at once, a specific date and time. So, when Jesus talks of being born again, why do we think we need to pin that down to a date, place and time?

 

If this phrase and the related experience it describes was so important, why is it not emphasized in the other gospels or the rest of the New Testament? If the line was so important, why does it only surface in this book written decades after the other gospels and all the other New Testament writings? Why is it only John who talks as much as he does about this business of being born? 

 

If this phrase is so important, why does it not show up in conjunction with passages about how you know you are a Christian. Even Jesus, when speaking of the last judgment and who will be deemed eligible to enter his eternal kingdom, talks of those who do things like giving a cup of cold water, visiting those in prison, caring for the sick etc. he does not say anything about being able to point to when you were saved.’ Again, when the Bible speaks of evidence of what it means to be born again, it does not mention being able to point to a date, it talks about showing the fruits of the Spirit in one’s life. Even john writes (I John 2:29) “everyone who does right has been born of him.” In 3:9 he adds, “Those who have been born of God do not sin.” In 4:7 John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God.” If those who can point to a born again experience question the truth of another person’s confession of faith because they cannot make that claim, is that love? Or is that judgment? We know whom we are to leave such judgment to, only God can judge the heart. Our actions are the proof of a change in our lives. There many whose lives show such actions and who profess to believe in Jesus’ redeeming work. It is the repentance from past ways and confession of faith that saves and it is in our lives that we show proof of this.

 

And what of all those who came before Christ? Surely we do not believe Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David and others are not going to be in heaven because they had not heard about being born again – well, you get the picture. 

If you can claim to have had a born again experience, good for you. But don’t judge everyone else on a couple of phrases from what is written in quite possibly the second last book of the Bible to be written. 

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Telling My Faith Story - I

Telling My Faith Story - I

Okay. I have written at least three posts on "telling our faith stories" - why, why not etc. It is time for me to begin to work on my own story. I am also sharing it here with you. There are many references in the Psalms and elsewhere to telling of the acts of God, his mighty works etc., in the congregation, to the people and to the nations. It is that path I am following here.

I believe in an earlier post I wrote about why I am a Christian that I alluded to my faith heritage as being a factor in that. That is the positive, the blessing, with which I can look back and say my life and my faith pilgrimage started from. I don't know about the faith of my ancestors prior to the Reformation. However, as an Anabaptist Mennonite, I know that I probably come from a pretty good line of faithful ancestors from then till now. I was blessed to have parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts who were mostly staunch members of this faith community in which my roots are. They taught me as much by example as word about it what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to have a relationship with God. There example, their teaching, their prayers - and one can never underestimate that - as well as that of the faith communities to which we belong both guided me as I grew up and kept me from falling into many traps that could have led to more negative outcomes.

If we look at the beginning of my life, my expectant mother (and I) were at her parents’ place, my maternal grandparents, in the Burwalde district in southern Manitoba when she went into labor. There was evidently a snowstorm, it being almost the end of October, which could have had disastrous consequences on the prairies. My mother's family knows from personal experience what happens when neighbors get lost in a snowstorm and freeze to death. However, we made it to the Bethel Hospital in Winkler, 5 miles away.

Then, and I don't know if my mother's physician or she knew this, but I presented for delivery as breech, or feet and rear end first. This in itself can be a dangerous situation, as a baby's head is the biggest part of the body and if the rest is delivered but the head gets stuck, well, you can imagine what could happen. Being a firstborn child added to that risk because who knew how wide my mother's pelvis was going to open. Thirdly, I was being delivered by a family physician in a rural hospital which could also be an issue because they would not have the same training and experience as an obstetrician in larger centers such as Winnipeg, which was over an hour's drive away. Indeed, in those days, it seemed much farther than that. However, rural physicians in those days also became quite accomplished in some of these areas simply through necessity and experience.

So, things worked out and I was delivered all right. Then, some two months later, I guess when I was deemed old enough to travel, mother and I set out on the return trip to join my father many miles to the north in Oxford House, Manitoba. Grandfather, mother and I took the train to the place where we would catch a plane to the community to which we were headed. When the aircraft finally took off from this place, The Pas, it needed to make a stop in Norway House. I almost met a premature end there because the pilot mistakenly at first thought that the people that were waving evergreen branches were welcoming him down to a landing strip on the frozen lake. Actually, they were trying to drive him away, because that was an area where they had just been cutting ice to use for storage and whatever had frozen over after that, would not have supported our aircraft. We landed safely farther away.

The next big event where I would say I remember God's hand being on our family was some six years later. Our youngest brother, not even six months old, was not doing well. We were then living in Grand Rapids, still an isolated community at the mouth of the Saskatchewan River and Lake Winnipeg. We were fortunate enough to get an aircraft to fly mother and Lloyd to St. Anthony's Hospital at the Pas, where they diagnosed that he had what they described as a large cyst on his kidney.

Our whole family then went down to Winnipeg, where Lloyd was operated on to remove this cyst, which resulted in him losing one kidney as well. This was done at St. Boniface Hospital by a Dr. McNamara, I believe, and it was evidently the first time such surgery had been performed in Manitoba on an infant. Lloyd's life was spared again within the year when our family was enjoying some tobogganing on our riverbank on a cold winter day. We were all walking back to the top of the hill after a run when we noticed Lloyd was nowhere to be seen. We looked around and there was his snowsuit-hooded head bobbing in our open waterhole. In those days, we got our water from the river by keeping a hole open in the ice. We grabbed him from that freezing water and rushed him into the house, stripped him and warmed him up and he was all right.

It was around that time, and I am not sure of the exact dates or whether I was six or seven-years-old. Our parents regularly read stories from the Bible or other Christian materials to us at bedtime before they said our night-time prayers with us. I don't know what triggered my behavior on this one particular evening. However, I remember breaking down in tears and crying because of my awareness of my own sinfulness. Our parents comforted me with the words of First John 2:1 and 2: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." Our parents explained this to me and told me what I could do to set things right between me and God with a prayer to him and I decided to do this. My sister decided she wanted to do the same, and we both were "born again" that evening.

I can say, that since that time, no matter what has come my way in my life, no matter what questions might have come up in my mind, God has kept me from straying from the path that he helped set me on that day, and for that I give him thanks. Of course, I am also thankful to my parents and all those around me who had influenced me by that time and continue to do so for their role in helping keep me in The Way since then.

Fire Escape, Sinking Ship and Being Born Again

Fire Escape, Sinking Ship and Being Born Again

Some of you might be reading that and wondering, What in the world do those three things have to do with each other? Others of you will already understand.

Some of you have heard the pitch, you have to be born again to escape the fires of hell. Or, to free yourselves of the clutches of this decadently evil and sinking, decaying ship (society). Nowadays, these phrases are probably mostly heard from television or the radio. You might hear them in your church or some special meetings. More so in the past, they were the stock catchphrases of the evangelistic crusades. 

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not entirely knocking any of the above. I have not only attended but also taken part in and supported crusades in the past by Billy Graham, Barry Moore, the, Ken Campbell and the Sutera twins, not to mention Anabaptism's own Brunk brothers and Myron Augsburger. People have experienced changed lives because of the efforts of these teams.

However, as some of them will also honestly admit, based on their own follow-up surveillance, many who make decisions at or around the time of these events, do not follow through. In medicine, when physicians attend a continuing education conference or learn some new guidelines, but don't really end up putting all of that new knowledge into practice, we call that a knowledge gap or a failure of translation of knowledge from word to deed. The same thing happens with many of these evangelistic efforts, whether it is a crusade or television broadcast.

You see, turning away from your old life to follow The Way, or, if you will, being "born again" or "becoming a Christian," is only a start. Somehow though, over the last two or three centuries out of the nearly 10 centuries that The Church has been in existence, too much attention and effort has been put into a certain way of inviting people into The Kingdom of God. We have had John chapter 3, with Jesus’ reference to being born-again and his apparent final words in Matthew 28 emphasized at the expense of a lot of other important biblical material (I used the word apparent because I think I recall reading somewhere that some believe these words were added later to express a certain point of view and may not have been the original words of our Lord). This emphasis on "winning souls" also causes a lot of guilt on the part of those who are constantly reminded that this is what they’re to be about if they want to earn their "stars" in heaven, but find that they're not very successful in “converting” their families, relatives, neighbors, friends or co-workers. In all of this, we seem to forget that we cannot convert anyone, only the Holy Spirit can, and to do so, it needs to find soil that is ready and prepared for the growth of the CD that is planted with the hearing of The Word. This flask is the test of The Church, but one that often we often fail in. That is in part because new converts are often not successfully linked to the physical expression of The Body of Christ somewhere, or even if they are, the receiving congregation doesn't provide a nurturing atmosphere necessary for growth in The Way to continue.

Christianity has too often been reduced to a program, strategies, aimed at getting people in the door of the church building. To be sure, many churches also do a good job of engaging these individuals, their members, in things like small groups. Sometimes the emphasis here is more on fellowship, helping the newcomers feel more like they belong, then that these are an avenue of serious learning more about it what it means to be a Christian and growing in The Way.

Some of these valiant evangelistic efforts are based on the so-called missionary travels of The Apostle Paul. However, what gets lost in the ‘knowledge translation’ here is that the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's own letters indicate that he often spent months and even years in some of these congregations, trying to make sure they were established in The Way, before moving on to a new destination. Not only that, he often returned to spend time in these congregations or dispatched others to make sure they were doing well. And of course, he wrote letters to them, some of which we still have. He and his helpers worked at the individual relational level. This is often lacking in The Church today.

As for our efforts to try and get people through the church doors, The Church in the New Testament and The Early Church times did not even have church buildings to invite people to. If you read the writings of the Early Church, it does not appear that they were very many come if any, individuals engaged in evangelism in the way we are familiar with it today, as described at the beginning of this writing.

Some of us have come to realize that what we have failed to do is cultivate discipleship in the newcomers. This is what the early church took very seriously and was good at. This was all it took for the church to grow slowly but surely so that by the fourth century AD, the Roman Empire, which had been persecuting them to that point, basically capitulated and became Christian. Unfortunately, that led to a whole new other interpretation of Christianity, which set it on another course that was not that helpful, for the next Thousand use and then some. I am referring to what some called Christendom, with all of its ramifications of the union of church and state, but that would be the subject of another article.

What the early church practiced was the development of spiritual virtues. To be sure, there are recorded instances in the New Testament of individuals being converted and baptized on the spot. In other words, becoming members of The Kingdom. What we forget though is that in many of these instances, the individuals, and sometimes their families, were already following God as they knew him from Judaism, so they new a lot about what it meant to be a follower or live the life of a disciple. However, it did not take long when the church moved into the Gentile world, for it to realize that a lot of time and effort needed to be put into helping reprogram, if you will, the pagans to the Christian way of life. Those who became interested by the witness of the word, and more often the action, of their neighbors, and wanted to become a follower of Christ, were assigned to sponsors who worked diligently and intensively with them for a year or two, while they and the rest of the local congregation observed the catechumenate, as they have been come to be called, to see whether they were really showing signs of having the fruits of the Spirit within them. Here again, we have another example of where a Scriptural concept has been somewhat distorted. “The fruits of the Spirit” has to often been interpreted as the number of souls won, instead of spirit-given virtues cultivated.

Many who have been busy doing what they described in the earlier part of this essay are turning their back on it having rediscovered that what we are called to be is faithful where God has placed us, in our neighbourhood or parish (when I dictated that word with my computer's voice recognition, it came out perish, LOL as they say nowadays, which could be true enough as well). What we need to focus on is cultivating virtue, and making sure the needs of ourselves, our fellow saints and our neighbors are met in ways in which we see God working. I suggest that is where we need to direct our efforts in the future.