Born Again

Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’  John 3:5-7

The Providence Journal  1903

In this complicated conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee, we come face to face with the phrase “Born again.”  This phrase has become a sort of fundamentalist litmus test – where people ask each other “have you been born again” in order to assess another’s faith.  It is time re-claim this phrase and understand it as the scripture intended it.

So what is “to be born again?”  As Jesus explains it, we must be born twice. The first time, through water, speaks to human birth – that moment when a baby emerges from the womb and draws one’s first breath. Being born again, being born in the Spirit, is another thing all together.  Some say it is a decision we make as adults, independent of others, to decide to follow Jesus – but many others believe that it is that moment in Holy Baptism when the Spirit binds us to a community of faith entrusted to teach us in the ways of following Jesus.    

What do you think?  Is it one or the other? Or is it both? To argue these divergent viewpoints is to risk missing the Truth that God is bound to us inextricably; that there is nothing we can do to separate ourselves from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  And when we recognize that, then life becomes anything but rigid and stiff; life becomes flexible and increasingly comfortable with living in the paradox that is life.