265Born Again = a New Reality

posted by Jeffrey on February 2nd, 2007

What is the first thing that springs to mind when you hear the phrase “born again”? Have you never considered those words together before? Do you think of dogmatic Christians? Do you think of religion? Do you think of freedom? Family? Something else entirely perhaps? For me, the first thing that comes to mind is the evangelical belief that a person must “accept Christ as their Savior” to be re-born into the family of God…lest they burn in Hell for all eternity. This belief comes largely from a verse in the Bible, located in John’s Gospel. In chapter three, verse three, “…Jesus declared, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’” Two verses later in verse five, Jesus says again, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” This of course begs the great question of “what is ‘the kingdom of God”? For now, ponder that on your own, that is for another post and another discussion.

Here, in this post, I’d like to deal with the idea of being “born again.” My friend Rick recently sent me a book called Sophie’s World. It is a novel about the history of philosophy and is an INCREDIBLE read! A very brief summary of the plot is that a fourteen year old girl named Sophie begins receiving letters in her mailbox, unstamped and without return address, asking some pointed questions. The first letter simply says, “who are you?” and the second reads, “where did the world come from?”. The proceeding letters contain short three or four page documents introducing Sophie to the world of philosophy. I’d like to share a paragraph from one of those letters with you here:

“The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty to wonder. Babies have this faculty. That is not surprising. After a few short months in the womb they slip out into a brand new reality [emphasis mine]. But as they grow up the faculty of wonder seems to diminish. Why is this? Do you know?”

I can’t believe I’ve never viewed the above mentioned Bible verse in this way! Most evangelical “Christians” adhere to the previously mentioned interpretation of this verse, but what if it simply means that like a new born baby, the awareness of the perfect love of Christ within us is like being born again into a brand new reality? Maybe it has nothing to do with whether you’re “part of God’s family” or not. Do you think Jesus is speaking of a new realm of existence and a new way of seeing altogether, of which the awareness of Christ’s Love is the catalyst??

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