Born Again - A New Start

FROM CHAPTER SIX: BORN AGAIN - A NEW HEART

Born Again: The Process

The born-again experience can be sudden and dramatic. It can involve a dramatic revelation, a life-changing epiphany, as in the case of Saul on the road to Damascus, an experience through which he became Paul. Such dramatic conversions continue to this day; some people can name a day or even an hour when it happened. There is no reason to doubt that such "sudden conversions" occur. William James not only reports many such experiences, but speaks of them as one of the most remarkable psychological phenomena known.26

But for the majority of us, being born again is not a single intense experience, but a gradual and incremental process. Dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity, dying to an old way of being and living into a new way of being, is a process that continues through a lifetime. The Christian life as it matures is ever more deeply centered in the Spirit--that is, centered in the Spirit of God as known in Jesus, the Spirit of Christ.

For most of us, this takes time. And even for those who can name an hour when they were born again, the process of living into the new life takes time. Of course, progress is not automatic; one can thwart it, obstruct it, impede it. But in the Christian life, aging, if not interfered with, has a way of deepening our centering in the Spirit. The messages and lures of youth and middle age are muted; we can rest more and more in God, more easily be in silence with God. And by being more centered in God, our lives are transformed. As the Christian life matures, we begin to experience the self-forgetfulness that accompanies a deepening trust in God.

The born-again metaphor not only applies to a single dramatic event or a lifelong process, but also to shorter rhythms in our lives. It is a process that may occur several times in periods of major transition, whatever the cause.

It even applies to the micro-rhythms of daily life. Martin Luther, a major spiritual mentor in my childhood, spoke of "daily dying and rising with Christ" and, in language that sounds a bit archaic, of "daily putting to death the old Adam," the old self in us. By adding "daily," Luther echoes the gospel of Luke.

The "dailiness" of the process fits my experience, as it does that of many people I know. In the course of a day, I sometimes realize that I have become burdened, and that the cause is that I have forgotten God. In the act of remembering God, of reminding myself of the reality of God, I sometimes feel a lightness of being--a rising out of my self-preoccupation and burdensome confinement. We are called again and again to come forth from our tombs.

This process is at the heart not only of Christianity, but of the other enduring religions of the world. The image of following "the way" is common in Judaism, and "the way" involves a new heart, a new self centered in God. One of the meanings of the word "Islam" is "surrender": to surrender one's life to God by radically centering in God. And Muhammad is reported to have said, "Die before you die." Die spiritually before you die physically, die metaphorically (and really) before you die literally. At the heart of the Buddhist path is "letting go"--the same internal path as dying to an old way of being and being born into a new. According to the Tao te Ching, a foundational text for both Taoism and Zen Buddhism, Lao Tzu said: "If you want to become full, let yourself be empty; if you want to be reborn, let yourself die."

This process of personal spiritual transformation--what we as Christians call being born again, dying and rising with Christ, life in the Spirit--is thus central to the world's religions. To relate this to John's affirmation that Jesus is "the way": the way that Jesus incarnated is a universal way, not an exclusive way. Jesus is the embodiment, the incarnation, of the path of transformation known in the religions that have stood the test of time.

Seeing this commonality between the way of Jesus and the ways of the world's religions is sometimes disconcerting to Christians, given our history of "Jesus is the only way." But the commonality is cause for celebration, not consternation. Not only does it mean, to echo an exclamation in the book of Acts, the Spirit has gone out to Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, and so forth, but it also adds credibility to Christianity.27 When the Christian path is seen as utterly unique, it is suspect. But when Jesus is seen as the incarnation of a path universally spoken about elsewhere, the path we see in him has great credibility.

Born Again: Intentionality

Being born again is the work of the Spirit. Whether it happens suddenly or gradually, we can't make it happen, either by strong desire and determination or by learning and believing the right beliefs. But we can be intentional about being born again. Though we can't make it happen, we can midwife the process. This is the purpose of spirituality: to help birth the new self and nourish the new life. Spirituality is midwifery.

Spirituality combines awareness, intention, and practice. I define it as becoming conscious of and intentional about a deepening relationship with God. The words are very carefully chosen. Becoming conscious of our relationship with God: I am convinced that we are all already in relationship to God and have been from our birth. God is in relationship with us: spirituality is about becoming aware of a relationship that already exists.

Becoming intentional about our relationship with God: spirituality is about paying attention to the relationship. Though God is "Mystery," there is nothing mysterious about paying attention to our relationship with God. We do so in the ways we pay attention in a human relationship: by spending time in it, attending to it, being thoughtful about it. We pay attention to our relationship with God through practice, both corporate and individual: worship, community, prayer, scripture, devotion. About practice, I will say more in Chapter 10.

A deepening relationship with God: in what is now a familiar theme, the Christian life is not very much about believing a set of beliefs, but about a deepening relationship with the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Paying attention to this relationship transforms us. This is what our lives are to be about: a transforming relationship to "what is," "the More."

In short, spirituality is about the process of being born again (and again and again). It is at the heart of the Christian life. If we as Christians and as the church took this seriously, we would recover the rich spiritual practices of the Christian tradition. We would learn them and encourage their use. One of the central purposes of our life together as church would be to midwife and nourish the process of being born again.

And this is happening. The recovery of spirituality and spiritual practices in mainline churches in our time is an encouraging sign of the revitalization of Christianity. It is also a sign of the emerging paradigm with its emphasis on a more relational and experiential understanding of faith and the Christian life.

FOOTNOTES
26 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, lecture 10.

27 The passage is Acts 10:45:They "were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles," that is, to those who were not of the chosen people. See Acts 11:18.


The New Life

Being born again begins a new life. Indeed, newness is its defining characteristic. It is most dramatically experienced and celebrated by those who thought their lives were irredeemably lost, whether prisoners incarcerated for brutal crimes or a slave trader like John Newton author of "Amazing Grace." The image of being "born again," born of the grace and Spirit of God, is full of hope, of new beginning in the midst of what seems like ending. Always grace and rebirth are possible.

And it is entry into a different kind of life. Dying and rising has consequences. It does not leave us unchanged. It is a transformation that begins a process of continuing transformation sometimes called "sanctification." The New Testament constantly speaks of the new life. As it does so, it is both rhapsodic and realistic. Its realistic treatment can be attested by the fact that the gospels, letters, and book of Revelation all offer explicit or implicit evidence of problems in early Christian communities.

But it is the rhapsodic aspect that I wish to highlight: what the new life is like. It is enormously attractive. It is the life of reconnection with God. It is the life of the returned prodigal, welcomed home from exile; the life of the healed demoniac, restored to his right mind and to community; the life of the bent woman, standing up and restored to health; the life of the woman of the city, redeemed by her love, the life of Lazarus, raised from the dead.

Paul speaks of the new life "in Christ" in the most extraordinary terms. It is marked by freedom, joy, peace, and love, four of his favorite words: freedom from the voices of all the would-be lords of our lives; the joy of the exuberant life; the peace of reconnection to what is, the peace that passes all understanding; and love--the love of God for us and the love of God in us. 28

Paul and the other authors of the New Testament consistently see these qualities as the "fruits" of the Spirit, as "gifts" of the Spirit. They are the fruit not of human striving, but of a new identity and new way of being--the fruit, the product, of centering one's life in God, in the Spirit.

Paul's most famous description of the new life is found in 1 Corinthians 13, often called Paul's "hymn to love." Its context between chapters 12 and 14 makes the connection to "the gifts of the Spirit" explicit. These gifts include prophecy, wisdom, healing, speaking in tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Then in chapter 13, unfortunately often read in isolation from its context, Paul says about love in relation to the other gifts of the Spirit:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 29

The affirmation sounds again at the end of the chapter in Paul's memorable triad of faith, hope, and love: "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." For Paul, love is the primary gift of the Spirit, indeed the definitive gift.

The same is true for Jesus. For Jesus, the primary quality of a life centered in God is compassion. When Jesus sums up theology and ethics in a few words, he says: "Be compassionate as God is compassionate." 30 Where Paul uses the word "love," Jesus uses the word "compassion." The associations of the word in Aramaic and Hebrew are strikingly evocative: to be compassionate is to be "womblike": life-giving, nourishing, embracing. So God is; so we are to be.

Thus growth in love, growth in compassion, is the primary quality of life in the Spirit. It is also the primary criterion for distinguishing a genuine born-again experience from one that only appears to be one.

It is the pragmatic tests suggested by William James, quoting Jesus: "By their fruits you shall know them." The fruit is love. Indeed, such fruit is the purpose of Christian life.

FOOTNOTES
28 For an exceptionally clear exposition of Paul's vision of the Christian life as marked by freedom, joy, peace, and love, see Robin Scroggs, Paul for a New Day (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), pp. 21-38.

29 I Cor. 13:1-3.

30 Luke 6:36. Though most English translations of Luke 6:36 use the word "mercy," the context in Luke points to "compassion" as a better translation. "Mercy" in English suggests a situation of wrongdoing: we can show mercy toward those who have wronged us. But the context in Luke suggests generosity: love your enemies, do good, lend without expectation of return.

Excerpts from The Heart of Christianity ©2003 by Marcus J. Borg are used with permission from HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.

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WHAT IS THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY?

From Marcus Borg's book, The Heart of Christianity which will be the basis for one of our Bible Studies in the near future.

"For me, the heart of Christianity--Christian fundamentals for our time--would be, first, the reality of God. Without a robust affirmation of the reality of God, Christianity makes little important sense.

Secondly, the centrality of the Bible. To be Christian is to be in a continuing, ongoing conversation with our sacred scriptures.

Thirdly is the utter centrality of Jesus. Christians are people who find the decisive revelation of God in Jesus, in a person. That means when Jesus and the Bible [contradict] each other, Jesus trumps the Bible.

The fourth fundamental is that a relationship with God is known in Jesus. Christianity is not primarily about believing; a relationship involves a much deeper part of ourselves than simply the content of our minds.

The fifth fundamental is a concern for the transformation of ourselves and of society. I'm convinced that the Bible from beginning to end is both personal and political, concerned with both spiritual matters and social matters, and the life of Christian faithfulness involves both of those."

Marcus Borg

If you would like to read more of Marcus Borg's book, please click the Amazon.com link at www.christchurchrb.com and order a copy. If you would like to participate in a study of this book, drop me an email at rwcornner@aol.com. We will be setting up class sessions in the next few weeks and begin the class in September. Marcus Borg is an Episcopalian and a regular contributor to Explore Faith.Com.