The staple phrase of Christianity, but what does it really mean? The way it’s described and taught in modern churches has always seemed either way too shallow, or too mired in dogma to be useful.
Believe in the lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved
That phrase has been used for the simple explanation. Simply declare your belief, causing you to instantly become born again and secure a place in heaven. The idea that a magic phrase can somehow transform you always bothered me. There are of course millions of examples of folks that will gladly tell you this phrase as evidence of their salvation, while struggling every day with behaviors and habits that are obviously not based on the words or even the spirit of the bible. These struggles range from the relatively harmless like a lie of convenience, to large scale damage and destruction of sexual abuse within church leadership. Pointing this out immediately elicits the standard response of “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven”. Granted, the vast majority of those that would proudly declare these statements are well meaning individuals just trying to do their best. So why doesn’t this belief and the concept of being born again more effectively help people achieve the simple core goal of Christianity:
Live with selfless love, compassion, and kindness to all of creation
Side note: this is also the core goal of most if not all religion… but we’re focusing on Christian vernacular at the moment.
The dogmatic approach is harder to discuss because of its diversity across denominations, but mostly because I tend to reject it from memory based on needlessness. What use is detailed explanation or documented rules about the infinite? This is summarized by Christ nicely in the new testament: “Consider how the flowers grow. They never work or spin yarn for clothes.” A paraphrase that appears in several books of the gospel. Taken with a larger meaning outside the clothing example, this is applicable to these dogmatic intellectual exercises of man. God doesn’t require this work, only selfless presence just like the flowers in the field. With that, the right action is determined naturally and sin is dissolved. It is man that determines and documents these details and rules, not God. Once they stop serving the core purpose of love, compassion, and kindness, these things should be discarded.
Being Born Again is not a single event, but a constant struggle
Being born again implies a death of something that then needs re-born. If you allow your views and definitions to expand beyond church sanctioned language and old Christian dogma, a curious alignment occurs. The thing that must die to allow us to be born again is none other than our own false self, our egoic mind, the self that is created out of our illusion of separateness. With that stripped away, our relation to the divine, our true self, becomes the remaining presence. In that moment, we are born again as our true selves, with a direct relationship to the infinite whom in this context we’ll refer to as God or Christ. In this state, the motivations to sinfulness disappear. How can we be sinful against our fellow man when the line of distinction between “me” and “them” is gone? To think of hurting another, let alone executing those thoughts becomes impossible. That is what I believe Christ was teaching, not a simple declaration of belief that can be proudly posted on your wall ironically boosting that same ego that you’re trying to release.
Being born again is a state of selflessness, a death of ego that must be returned to and maintained.
The funny thing is, our ego doesn’t simply stay gone. Just try to meditate for a few minutes, to release the thoughts that constantly make up our false selves, the focus on the past, the worry about the future, all the bits and pieces we’ve gathered that define our “selves” as separate from each other, the world, and the infinite. Even those that practice all the time don’t manage but a few minutes of actual presence without the self butting in with some inane thought.
In the mindfulness / meditation circles, it is assumed that all will fail at maintaining being born again. Why isn’t this same approach used in Christian thought? Instead the individual ends up in a loop, seeking forgiveness instead of focusing on growing and maintaining a life as truly born again. Inevitably, the ego returns to its power and convinces us that I know better, I am more important, he/she/they are wrong. And once we identify with those thoughts as truth, the barriers to sin come down and the cycle repeats.
Instead, I propose a new approach to being born again. This approach must be taken every minute of every day… allow your false egoic self to die so that you may be born again into the moment, in fellowship with the infinite God and all life that has come from it.
You will fail at this, like we all do. Forgive yourself these failures over and over again, and return to the new moment where you have equal chance to truly be born again… again.