A Different Look At Being ‘Born Again’

John 3:3-[to Nicodemus] Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (New King James Version)

2 Corinthians 5:17-Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (also NKJV)

Hi, I’m [river in Ireland], and I’m not an addict. I’m not an alcoholic either, although such things run in my family. I’m not a sex addict, since it’s kind of hard to be one of those when you’ve only ‘been with’ one person. I’m not a criminal, have never been homeless and had a pretty good childhood. And yet, I am what you could call a born-again Christian. In a sense, anyway.

When I first came to know God, I was part of a very small Independent Baptist church. I was fifteen. For most of the [censored] years since then, I’ve traveled in various Baptist and Pentecostal/non-denominational circles. If you’ve been there, you know that those churches tend to be full of ‘born-again’ Christians. One of the biggest things I’ve heard them say is how God brought them up out of the pit of Hell in the form of addiction, sex, abuse, crime, etc. I’m not discounting their conversions at all-in fact, I admire them. I can’t even begin to imagine what their lives were like or how difficult it has been to change. If this describes you, bravo-you are a better woman than I, my friend. Or man. Or whatever.

One thing I also saw, though, was how these were thought of as the only ‘real’ conversions. It seemed that, the more dramatic the change, the more ‘legitimate’ your faith. I heard it said that people who grew up in ‘traditional’ churches or always lived on the straight-and-narrow couldn’t be ‘real’ Christians because they couldn’t be ‘born again’. We weren’t ‘new creations’ because we have always lived the ‘Christian’ life, even if we didn’t call it that.  Leaving one denomination for another as many of my sorority sisters did ‘counted’, because their previous churches were ‘dead’ and they needed to go somewhere else for an ‘authentic’ experience of God. I’m not saying that every new Christian I met felt this way or that this is the Evangelical ‘party line’, but it was something I hadn’t heard before and it made an impression.  Some were downright rude about it, but ohers just spoke from their own experience. I see their point, but I think they’re missing something.

A big part of being ‘born again’ is recognizing your need for God; that you can’t do it all by yourself. People being brought up from the depths of whatever usually acknowledge that a change is needed, that they are on a path that only leads to destruction. The ‘good kids’, however, usually think they’re doing just fine. That’s how I was, anyway. They might not see their need for God because, to them, He’s always ‘been there’; they’ve never known what it’s like not to have Him in their lives. They never ‘look’ for Him because they don’t think they need to.

Then, enter college. I say college because this is a time that many people are away from home for the first time, but it can happen anytime a big change comes. At some point in our lives we will sit back, take stock of what we’ve believed so far and decide where to go from there. We’ll decide which pill to take and whether or not to walk through the door we’ve been guided to.*

For instance, take my friend D. He was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school the whole way and was pretty devout until he went away to college at 18.  The first thing he thought when he got there was, ‘yay, freedom! I can stay up as long as I want, watch dirty movies  and, most of all, sleep late on Sunday because no one will make me go to church! Yay!’  He thought he didn’t need to go to church or keep up a relationship with God because He was always going to be there no matter what.

He was partly right.  God was there, just as He always is. However, it wasn’t long before he felt that something was missing in his life. Am I homesick? Not really. Friends?  That’s what email is for. Is it a girlfriend?  Maybe. When all those needs were fulfilled, though, something was still lacking. Then, he came across a Catholic campus ministry, found a church and resumed the observances that he’d been ignoring.  The ‘hole’ he’d felt was filled and he went back to the way of life he’d gotten ‘freedom’ from before.

My point is that, despite his upbringing, he still had to make an active decision whether or not he still needed or wanted God in his life, which is the same thing I did when I got ‘saved’ and my hard-living sister did when she found God and got onto a better path. It wasn’t a dramatic change and it didn’t look like the ‘brought up from the pit of Hell’ things we often see, but he was still ‘born again’ because he had analyzed his circumstances and decided that He still wanted to follow Jesus. However, a lot of people I’ve known would say that his experience isn’t ‘valid’ because he didn’t ‘get saved’ and make the 180° turnabout that many think is required. Even so, he still had to make that commitment, he still had to renew his focus on God and accept the charge that is given to all Christians to do God’s work on earth.

When I first learned about God, I was taught that our past wasn’t of concern to Him so much as our present and future. We often take that to mean that He can redeem even the worst of sinners because they are the ones most in need of it. This is true, but perhaps it’s the only way right way of looking at it. Perhaps the past God doesn’t care about also includes our past of thinking we could earn ‘brownie points’  by being good and of not thinking we need Him at all. Like I said before, the people who know they are on a destructive path usually know something needs to change and will do what they have to for it to happen. They’ll turn to God because they will learn that there’s really no other way.  Those of us who think we’re okay without God might not see it this way, however, but I think you might be able to say that we’re even *more* in need of being ‘born again’ because then we will come to the realization that it’s Him that saves, not our good works.  It’s not about what we do, but what He already did.

Each person has his/her own path to follow. Whether it starts at age four in Children’s Chapel, age nine in Vacation Bible School, age 18 when entering a transitory period or age 40 after decades of hard living, each person experiences God and the message of Christianity in their own way. No one else can tell us whether or not our walk started in a ‘valid’ way; it’s following Jesus and giving Him our whole hearts that matters most.  I’m not the best at this, but I guess that’s part of the ‘process’ that is the Christian life.

My cat Toby agrees, which I guess is as much of an ‘endorsement’ as I can expect.

*Please forgive me the Matrix references. It was a big franchise when I was younger, back in the dark ages.

God proved His Love…

Reblogged..

God proved His Love….

Say what you want about evangelists..I’m no longer a Southern Baptist, but I have nothing but respect for Rev. Graham.

The Unlovable (3/5/13)

Reblogged from The River Walk:

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Read: Numbers 4:1-5:31, Mark 12:18-37, Psalm 48:1-14, Proverbs 10:26

"And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)

Relate: Some people are easy to like. They exude charm. Maybe they're always smiling.

Read more… 437 more words

Inspired...

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A Rather Interesting Video, And An Example Of Ineffective ‘Evangelism’

A friend of mine posted a link to this video on Facebook today.  Regardless of what you think about abortion, it’s definitely worth viewing.

Two Abortion Protesters Decided To Yell At This Guy’s Wife. They Probably Shouldn’t Have Done That.

http://www.upworthy.com/two-abortion-protesters-decided-to-yell-at-this-guys-wife-they-probably-shouldnt?c=bl3

I have to applaud this man for having the guts to call the protestors onto the carpet.  I don’t like the idea of an abortion-I don’t know anyone who does-,but I understand that there might be situations like this man’s wife’s where it’s really ‘the lesser of the two evils’. I can’t imagine that these parents would do this if they didn’t feel they absolutely had to. I certainly wouldn’t. I’ve never been in this situation, and that is this man’s point-you just don’t *know*. There’s nothing wrong with demonstrating your beliefs in public, but it stands to show that we should be careful as to how we do so. Some people would liken tempering our methods to being ‘ashamed’ of the Gospel or not ‘standing up for God’, but it’s not a matter of trying to please others so much as trying to communicate in a way people are willing and likely to listen to.

I’ve seen protesters like this in front of Walmart ranting about gay people and abortion. They bore signs that said things like ‘I chose Jesus, you chose to be gay’ and waved a fishing pole with a red-painted baby doll tied to it. I suppose this was to represent an aborted fetus, but it was unnecessarily graphic and probably grossed more people out than it ‘reached’.

I assume that the ‘I chose Jesus’ sign was supposed to get people to come to Jesus, but what does it tell the person about Him? Nothing. What does it say about the person holding the sign? A lot. It says that that person thinks they are better than others, that they are somehow ‘more saved’, ‘more loved’ by God than someone else. They say they want people to be ‘saved’, but they’ve pretty much ensured that anyone who sees those signs or hears what they’re saying is going to keep on walking.  In addition, some of the people they are supposedly trying to ‘help’ by their protests will probably run screaming from the very *mention* of Christianity, even if they would otherwise embrace it. I’ve seen it a million times.

Several of my non-Christian friends tell me that they see me as ‘the exception’ because I *don’t* get in people’s faces and act like I’m better than they are, I *don’t* preach hate as opposed to love and I *don’t* try to shove things down their throats. The fact is that I’m *not* the exception, it’s just that we’re not as loud as the screamers and ‘judges’.  Maybe we *should* be.  Maybe we *should* be like this man sometimes. Even if he didn’t mention Jesus outright, he makes the point that there are a lot more effective ways to help people than screaming at them and making them want to ignore you. To me, working to make sure our message is effective and shows the love we claim to preach *is* standing up for God-Hopefully I can figure out a way to be brave enough to do it.

 

What *is* sin, exactly?

I’ve never been very good about reading my Bible or putting time aside for God. I know I should but, every time I start a new ‘kick’ of reading or devotion, I seem to fall to the side as the ‘regular’ pressures and distractions of life come to me. Even if I *do* remember, there’s no guarantee that my mind will stay where it should be for long. One minute I’ll be reading the Sodom and Gommorah story in Genesis…that usually leads to a mental recitation of the scene in Dogma where Loki and Bartleby (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in all their glory) are shopping for a gun while recounting stories of raining down fire and brimstone. From there, I’ll go over other Kevin Smith movies in my head until I find myself arguing with Jason Lee about whether or not the cookie stand is part of the food court at the mall or playing roller hockey with Dante on the roof of a convenience store. I suck, by the way.

I usually pass it off as a function of my bipolar/ADHD, but that only goes so far. I usually try to fight it, but today I’ve decided that I’m not going to. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

I know so many people who think of religion as a series of ‘dos’ and don’ts’ for life. Some groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention-my former ‘stomping grounds’-put more emphasis on the ‘don’ts’. The Episcopal church, on the other hand, seems to focus more on things like prayer and service-things we ‘do’. That’s how the liturgy in my church looks, anyway. I suppose each group has to teach the Gospel in the way that works for them, but these things greatly affect what kind of relationship a person has with God. For instance, do they love Him or fear Him? Do they pray to praise Him or to ask for things? I’ll admit I do the latter most of the time. Do they feel like a beloved child, or do they feel like a bug who gets ‘zapped’ if they go too far in the wrong direction? Or is it all of the above?

We’re taught that the reason sin and death even exists in the world is because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Basically, all of humanity inherited that tendency from them. Maybe that’s true and maybe that’s where the emphasis on sin as an act comes from, but I’ve come to see it in a different way.

My family has been touched with a lot of medical conditions-high blood pressure, high cholesterol, alcoholism, breast cancer, sinus issues etc-that have a strong genetic component. That’s not to say that they can’t happen independent of such things, but those of us who have such conditions in our families have to be especially vigilant to make sure that the negative effects don’t happen to us. We have to eat right, exercise, lay off the liquor and carry tissues around with us everywhere we go and have everyone in school make fun of us. Okay, that last one was just me, but you get the point. It seems pretty obvious that the condition of sin can be better controlled by staying away from things (and people) that cause us to stumble. I’m definitely not disputing that because I’ve had to take such measures myself on a number of occasions. Perhaps you have too.

What happens, though, when the illness ‘hits you’? If you get a sinus infection, you go to the doctor for antibiotics. When you get cancer, you have several treatment options. If you fall and break a bone, you go to the hospital to get a cast. In other words, you deal with it. You don’t sit around and blame God (much) or expect a cure to happen instantly. You do whatever you have to do to get your condition treated and get on your way.

Perhaps we should see sin the same way-a condition that needs to be treated? I’ve heard of churches referred to as a ‘hospital for sinners, not a country club for saints’. Perhaps the treatment for the condition of sin takes place in church among a community of other believers and starts once you begin to trust in Jesus as your savior. When I had the hip replacement surgery to repair damage from an accident about eight years ago, my faulty hip was replaced with a new one that gave me back the range of motion I lost. Perhaps my new hip can be likened to the new heart and new creation we become when we come to Christ, and the damage it repaired to the punishment He took when He died on the cross?

Also like my hip, we can’t stay idle. My surgery was over in five and a half hours, but it took a while before I was able to do much for myself. In order to walk again, I had to do a lot of work. The therapy exercises were painful and difficult at times, but I had to keep at them so that my muscles could heal and get strong enough to support my weight. There was no ‘shortcut’…it took as long as it took. Such is the Christian life…difficult at times, but we have to keep on going and working in order to grow stronger in the faith. The process of becoming more and more like God is like my recovery-it happens over time and takes as long as it takes.

I have recovered very well, but there will always be precautions I will have to take to ensure that I don’t dislodge my new hip. Otherwise, I’ll end up right back where I started and might even do more damage. I have to trust that the doctors know what they are talking about when they tell me how to care for my new hip properly. To give another example, my ‘recovered’ friends will have to keep working their Twelve Steps and live their lives differently so that they won’t fall back into the trap of drugs and alcohol that got them in trouble to begin with. It’s not easy, but the effort is worth it. Maybe the same can be said about our walk with God…we have to trust that He knows what He’s doing? Without this trust, we’re liable to fall even harder than before? This isn’t to say that we’ll never stumble or fall again…in fact, it’s pretty much a guarantee that we will. There’s always the temptation to have just one more cigarette, to put off laying off the junk food and soda for ‘just one more day’ (another issue of mine) etc. With the support of others, however, we can continue on the right path. Could this be likened to the way that we’re always going to have trials and tribulations but, with the support of Jesus and our brothers and sisters in Christ, we can get through them?

I don’t know…I’m probably getting way off track and sounding like a rambling fool. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. I guess what I’m getting at is that our faith isn’t just about what to do and what not to do-it’s about a lifelong change, a lifelong effort at a relationship with God and becoming like Him. Sin isn’t an act so much as a condition, a condition that will need to be taken care of. It takes time and work to ‘get better’, and we have to trust that the Person who we’re trying to serve knows what’s best for us. We can’t do it by ourselves or in our own way. The support of a community of believers can help keep us on the right track, and help pick us up when we fall.

Speaking of which, I’d better go eat something before my mind goes and I start typing even more nonsense. Oops, too late.

Faith ≠ Intelligence?

Several of my friends are atheists. Some say they do not believe in a God or any other sort of faith because it’s not ‘rational’…one person in particular is very condescending about religion and says that he no longer believes ‘because he has a brain, and if [I] had a brain, [I] wouldn’t either’.  An ex once asked me how someone ‘as intelligent as I am’ could believe in something ‘stupid and irrational’ like God, the rudeness being one reason he’s an ex!   Even if they aren’t quite this blatant, the sentiment is the same-faith makes no logical sense, and thus isn’t worth pursuing. I’ve heard this a lot.
They’re entitled to their opinion; frankly, I don’t care what anyone else believes or doesn’t believe, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else by it.

In a way, I can see their point.  Maybe it isn’t ‘rational’ to believe in things you cannot see, touch, smell, count, etc.  I guess it isn’t scientific to believe a person rose from the dead, although zombie movies make a good effort at explaining. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense for five loaves of bread and two fish to be made into a meal for 5,000+ people or for a grown man to walk on water. Truth be told, it all seems a little strange to me too. However, I’d like to let my friends know that it isn’t necessarily about cold, heart facts. Faith has its purpose; that it can meet other needs a person might have.

One of the biggest needs I’ve seen, IMO, is the need to feel ‘connected’. To feel a community with other people, or a connection to something outside of and higher than ourselves. Faith can certainly give those things, or at least put a name to them.

Sometimes the love and acceptance of God, spoken of in the Bible and/or displayed through the actions of other people, is the only real experience of love a person has. I had a friend in college, who I will call ‘A’, who had had a rough time of it in life. He didn’t have much of a family life growing up and had been either let down or rejected by people in school, church, or pretty much any group to be joined. For Simpsons fans, he was a ‘real life’ . He had friends, certainly, but hadn’t really experienced ‘belonging’ or ‘being accepted’ on an ongoing basis. He was very much into computers and thus didn’t have much trust in things that couldn’t be tinkered with or proven. One night we were talking in the computer lab in my dorm, and I told him I was a Christian. He began to go off about how nasty some of the people in his earlier life had been, particularly those who claimed to be Christians. It turned out that he had been abused in some way and he didn’t find any support regardless of where he turned. He didn’t understand how any God who is thought to be so powerful and loving could allow this happen, much less how such a God could allow some of the horrible things done in His name in history. I wished I had an answer for him…hell, I wish I had an answer for myself! I think I then told him about my experiences, or maybe we talked about Monty Python, I don’t remember.

I saw A again about a month later, and he was in a much better mood than I’d seen him in a while. Turned out, he’d met a lady and they hit it off. She was a church-goer, and A started going along with her. At first he was going just to satisfy her, but then something started to happen. He’d heard of Jesus before, but now he started to really learn about who He is and what He taught. What’s more, he saw the people in the group practice what they preached. They told about how Jesus talked about welcoming strangers, and welcomed them. They told about how Jesus said not to judge others and didn’t judge others…or at least, tried not to. They didn’t do a lot of the negative things commonly associated with Christians, particularly in the Bible Belt (where we live). They treated others as they would want to be treated, which to me is the summation of most everything else. They weren’t perfect with this, but the fact that they actually cared and made an effort made a big impression on him as my ‘first church’ did for me.

Now, I know what you are going to say. I know that Christians don’t have the monopoly on good behavior. In fact, Christians and other religious people can be pretty nasty and hurtful…history can tell you that. I know how people can be hurt by doctrines and ‘church people’-oh, do I ever-but I am telling this story because it happened to be faith and the sort of community that this church group provided that changed A’s life. It was the behavior of this group and their exemplifying what Jesus taught that helped A learn about the love of Jesus, and feel that sort of unconditional love for the first time in his life. I know this is not the case with everyone, but this article is about the way faith or religion can fill needs a person has other than intellectual, and A’s story perfectly illustrates my point.

Faith can also give a person a sense of purpose in the world. I don’t mind ambiguity in many areas of life, but I really can’t stand the idea that the things that happen are just random, that there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it. I don’t have to know what that reason is, just that there is one.

And, well, I sometimes think that one of the only things that makes me feel even the slightest bit better about the deaths of so many people in my life is the belief that they’re not simply gone…that there’s something else other than this world that a person’s soul can go to to find comfort. Other religions handle this by the belief in reincarnation-the soul being reborn in other sorts of bodies, with the ultimate destination of a person’s soul being eternal comfort. This concept is foreign to many of us, but the idea is the same-the soul doesn’t die when the body does. We’re not just ‘blips on the radar’. If someone can be comforted by the belief that there’s something else out there at work and they’re not hurting anyone else, what is the harm in letting them?

I’ll stop preaching now.

I guess my question is…if a person thinks that they ‘are too smart to believe’, why can’t they also figure out that perhaps religion can meet other needs? There are other needs, you know. What needs does faith meet for you? How do you decide which needs are more important for you? How do you reconcile times when ‘heart’ needs and ‘head’ needs conflict with each other?

Yet Another ‘Kid’ Post

I’ve been thinking a lot about kids lately. Yes, we’ve been here before, but I guess this is something I won’t get over anytime soon.  The loss of my cat Daniel Tiger and the fact that it’s a brand new year has me thinking about things in a different way.

I’m 35-am I too old to have kids? Is it too late for me? Some people say yes. Quite a few, actually. Some of those people wouldn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about what they think.

Is the fact that I spent the last seven years with an injury that made it impossible for me to have kids (or do what it takes to make a kid), only to get it ‘corrected’ when I’m past the age some doctors would even *see* me God’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t reproduce? My doctor once said that he would refer me to a high-risk OB if I got pregnant because of my age and my bipolar disorder. The last one, I can see. As for the first…I remember telling my husband that I was concerned that the accident and our financial situation would make it so that we would never be able to have kids, even if we wanted to. We were prepared for the possibility that we might decide not to have kids because of our medical issues, et cetera…we might not like it, but at least then it would have been our choice. It wouldn’t have been because some wreck I don’t even remember getting in took that choice away from me.

Related to the above, am I an ingrate for being bothered by what the injuries made impossible when I’m pretty damned lucky to be alive at all?

Sometimes I feel left out because a lot of the women in the circles close to me all have kids or their lives center around kids. I feel like they’re in some sort of club that I will never belong to and that there’s something wrong with me because of it. That they will always feel like I am ‘left behind’ or something and will never *quite* have enough in common with them again.  As much as I love my guy friends, sometimes I want to be around some women.  I know it’s not a ‘contest’ or a ‘race’, but sometimes I still feel lonely because I’m in this weird place in life that most of my girl friends back home are in too, but no one here is.

What am I missing out on? Sure, I’m not having to wake up at 3am to change a diaper or spend hours connected to a breast pump. But I’m also not going to have anyone to take to a first day of school, anyone to make tuna salad sandwiches for, anyone to take prom pictures of, anyone to send off to college…you get the idea. Will my life still feel complete? Will it *ever* feel complete again?

I just finished writing a pilot for a kids’ sitcom. I got the idea from Amazon Studios and, while I’m not sure anything will come of it, I am grateful for the ‘push’. You see, I have all these stories going around in my head that I have yet to really do anything with. I sometimes will mean to write them down, but get distracted or discouraged halfway through (or sometimes not even *that* far). I had a great time writing this story, but it bothers me that I keep running through the final scene in my head. In it, the main character (a 14-year-old boy) is really excited because he just asked out a girl for the first time and she said yes. I keep thinking…you know, I’m not *quite* old enough to have a kid that age…well, not unless I had him at age 21. That’s still pretty young. But what if the kids I write about in this sitcom project are the only ones I will have? I love my cats like they are kids, but what if they are the only kids I have? Will I be okay with that? I’m really not sure anymore.

What if I don’t make a difference in the next generation? I’m not around my nephews much, although that isn’t necessarily through any fault of my own. We do go to see my sister-in-law’s little boy as much as we can since he’s here in town, but all my other nephews live at least 8 hours away in Virginia. I’d be with them all the time if I could.

Maybe I’m just being selfish.

Maybe all these questions are my mind’s of telling me that maybe I’m more ‘desperate’ than I thought. Or that I don’t have anywhere near as much time as I think I do; that I’m too old now to think of things in ‘maybe someday’ terms.  I don’t know. I’m too young for a mid-life crisis! We talk about adoption, but we haven’t been able to make any sort of plan because everything hinged on being able to have the hip replacement surgery. We had to save up to afford it, we still have bills surrounding it, and it wouldn’t be fair to a kid to have a mother who couldn’t play with him or take proper care of him because she was recovering from surgery.  Even if there were other people around to help, he would still need *me*, and I couldn’t be there. If that makes sense.

Maybe this is God’s way of having us wait for Him to bring the right child into our lives. Maybe there’s a child yet to be born (or already born to someone else) who we will be uniquely suited to parent. Maybe this is God’s way of having us wait for Him…period.

I don’t know. I never do. Hopefully I will someday.