Last Sunday night I went to Blueprint Church. It was ten years to the day since I’d become a Christian, and I felt so grateful I just had to go to a good old-fashioned Pentecostal service to hype it up a bit. Blueprint is run out of the Global Cafe at Glover Park, by my mate Sam Harvey - that's right, Sam the blogger from Deep as a Puddle.
And it was superb. The music there is great - Hayden Shearman (ex-Moped) knows how to pick songs and music that inspires actual worship, not buzzy hype or soppy sentimentality, and that's quite a rare achievement in Penty churches these days. We even had a good old singing and praising in the spirit session after the preaching. Now I know what Sam means when he says the Charismatic Movement didn't finish in 1989 - it's still going at Blueprint!
That fact was proved with the preaching too. Three members of the church got up and shared stories from their life about how they were learning things from God in different ways. What was interesting was that all of the stories were about the way God has blessed them in hardship. Get that. Not out of hardship - in hardship. In trial, in struggle. One guy talked about how God relieved him from anxiety - not by rubbing dirt on his temples and saying be healed, but on his bed so nauseausly sick that he couldn't look at a tv screen without wanting to spew up. For a whole year!
What really got me though was when Sam's bro Pete got up to speak. One of the first things he said was something about not being a Christian. I figured I hadn't heard him right and waited for him to explain about how he wasn't a Christian, or about how one of his friends wasn't a Christian. But no, he said it again! And he went on to talk about how he believed in God, but was having difficulty believing the things we preach about Jesus. But he was still praying, and he asked God what the deal was with that - "I can't believe in Jesus, it doesn't make sense to me, is that ok? Please give me peace anyway." "Ok," says God. "Peace." Real and experienced. Now I don't really know all the theological implications of that sort of prayer, but I do know its much the same sort of experience that I had in my fourth year of being a Christian.
After Pete spoke Sam talked about how important it is to be honest with God. He said that something like two-thirds of the Psalms are complaints about God not coming through. In my last two posts I talked about my experience of being born again. I talked about the struggles, trials and confusion I faced before, to use Paul’s terminology, Christ was formed in me – before I was made fully alive in Christ. But being born again, having Christ formed in oneself, losing one’s life and being made alive in Christ, does not mean one has completely arrived. All it means is that there is a permanence of Christ’s spirit at the depth of one’s being. And while that makes it easier to face trials and challenges, those challenges only become more difficult!
For my first few years as a born again Christian things were actually very easy. The decision to live for Christ rather than myself, or the social norms around me, was such a radical decision that the effect of its distinctiveness on my life and identity was impossible to avoid. The sense of love and purpose it gave me, the amazing community of Christians around me at Massey, and the way student life gave me so much space to devote time and energy to God’s kingdom, made serving Jesus highly desirable and full of social and psychological benefits. But by the time I entered my fourth year of being Christian things very much began to crumble for me, even while I was president of Massey University Christian Fellowship, the biggest Christian group on campus.
Pete’s prayer at the moment is, “God, I can't believe in Jesus, it doesn't make sense to me, but please give me peace.” My situation was much the same as Pete’s. As I went through my own "dark night of the soul," or "year of despair" as I like to call it, I did a lot of writing. I've scrambled through my archives to dig up my own prayers and reflections on the time, and I found a similar prayer to Pete’s.
My prayer was;
“Lord, if I can only pray to you through Jesus then take me that way, I will gratefully allow him to be my atoning sacrifice. But if you don't actually have that much to do with Jesus God take me the way you want to. Reveal to me how I am to come to you, how I am to approach you, what sort of relationship you want to have with me.”
My main problems with Christian theology and our dependence on Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our salvation were: a) the assumption we have sufficient power to be held responsible for our sin (ie addressing problems of predestination, fate, determinism), and b) the implications of Christ’s centrality for “God-fearing” Muslims, Sikhs, etc. (ie will God comdemn those people to eternal judgment for ignorance of a gospel they haven’t heard of?). Thankfully I came to a philosophical position by which I could reconcile God’s sovereignty with an idea of human freewill and moral responsibility, and I also found a satisfactory way of understanding the nature of salvation and God’s grace with regards to people of other faiths. With these issues resolved, the story of Jesus as God’s ultimate and definitive demonstration of his love towards us remained irresistible to me.
I may blog a series of posts on that “dark night of the soul.” As I dig up what I wrote at that time I am surprised at the depth of thought and authenticity I find there. We are beginning to touch on existentialism in my philosophy class at the moment, and the idea of spiritual crisis seems central to an existentialist approach to life and thought. What is not central is a positive role for religious belief as a free act or “upsurge” which resolves the crisis – in fact religion is more typically seen as the trappings that are stripped away in such a crisis. As I prepare for my own essay on existentialism I may review that “year of despair” in this light.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Christian gestation
In my last post I talked a bit about what it means to be born again. I talked about the types of Christian commitments I made as a kid, and how my final commitment was more of a surrender than a statement. I asked, "If we are so much at the mercy of God, yet are not accepted into his Kingdom without that rebirth, then what on earth can we do about it?"
The scriptures indicate, as does Christian experience, that true spiritual rebirth is entirely dependent on the grace and sovereign will of God. Yet it seems that human beings quite consciously make decisions to be involved in that process, at many levels. Today I would like to explore this paradox, and try to answer that question; What can I do to be born again?
The scriptures
The Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, makes a statement that, though short, reveals some more detail about the nature of Christian rebirth. Frustrated at the way his disciples are being persauded by false teachers, Paul is concerned "that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you" (Gal 4:10).
He says (Gal 4:19);
"My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!"
Again;
"...for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you..."
This statement seemed quite odd to me when I first read it. The idea of the second birth seems to be clearly rooted in Jesus’ own divine conception by the Holy Spirit. The born again Christian is begotten of God. That means, rather than being the product of a biological union conceived of father and mother, we are conceived spiritually, as Christ, by the Holy Ghost. But in this scripture Paul talks as though the Holy Ghost is not the only parent of the born again. As a mother carries and bears the seed of the father, so Paul talks of himself as the mother of these Galatians, bearing “the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”
This seems unusual, because as Jesus said to Nicodemus (John 3:8), “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Paul seems to be in the know, or at least hopes he is, that the wind of the Spirit is blowing in the direction of the Galatians. The Virgin Mary held to the words of the Angel Gabriel that the child in her womb was conceived of the Holy Spirit. Paul speaks as if he has a similar prophetic conviction that God was most certainly at work among the Galatians.
But then, this is not so strange. Rather than creating tension with other scriptures, Paul’s self-reference as mother to the "children" of Galatia fits perfectly with the most common analogy for the relationship between Christ and his church – that of bride and groom. If the church is those who have already been born again, then this makes total sense of Paul's gestation analogy.
When Christ died on the cross, as a rib was taken from Adam's side to make Eve, blood poured from Christ's side to make a redeemed, forgiven and called out church – Jesus’ disciples. Seven weeks later the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost and 3000 people were saved. Those people joined in fellowship with the disciples at Jerusalem and, as the Book of Acts puts it, were devoted to their teaching. As the disciples taught and pastored those people, their conversion and hope was made sure. So well were they converted that they endured persecution and hardship and ministered dynamically throughout the Roman Empire, forming the most powerful and enduring institutional movement the world has ever seen. Just as these early Christians were devoted to the teaching of the apostles, so Paul admonishes the Galatians to “become like me” (Gal 4:12) “...until Christ is formed in you."
In Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians we find a similar image. Paul talks of Epaphras, who “is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured” (Col 4:12). This analogy, of extreme physical exertion by one person for the spiritual development and growth of another, also echoes resoundingly the gestation image. What seems clear is that for Christ to be fully formed in us, for us to complete the gestation and be successfully born again, a lot of work on the part of the church is typically required.
What, then, are the implications of this? As a seeker of genuine spiritual rebirth, what can one do to ensure the work of the spirit in us? What can we do to avoid miscarriage or stillbirth? How transferable is the gestation analogy to Christian conversion?
My story
When I look at my own conversion I can certainly see parallels. What's more, I think that useful principles for the seeker and for the evangelist can be drawn from the analogy. I certainly had my fair share of Pauls and Epaphrases around me sharing in the labours of my second birth – my father and mother for one, my best friend from school Jeromy (without me even knowing it), and the new friends that I made when I entered university.
If spiritual rebirth involves a point of conception as well as a point of birth, then I would point to the preaching of Dave Mann and worship leading of Craig Jones at Eltham Easter Camp 1998. There God's word, to use Jesus’ cultivator analogy (Mark 4:1-20), fell on freshly tilled soil. There were a few thorns around – “the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things,” but despite that, the impact of that camp left an eternal echo in my soul. When I picked up the Bible and read the Book of Ecclesiastes some time later it was because my heart had been so softened by that camp. I made a Christian commitment when I got home from the camp, but it took another year and 20 days until the seed of faith became mature enough to graduate from the pot to the garden! The whole time my father and mother were doing what they could to teach, encourage and pray for me, as were my friends. But obviously I made for a difficult labour - it wasn't until I was at university, surrounded by teaching, encouraging, praying friends, that I finally understood what it was to be born of God, and I was “made alive with Christ,” to use Paul's terminology (Eph 2:5).
Just before I entered university I read the Book of Ecclesiastes and was shocked at the inherent meaninglessness of a life without God. As a result, when I got to Massey, though my main priority was to get boozed and have heaps of fun during O-Week, I was quite interested to find out whether there were any Christians around and what they might be up to.
Very early on I met Mike, a rowdy Christian guy who went on to become one of my best mates. Before he’d even moved into the hostel Mike had been to a Christian camp for university students, run by Massey University Christian Fellowship (MUCF). Now MUCF is a group run by students to reach and help other students with an interest in the Christian faith. It has a long history as part of a wider international student Christian movement that has included the likes of CT Studd and John Stott. Massey has been a particularly fruitful ground for Christian student ministry. In the 1970s and 1980s Massey students were particularly impacted by and involved with the events of the Charismatic Movement. A decade and a half later, MUCF still had a strong sense of seriousness about mission, and charismatic but challenging spirituality.
Mike became a regular at “CF”, as did two other Christian friends I made in my hostel – Steve and Matt. Soon MUCF was on my case – they’d heard I was open to Christianity. Next thing Gavin and James were on my doorstep giving me freshly cooked baking for free, and inviting me to their hostel bible study group. Soon enough I was roped in – I was going along to bible studies and actually starting to learn some things about the Christian faith.
But at the same time I was learning some things about just how much fun life at uni could be, and how good it was to have finally left home and be free to do whatever I wanted. And if I was honest, what I really wanted at that stage, what was more attractive than anything, was to be able to go and get boozed whenever I wanted, and to kiss and take whom whoever I wanted. I knew Christianity demanded a more sober lifestyle, and a more sensitive and respectful attitude to relationships. So I stopped going to the bible studies, and tried to avoid these new Christian friends, and smoke dope with the stoners instead!
Successful labour
Thankfully my friends didn’t give up on me. My family were praying from home, Jeromy was praying from Wellington, and Mike, Steve, Matt, Gavin, James & Marion at Massey were all teaching and encouraging me, and praying for me. Like Paul with the Galatians, this great team of saints were enduring the pains of childbirth to see Christ formed in me. And it was painful. I can remember raising all the problems I had with Christianity to Steve and making him feel like throwing it in as well. And the closer I got to true conversion the more I pulled away from everyone. Once I realised the hugeness of what Christian commitment actually meant (Luke 9:23-26; Gal 2:20) I ran in the opposite direction before running to Jesus and his church.
Finally, on the night of Monday May 3, 1999, after a weekend of drunken & hallucinogenic debauchery, followed by a surprise visit from my father, I realised I couldn’t run from God any longer. My doubts weren’t good enough excuses anymore. The person of Jesus and his work in my life was just too real for me to deny him. He made too much sense. The depth of life he offered made the mundanity of living for the mob or my whimsical dreams seem abhorrent. I couldn’t deny Christ and then just live a normal life as if nothing had happened. Christian or depression-ridden junkie were the only options – the choice was easy.
And so that Monday night I went back to the bible study group. Gavin and James had decided that this would be a night of sharing testimonies –stories of how people came to faith. It got round to me and I had to tell the guys I didn’t have a testimony to share, but I did have a confession to make. As I began to talk about how I’d been running from God, and that I wanted to finally accept him, I totally broke down. I was completely red, tears in my eyes, face in my hands – I killed the night! But there my friends prayed for me as I accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, and asked him to change my life.
And this is why I see that final decision, that true spiritual rebirth, as a surrender rather than a statement. I could see Jesus in all his brilliance. I could sense his transforming love at work. I knew there was no other source of authority that could compete with him, and no other power as able to help me make sense of life. How could I dismiss all that I’d seen in this Christianity as mere fable and superstition? This Jesus was truly the bread of life – spiritually, intellectually, emotionally – and I was starving!
Yet the whole process of Christ revealing himself to me involved individuals making choices every day. I had to at least be willing to take an interest in the Christians, and to let them talk to me about Jesus. They had be willing to be bold enough to talk about their faith with a skeptic on the edge looking in. Salvation is the sovereign work of God, but the seeker can do something by simply being willing to be open to people God is working through. The Christian does his bit by being willing to share his faith, and willing to help, admonish or challenge someone who’s on the edge.
TSCF & Catalyst
I would like to close this post by making a plug for Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship, the national body of the movement that touched my life so dramatically at university. TSCF has 34 different groups on campuses throughout the country. If you are a student you will find a link for your own campus on the “Your Campus” page of the TSCF website. If you are interested in supporting financially a movement with a significant kingdom impact then visit the “Support Us” page.
I would like to particularly promote the work of Mark Grace in Palmerston North, where he has been serving for over seven years. As any Massey Christian student will tell you, Mark puts in a lot of energy and a lot of hard work. On top of the campus ministries he has more recently been developing the Catalyst network. Catalyst is “Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship’s ministry to graduates in the marketplace, post-graduate students and academics.” And the big news is that next month is the first Catalyst Conference, from June 26-28 at Forest Lakes Camp, Otaki. If you want to think seriously about your profession and/or career through the lens of the Kingdom of God, but need a bit of help, then this conference is for you.
Find out more:
Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship
Catalyst Conference
The scriptures indicate, as does Christian experience, that true spiritual rebirth is entirely dependent on the grace and sovereign will of God. Yet it seems that human beings quite consciously make decisions to be involved in that process, at many levels. Today I would like to explore this paradox, and try to answer that question; What can I do to be born again?
The scriptures
The Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, makes a statement that, though short, reveals some more detail about the nature of Christian rebirth. Frustrated at the way his disciples are being persauded by false teachers, Paul is concerned "that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you" (Gal 4:10).
He says (Gal 4:19);
"My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!"
Again;
"...for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you..."
This statement seemed quite odd to me when I first read it. The idea of the second birth seems to be clearly rooted in Jesus’ own divine conception by the Holy Spirit. The born again Christian is begotten of God. That means, rather than being the product of a biological union conceived of father and mother, we are conceived spiritually, as Christ, by the Holy Ghost. But in this scripture Paul talks as though the Holy Ghost is not the only parent of the born again. As a mother carries and bears the seed of the father, so Paul talks of himself as the mother of these Galatians, bearing “the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”
This seems unusual, because as Jesus said to Nicodemus (John 3:8), “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Paul seems to be in the know, or at least hopes he is, that the wind of the Spirit is blowing in the direction of the Galatians. The Virgin Mary held to the words of the Angel Gabriel that the child in her womb was conceived of the Holy Spirit. Paul speaks as if he has a similar prophetic conviction that God was most certainly at work among the Galatians.
But then, this is not so strange. Rather than creating tension with other scriptures, Paul’s self-reference as mother to the "children" of Galatia fits perfectly with the most common analogy for the relationship between Christ and his church – that of bride and groom. If the church is those who have already been born again, then this makes total sense of Paul's gestation analogy.
When Christ died on the cross, as a rib was taken from Adam's side to make Eve, blood poured from Christ's side to make a redeemed, forgiven and called out church – Jesus’ disciples. Seven weeks later the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost and 3000 people were saved. Those people joined in fellowship with the disciples at Jerusalem and, as the Book of Acts puts it, were devoted to their teaching. As the disciples taught and pastored those people, their conversion and hope was made sure. So well were they converted that they endured persecution and hardship and ministered dynamically throughout the Roman Empire, forming the most powerful and enduring institutional movement the world has ever seen. Just as these early Christians were devoted to the teaching of the apostles, so Paul admonishes the Galatians to “become like me” (Gal 4:12) “...until Christ is formed in you."
In Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians we find a similar image. Paul talks of Epaphras, who “is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured” (Col 4:12). This analogy, of extreme physical exertion by one person for the spiritual development and growth of another, also echoes resoundingly the gestation image. What seems clear is that for Christ to be fully formed in us, for us to complete the gestation and be successfully born again, a lot of work on the part of the church is typically required.
What, then, are the implications of this? As a seeker of genuine spiritual rebirth, what can one do to ensure the work of the spirit in us? What can we do to avoid miscarriage or stillbirth? How transferable is the gestation analogy to Christian conversion?
My story
When I look at my own conversion I can certainly see parallels. What's more, I think that useful principles for the seeker and for the evangelist can be drawn from the analogy. I certainly had my fair share of Pauls and Epaphrases around me sharing in the labours of my second birth – my father and mother for one, my best friend from school Jeromy (without me even knowing it), and the new friends that I made when I entered university.
If spiritual rebirth involves a point of conception as well as a point of birth, then I would point to the preaching of Dave Mann and worship leading of Craig Jones at Eltham Easter Camp 1998. There God's word, to use Jesus’ cultivator analogy (Mark 4:1-20), fell on freshly tilled soil. There were a few thorns around – “the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things,” but despite that, the impact of that camp left an eternal echo in my soul. When I picked up the Bible and read the Book of Ecclesiastes some time later it was because my heart had been so softened by that camp. I made a Christian commitment when I got home from the camp, but it took another year and 20 days until the seed of faith became mature enough to graduate from the pot to the garden! The whole time my father and mother were doing what they could to teach, encourage and pray for me, as were my friends. But obviously I made for a difficult labour - it wasn't until I was at university, surrounded by teaching, encouraging, praying friends, that I finally understood what it was to be born of God, and I was “made alive with Christ,” to use Paul's terminology (Eph 2:5).
Just before I entered university I read the Book of Ecclesiastes and was shocked at the inherent meaninglessness of a life without God. As a result, when I got to Massey, though my main priority was to get boozed and have heaps of fun during O-Week, I was quite interested to find out whether there were any Christians around and what they might be up to.
Very early on I met Mike, a rowdy Christian guy who went on to become one of my best mates. Before he’d even moved into the hostel Mike had been to a Christian camp for university students, run by Massey University Christian Fellowship (MUCF). Now MUCF is a group run by students to reach and help other students with an interest in the Christian faith. It has a long history as part of a wider international student Christian movement that has included the likes of CT Studd and John Stott. Massey has been a particularly fruitful ground for Christian student ministry. In the 1970s and 1980s Massey students were particularly impacted by and involved with the events of the Charismatic Movement. A decade and a half later, MUCF still had a strong sense of seriousness about mission, and charismatic but challenging spirituality.
Mike became a regular at “CF”, as did two other Christian friends I made in my hostel – Steve and Matt. Soon MUCF was on my case – they’d heard I was open to Christianity. Next thing Gavin and James were on my doorstep giving me freshly cooked baking for free, and inviting me to their hostel bible study group. Soon enough I was roped in – I was going along to bible studies and actually starting to learn some things about the Christian faith.
But at the same time I was learning some things about just how much fun life at uni could be, and how good it was to have finally left home and be free to do whatever I wanted. And if I was honest, what I really wanted at that stage, what was more attractive than anything, was to be able to go and get boozed whenever I wanted, and to kiss and take whom whoever I wanted. I knew Christianity demanded a more sober lifestyle, and a more sensitive and respectful attitude to relationships. So I stopped going to the bible studies, and tried to avoid these new Christian friends, and smoke dope with the stoners instead!
Successful labour
Thankfully my friends didn’t give up on me. My family were praying from home, Jeromy was praying from Wellington, and Mike, Steve, Matt, Gavin, James & Marion at Massey were all teaching and encouraging me, and praying for me. Like Paul with the Galatians, this great team of saints were enduring the pains of childbirth to see Christ formed in me. And it was painful. I can remember raising all the problems I had with Christianity to Steve and making him feel like throwing it in as well. And the closer I got to true conversion the more I pulled away from everyone. Once I realised the hugeness of what Christian commitment actually meant (Luke 9:23-26; Gal 2:20) I ran in the opposite direction before running to Jesus and his church.
Finally, on the night of Monday May 3, 1999, after a weekend of drunken & hallucinogenic debauchery, followed by a surprise visit from my father, I realised I couldn’t run from God any longer. My doubts weren’t good enough excuses anymore. The person of Jesus and his work in my life was just too real for me to deny him. He made too much sense. The depth of life he offered made the mundanity of living for the mob or my whimsical dreams seem abhorrent. I couldn’t deny Christ and then just live a normal life as if nothing had happened. Christian or depression-ridden junkie were the only options – the choice was easy.
And so that Monday night I went back to the bible study group. Gavin and James had decided that this would be a night of sharing testimonies –stories of how people came to faith. It got round to me and I had to tell the guys I didn’t have a testimony to share, but I did have a confession to make. As I began to talk about how I’d been running from God, and that I wanted to finally accept him, I totally broke down. I was completely red, tears in my eyes, face in my hands – I killed the night! But there my friends prayed for me as I accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, and asked him to change my life.
And this is why I see that final decision, that true spiritual rebirth, as a surrender rather than a statement. I could see Jesus in all his brilliance. I could sense his transforming love at work. I knew there was no other source of authority that could compete with him, and no other power as able to help me make sense of life. How could I dismiss all that I’d seen in this Christianity as mere fable and superstition? This Jesus was truly the bread of life – spiritually, intellectually, emotionally – and I was starving!
Yet the whole process of Christ revealing himself to me involved individuals making choices every day. I had to at least be willing to take an interest in the Christians, and to let them talk to me about Jesus. They had be willing to be bold enough to talk about their faith with a skeptic on the edge looking in. Salvation is the sovereign work of God, but the seeker can do something by simply being willing to be open to people God is working through. The Christian does his bit by being willing to share his faith, and willing to help, admonish or challenge someone who’s on the edge.
TSCF & Catalyst
I would like to close this post by making a plug for Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship, the national body of the movement that touched my life so dramatically at university. TSCF has 34 different groups on campuses throughout the country. If you are a student you will find a link for your own campus on the “Your Campus” page of the TSCF website. If you are interested in supporting financially a movement with a significant kingdom impact then visit the “Support Us” page.
I would like to particularly promote the work of Mark Grace in Palmerston North, where he has been serving for over seven years. As any Massey Christian student will tell you, Mark puts in a lot of energy and a lot of hard work. On top of the campus ministries he has more recently been developing the Catalyst network. Catalyst is “Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship’s ministry to graduates in the marketplace, post-graduate students and academics.” And the big news is that next month is the first Catalyst Conference, from June 26-28 at Forest Lakes Camp, Otaki. If you want to think seriously about your profession and/or career through the lens of the Kingdom of God, but need a bit of help, then this conference is for you.
Find out more:
Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship
Catalyst Conference
Sunday, May 03, 2009
My 10th Birthday
Yesterday was a significant day in the life of A.J. Chesswas. I turned 10.
Jesus said;
"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
Another guy asked,
"How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born."
Jesus replied;
"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
1950 odd years later I heard about this from Mum and Dad, from church and from Bible-in-school. As a wee tacker I figured this verse was saying that being a Christian means that you have to live quite differently to if you weren't a Christian. You can't be bad anymore. Being born again means being good.
Being good got too hard for me as I got older. Especially when the older kids in the playground started beating up on me. Especially when I found out it was because I was a Christian. And it seemed like everyone I knew wasn't Christian and didn't care so much about being good.
Not that any of this excused me.
Another thing Jesus said was;
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
I don't remember being taught that as a kid, but even if I had I don't think it would have made a difference. From that point on I didn't simply hide my Christianity - I gave up any commitment from my own will to the cause. I'd still go to church with the family - kicking and screaming at times. This change was so rapid that when a new kid started school the next year, an older kid told us he'd heard this kid went to church, and I mentioned that I'd seen him at church but that I was only there because my parents forced me to. Not only that, but I went on to be one of this kid's main tormenters. I won't forget the furiousness with which my teacher sent me from the room for telling everyone this kid had AIDS! It's so easy to forget how nasty childhood is sometimes!
Anyway, my point is that my faith as a child was obviously not a very deep one. Once I learned Christianity and social mobility didn't go hand-in-hand in my community, I pretty much kicked the faith to the kerb.
Through my teens there were stops and starts where I made Christian commitments, only to go back on them really quickly. There was the time everyone got sick on a school trip to the South Island, except me. On this trip I also noticed how different I was from everyone. I figured God must be protecting me and keeping me well, and that I should see sense and be a Christian. But once I returned to the drudgery of home life as a 14 year old, being a good obedient son to my parents was just too much of a strain so I gave up on the idea! What I could never do is go about calling myself a Christian without living a "good" life. At least in this sense I had something of an idea of our need for a different spirit in order to enter God's kingdom.
Of course, once I actually became a Christian when I was 18 it seemed I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about how we can't be good people on our own efforts - that I needed the very spirit of God which raised Christ Jesus from the dead to perform a similar miracle upon this dead heart of mine. But I'm sure that before this actually happened to me I could never have understood what people meant by that. And I'm not sure it would have been helpful anyway.
When I finally made that lasting commitment, the night I think of ten years on as the night I was born again, it was more an act of surrender than an act of determination. I still desired to equate my Christianity with a commitment to be "good", but when trials and temptations came I realised the goodness I knew in Christ was more about surrendering to and relying on his work in me than valuing or doing anything of my own accord.
A friend and I had a quick chat in the car on Saturday, about the mystery of a spirituality that acknowledges God's supreme power in the work of salvation and sanctification, yet looks remarkably like a self-propelled daily determination to do good.
Now get ready for this big sentence! [BREATHE]
God's sovereignty often makes us feel like our powerlessness in living right and avoiding sin indicates an absence of God's grace. Thereby we excuse ourselves - we couldn't have done otherwise! But we can never know the degree to which God is helping us. We can never know when doing his will is experienced with a sense of salvific exhilaration, or of rugged and war-like determination. Whether God's will seems easy or hard, the fact is that without the help of his spirit it would be impossible.
And this is why no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.
But, as I said, all this sort of talk is so frustrating when you're on the other side of spiritual rebirth. If we are so much at the mercy of God, yet are not accepted into his Kingdom without that rebirth, then what on earth can we do about it?
Coming up: Christian gestation - how to be born again
Jesus said;
"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
Another guy asked,
"How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born."
Jesus replied;
"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
1950 odd years later I heard about this from Mum and Dad, from church and from Bible-in-school. As a wee tacker I figured this verse was saying that being a Christian means that you have to live quite differently to if you weren't a Christian. You can't be bad anymore. Being born again means being good.
Being good got too hard for me as I got older. Especially when the older kids in the playground started beating up on me. Especially when I found out it was because I was a Christian. And it seemed like everyone I knew wasn't Christian and didn't care so much about being good.
Not that any of this excused me.
Another thing Jesus said was;
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
I don't remember being taught that as a kid, but even if I had I don't think it would have made a difference. From that point on I didn't simply hide my Christianity - I gave up any commitment from my own will to the cause. I'd still go to church with the family - kicking and screaming at times. This change was so rapid that when a new kid started school the next year, an older kid told us he'd heard this kid went to church, and I mentioned that I'd seen him at church but that I was only there because my parents forced me to. Not only that, but I went on to be one of this kid's main tormenters. I won't forget the furiousness with which my teacher sent me from the room for telling everyone this kid had AIDS! It's so easy to forget how nasty childhood is sometimes!
Anyway, my point is that my faith as a child was obviously not a very deep one. Once I learned Christianity and social mobility didn't go hand-in-hand in my community, I pretty much kicked the faith to the kerb.
Through my teens there were stops and starts where I made Christian commitments, only to go back on them really quickly. There was the time everyone got sick on a school trip to the South Island, except me. On this trip I also noticed how different I was from everyone. I figured God must be protecting me and keeping me well, and that I should see sense and be a Christian. But once I returned to the drudgery of home life as a 14 year old, being a good obedient son to my parents was just too much of a strain so I gave up on the idea! What I could never do is go about calling myself a Christian without living a "good" life. At least in this sense I had something of an idea of our need for a different spirit in order to enter God's kingdom.
Of course, once I actually became a Christian when I was 18 it seemed I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about how we can't be good people on our own efforts - that I needed the very spirit of God which raised Christ Jesus from the dead to perform a similar miracle upon this dead heart of mine. But I'm sure that before this actually happened to me I could never have understood what people meant by that. And I'm not sure it would have been helpful anyway.
When I finally made that lasting commitment, the night I think of ten years on as the night I was born again, it was more an act of surrender than an act of determination. I still desired to equate my Christianity with a commitment to be "good", but when trials and temptations came I realised the goodness I knew in Christ was more about surrendering to and relying on his work in me than valuing or doing anything of my own accord.
A friend and I had a quick chat in the car on Saturday, about the mystery of a spirituality that acknowledges God's supreme power in the work of salvation and sanctification, yet looks remarkably like a self-propelled daily determination to do good.
Now get ready for this big sentence! [BREATHE]
God's sovereignty often makes us feel like our powerlessness in living right and avoiding sin indicates an absence of God's grace. Thereby we excuse ourselves - we couldn't have done otherwise! But we can never know the degree to which God is helping us. We can never know when doing his will is experienced with a sense of salvific exhilaration, or of rugged and war-like determination. Whether God's will seems easy or hard, the fact is that without the help of his spirit it would be impossible.
And this is why no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.
But, as I said, all this sort of talk is so frustrating when you're on the other side of spiritual rebirth. If we are so much at the mercy of God, yet are not accepted into his Kingdom without that rebirth, then what on earth can we do about it?
Coming up: Christian gestation - how to be born again
New Zealand's own parrot goes to town
A month ago I was jogging up the top of Highbury (the Wellington suburb), near Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, when I noticed a couple of kaka noisily having a bunch of fun in a tree in someone's garden. How cool is that, I thought, I bet you Wellington is the only city where you can see a kaka in someone's section. Having noticed the boom in the tui population already, I pondered how cool it might be if kaka would successfully repopulate what was once its rightful habitat. But then, I figured it was no miracle given that these kaka were so close to the sanctuary.
But the very next day I was busy cutting up some wood outside my sleepout when I heard the same noise, and looked up to see a kaka fly past. And this is in Kelburn, much further from the sanctuary than Highbury. It was very cool to see this big bird swoop across the sky in front of me, with its noisy guffaw, New Zealand's very own native parrot.
However I didn't see a kaka again, although I was rather preoccupied in this time, with getting engaged and helping my fiancee pack for America, then spending a week in Taranaki. And I wasn't back in Kelburn a week before I was treated to the sight of not one, not two, but at least four kaka flying across the top of the Aro Valley from the Botanical Gardens, making their way in the direction of the wildlife sanctuary. And before I saw them I'd already recognised their cheeky & flirtatious whit-whio.
Now when I noticed the tui population boom, I anticipated an article that appeared in the Dominion Post on the subject. So I got online and did a google search to see if anybody had written about the kaka, and I came across a couple of images on Flickr; one of a kaka feeding from an exotic tree in the Botanical Gardens, taken November 2008, and another of a kaka living it up at a party in what looks like Higbury, December 2008. Both birds have tags on their legs, so it's not as if the population is booming wildly, but it's still cool we can see these beautiful birds around our city.
Kaka fees from an exotic tree at Botanical Gardens, Wellington
Kaka takes a nibble at Highbury party, Wellington
Kaka enjoys the view from the balcony, Higbury, Wellington
But the very next day I was busy cutting up some wood outside my sleepout when I heard the same noise, and looked up to see a kaka fly past. And this is in Kelburn, much further from the sanctuary than Highbury. It was very cool to see this big bird swoop across the sky in front of me, with its noisy guffaw, New Zealand's very own native parrot.
However I didn't see a kaka again, although I was rather preoccupied in this time, with getting engaged and helping my fiancee pack for America, then spending a week in Taranaki. And I wasn't back in Kelburn a week before I was treated to the sight of not one, not two, but at least four kaka flying across the top of the Aro Valley from the Botanical Gardens, making their way in the direction of the wildlife sanctuary. And before I saw them I'd already recognised their cheeky & flirtatious whit-whio.
Now when I noticed the tui population boom, I anticipated an article that appeared in the Dominion Post on the subject. So I got online and did a google search to see if anybody had written about the kaka, and I came across a couple of images on Flickr; one of a kaka feeding from an exotic tree in the Botanical Gardens, taken November 2008, and another of a kaka living it up at a party in what looks like Higbury, December 2008. Both birds have tags on their legs, so it's not as if the population is booming wildly, but it's still cool we can see these beautiful birds around our city.
Kaka fees from an exotic tree at Botanical Gardens, Wellington
Kaka takes a nibble at Highbury party, Wellington
Kaka enjoys the view from the balcony, Higbury, Wellington
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