It's not about a denomination, it's about Being Born Again! Are you born again?
sisterchristian,
I'm not sure who you imagine yourself to be fooling. But I do imagine that you are deceived by your own selected "spirit speak". The reality of salvation and our actual identity in Christ is indeed that-
a concrete reality, not some pocket book concept. Salvation isn't a matter of lingusitics. It doesn't lie in your choice words.
This is why I am continualy perplexed by this warped emphasis on being born again. In fact, from all points of observation, it isn't actually the emotional, spiritual, pyschological state of being "born again" that is being obsessed over, rather it is simply the usage of that label.
Being born again, as far as I can see, means little more than chanting one's rebirth like a salvific mantra. All the "re-birth" that it seems to entail is an instant subscription to a series of theological concepts and right-wing, American ideology.
My understanding of being born again is not of some one time adolescent, emotional euphoria. It isn't kneeling in my bedroom or standing in a singing congregation, it isn't raising my hand and saying that I've given my heart to Jesus. It isn't a teary confession. It isn't even the acknowledgment that God is real or that Christ died for us.
Rather, being born again means exactly what the concept implies. It is an actual passing away, a death. Now think of that word, death. Death is not easy, death does not feel good. It is painful, it is a turmoil. As Christians we are called to suffer inwardly, to struggle with ourselves and be "crucified with Christ". Jesus died for us so that we might die with him.
Without this pain, without the inward, existensial experience of the Crucifixion we will never share in the Resurrection.
It isn't simply believing in God through Christ, it is the implications of that belief as they are lived out in faith. It is a purging, a breaking, a ruin of everything that we thought we were...it is a continual ruin of everything we cling to now.
Being born again is not a single and once and for all event. Remnants and reminders of our old sinful self seep in every day. Are we not to die to them every day in Christ? Is not rebirth a daily, even hourly, call of faith?
I would be very wary about cheapening our second birth by sitting at your doctrinal "wicket" and turning it into the admission ticket of Christian identity. It is a much more lucid and meaningful
process than that.
:[/b]
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