Reflection This Week
BEING BORN AGAIN IS JUST THE BEGINNING

   We live in a world, or at least our little part of the world, where sound-byte answers suffice for deep theological and political responses. We ask our presidential candidates, for instance, about their stand on immigration reform or the mortgage crisis or the continuing spiraling cost of fuel and we want a detailed response in thirty seconds. Then when a candidate dares respond, we pick that response to pieces because it is obviously inadequate. If the candidate replies that the subject is too deep to give an adequate response, we criticize him/her for not having an answer to the problem.

   These days we seem to want simple answers to complex questions and simple solutions to very difficult problems – or at least we seem to be willing to settle for them. I have been asked on quite a few occasions by those who did not know my vocation whether or not I had been “born again”. When I sound-bytedly replied, “yes, at my baptism,” I was taken to task because my answer was too simple even if it was totally theologically correctly and completely adequate.

   On the other hand, there are those who seem to believe that a “born again” experience is all that one needs and one’s salvation is in the bag and one’s life is all in order. That is sound-byte theology in reverse. Being born again is not an ending to the process of life in Jesus Christ; it is just the beginning. I ran across a young man who told me about going to a crusade and responding to an altar call and giving his life over to Jesus. He told me he was “born again.” When I asked him how his life had changed, he replied that it hadn’t but that did not matter now that he was saved.

   The truth is, of course, that we are born at our physical birth, born again at our baptism and born again every single day of our lives. Each day is a new day, a new life, a new opportunity to live as a faithful follower of Jesus. While we may not live this day as faithfully as we possibly can, at least we have the opportunity to begin again, to start over when we arise to new life on the morrow.

   Yes, there just might not be a new life in this life to rise to come tomorrow. That is why we are to try to live this day, each day as fully and as faithfully as we possibly can. It means that we are never to take the day for granted, to assume that we always have tomorrow to make up for our failures of this day, that it even all right to flub this day because we will be born again and anew when we rise from our beds the next day.

   Unfortunately, we often do just that. Even worse, of course, is the attitude of the young man who never worried about tomorrow or even today because his born again experience covered his tracks. Since he had given his life to Jesus, it did not matter what he did or did not do. Good or bad, he was saved. “Got a problem with that?” he asked rather smugly when I pressed him on how his life had changed. I obviously did; but I knew I was wasting my time. He had no time for a deep theological conversation let alone any life conversion.

   Each day is indeed a new beginning, but that does not mean that each day we begin as a babe just out of the womb. It does mean that we build today upon the growth we made yesterday so that we will grow even more tomorrow. Being born again is a beginning, not an ending.   WJP