A messy, painful, shocking, beautiful, paradigm-altering process. It’s a movement from comfort through discomfort into a new life. It’s a shift from one source of nourishment to another. It’s a relocation from a familiar, enclosed environment to a wider and wildly more expansive environment. It’s a transition from one state of existence into a fuller state of existence. It’s a graduation from being alive to being able to truly live. Nothing is ever quite the same afterward.
So it is with rebirth.
This is, of course, all a metaphor, and no metaphor is perfect; they all break down at some point. Here’s where I think Jesus’ metaphor breaks down:
While biological birth is a one-time event, spiritual rebirth is a repeatable event. Rebirth is an ongoing process, perhaps a little bit every day, if we’re paying attention to the small contractions. But then there are the big ones. As I look back on my years of faith, I can name three to four major rebirths. Three to four significant times where great pain suddenly shoved me out into a wider world, ushered me into a fuller state of existence.
Perhaps better than asking, “Have you been born again?” would be to ask, “Can you tell me the story of the last time you were born again?”
Being born again is often a messy, painful, shocking, paradigm-altering process. But it’s worth it. As the instructor in our childbirth classes said, “it’s pain with a purpose.” A baby cannot see the outside world until they are born. In the same way “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3:3)
I want to see more of the kingdom of God than I can see right now.
I want to be born again.
Again.
