Born Again.

What does it really mean to be born again? This is of course the key selling point to the gospel that the Christian church declares right? I wanted to take some time and look at this doctrine of regeneration because I believe this is one place the church has exploited and just down right oversold the transformation you experience when you are Born Again.

I never want to mislead any readers, so let me be direct and clearly state my claim. I believe the current system of American Christianity as we know it today is terribly broken. While there are several elements to this break, I want to focus today on what I believe to be one of the biggest problems: the misrepresentation of the transformation.

As a theology student, I was able to look closely at how this transformation process was presented in the Bible, and unfortunately it’s not something that happens right away. I wish it did. I thought that was the case initially and all through Bible college I just kept telling myself that every time I felt old tendencies pop up.

However, when I looked closely at the Bible and began to develop a more complete view of theology, I realized this transformation that you experienced when you followed Jesus was not all at once, but a maturity process called sanctification, that takes place over the entire course of a believer's new life.

In my view, there is the initial conversion event, referred to as regeneration, that occurs when a person truly believes the Gospel. The Bible speaks of this as our rebirth, and for most it will be an extremely radical experience in which you see the world and everything in it in a whole new perspective. For some it will happen at your bedside when you are five years old as your parents explain this amazing gift of salvation you are offered…and you eagerly accept!

I have witnessed men in their 60s decide for the first time to believe in the Gospel. I have watched mothers in their 20s understand God’s love for the first time. And I have seen all four of my own children say “Yes I believe!” all in their own timing. It doesn’t matter who, when or how this happens, but when a person understands the Gospel for the first time and accepts the offer of eternal life, they are born again.

This event is amazing and powerful and should not be taken lightly, but you are not made perfect the day you believe. Titus 3 tells us at conversion, we experience regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, we are justified of our sins, and we are given eternal life. So at this point, a person has trusted Jesus as their Lord and the are going to Heaven when they die, but they are not sanctified yet, or made perfect, as this will take the duration of their time on Earth to complete.

And that is one of the major problems with the church right there is that it over sells the transformation. The American church is essentially running a big banner outside that says “Believe in Jesus and you will be perfect! All your struggles and sins, fears and failures, problems and pain, will all go away immediately if you just start going to church!” Some theology even goes as far as saying you will not only stop sinning completely, you will not even have sinful desires anymore! If you are still struggling with sin, you must be hiding something or else you just don’t have enough faith yet.

Most of this comes from over-simplifying a very powerful verse in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this verse preached to declare Christians should have no real desires to sin anymore because they are new.

However, Paul could not have meant that we will never commit sins again because he himself still struggled with sin. I believe the most likely interpretation of this verse in 2 Corinthians is that Paul is speaking about those who have passed away, as in died and went on to Heaven. They are made perfect, but the rest of us have a lot of work to do yet.

To the Romans, he confessed, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Rom. 7:15) Does this sound like a man who believed in any perfect Christians? When he himself was still sinning? No.

When you look at Paul’s life, and the lives of all the apostles of Christ and every single person in the Bible besides Jesus for that matter, you will see the life of a sinner. This is important to understand. I am a sinner today just as I was the day Christ saved me, the difference is I am forgiven. The apostles were sinners till the day they died.

As Jesus got closer to his day on the cross, the apostles were blowing it left and right! Arguing about who’s the greatest? Pulling a sword on the guard in the garden of Gethsemane? Telling Jesus not to die for the sins of the world? What about after Jesus went back to Heaven? The apostles lasted all but a few days and they went back to fishing.

Yes they were born again, justified of their sins, given eternal life, and indwelt with the Holy Spirit, but they were still sinners until they died, when their sanctification was to be completed. This was their day of glorification, the day they go to Heaven, the day they finally cease to be sinners.

You see the problem here? The church made a mistake in expecting people who have been born again to be free from sinful desires and as a result would not sin anymore. Unfortunately, people will always have these sinful desires, as long as they live on planet Earth, and we need to live in a healthy environment that accepts, and even celebrates transparency and authenticity in all areas of life. The alternative is life as we know it today.

Basically, you have to put on a front and pretend you are someone you are not, hiding your struggles from everyone around you, even those who love you, until finally your secrets create walls of isolation around you and you are totally alone. You may think this is extreme, but please hear me out before you discredit my argument.

The church has declared itself to the public as an alternative service for societies hardest problems offering free help to everyone from drug addicts to rape victims, even to those with severe PTSD, down to the sick and dying. Of course, people who are struggling with addiction, severe mental trauma, and all sorts of suffering come to the church for help! Why wouldn’t we? But, after we start going to church we realize… There is no therapy at all. None of our issues are even addressed. There is no help for the drug addict, and the rape victim stays in silence. Mental health issues are seen as a weakness, a spiritual weakness, and so we keep quiet about it.

In this program, we only excel when we give the impression of miraculous rapid progress. And the way to get there is just to act like all the pain and suffering and struggle and trauma never happen. “Don’t look back, just keep your eyes on Jesus” as they tell you. But we are still just as messed up as before, only now we have to hide it all and it is eating us alive. There is no outlet for healing, no way to be honest about our pain, and it seems like everyone around us is somehow perfect. We ask ourselves, “How did they get fixed? Are they faking it too? Maybe it's just me?”

We lie to ourselves, saying everything will be fine and you just learn to play the game. We get pretty good at acting like we are perfect, and before you know it, we are part of the group! We are a part of the family of God. All it took was a few exaggerations, fake a smile here or there, say the right stuff, quote the right books, and we’re in. Oh yeah, and we have to disown all our old friends and family if they didn’t go to our church. Ouch! And, now that we are official, we are really expected to shine. Even better if we can outshine the others, as that will indicate we are on another level…the miraculous. Sadly, this was me; always the hustler.

I was very surprised to discover as it turns out, at least from a macro level, that most of the people in church are actually from good families, “raised in the church” and don’t really have much of a sinful past to speak of. In an average church of about 150 people, I estimate you will only see about 3 or 4 people like me, who came from a sinful past. In other words, they were not raised in the church, and had lived life wildly. For the most part, these new converts are given a small window of time to prove they are transformed into a perfect carbon copy Christian. Have you heard of Ned Flanders?

Most will fall into line and follow suit with everyone else, at least on the surface. This is nothing new, religious folk have always made it their mission to civilize the heathen population. If you are lucky, you will be selected as a poster-boy to advertise to other poor heathens your success story as proof that church life works! As soon as I realized the game and how the rules worked, I practically volunteered to be the new poster-boy for the church.

This point is important to make so please hear me on this: I knew the game and I chose to play. I saw the church was a hustle, and if you said things just the right way, you could predict the outcomes. I believe I came to the church with good intentions, but as I too, soon became corrupt, I must take full responsibility for my own actions.

I was raised to learn a system and crack it, it's just in my nature, my sin nature as it turns out. I was not innocent in my part of church fraud, I was as guilty as they come. This is why I know the depth of the corruption of the church, because I was driving the car at one point in my own life. I became the two-faced preacher who smiled at you on Sunday morning, and talked trash about you later at lunch with the elders of the church. I did this for 7 years before it stopped.

Finally in the end of 2014, God himself put a stop to it, knocked me off my horse if you will, and began to deconstruct the wicked man I created. It’s as if my eyes were opened and I am now able to see the many evils of the church life that I broke away from. I know the church life is wrecking families everywhere and I want to help. I believe people are being kept from knowing God fully as they embrace this church life.

Do you hear me on that? When you depend on the church for all of your spiritual needs, you are missing out on experiencing the undeniable power of God! The church is an imposter and a poor substitute for your Creator and when you dethrone the church, you can only then begin to truly worship the one true God.

I hope this can start to express where I am coming from and begin to communicate my intentions for this project. I believe if we are ever going to be happy we need to be free to live honest lives that allow for healing and renewal through authenticity.

As I have broken away from dependency on the system of the church, I have acquired and developed some real tools for healthy transformative living that I plan to share. Not reinventing the wheel here, just taking an honest approach to life, and exploring ways to heal and grow and thrive.

Life is better today than ever before and God is more real to me than I could have ever imagined! We lost dozens of fake friends but have learned who our true friends are and made new friends. We gave up old plans and new dreams have blossomed up in their place.

I have experienced miracles where I used to have suffering. I have seen healing where I once had pain. I have love were there was hate. And I have life where before I had death.

There is so much more to this life than just surviving until Heaven. You have the freedom to live a life full of peace and happiness. You only have to choose not to hate but instead choose to love God and love one another.

© 2018-2023. Christopher Joy. All Rights Reserved.