Maybe Jesus Needs to be Born Again

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Scientist, Jesuit Priest, and Mystic who lived from 1881 to 1955 who believed that you could find the heart of God at the center of matter.

In other words, he believed that the heartbeat of God could be found pulsing through everything.  

As a result of this belief, he took a strong stance against the church's tendency to divorce spirit and matter, to say that "spirit is good" and "flesh is evil".  He pointed to the incarnation of Christ (the idea of God becoming flesh in Jesus) and wondered why the church holds sacred a doctrine that unites heaven and earth all the while teaching that heaven is good and the earth is bad.

There's a lot we could say about Teilhard, but there's a quote of his that I came across this morning that really has my wheels turning.  It's one of the last things he ever wrote towards the end of his life (about 70 years ago) and this is what he said ...

"Christianity is reaching the end of one of its natural cycles of its existence ... after what will soon be 2000 years, Christ must be born again."

Christ.

Must.

Be.

Born.

Again.

... Isn't that interesting?  

Teilhard's point was that once Christ is born again in the church and the church comes to a fresh understanding of who Jesus is, Jesus will no longer be seen as a "deserter of the earth", as someone who insists that the earth and flesh are evil while only heaven and spirit are good, BUT as a lover of the earth and a lover of humanity and a lover of creation - someone who (himself) has infused all of matter with his own creative energy.  

And so here I am this morning, sipping my coffee, and wondering if there are (perhaps) many, many ways that Christ needs to be born again in our midst.  

It's funny, right?  Because the church often speaks of our need to be born again ...

"You gotta be born again."

"You were born of the flesh, but to be saved you gotta be born of the Spirit."

"Your first birth is from the womb of your mother, but the second is from the womb of the Spirit."

... the phrase "born again" comes from Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in the Gospel of John and is the only time the phrase appears in the entire Bible and yet (interestingly) the church has built an entire theology around it, insisting that EVERYONE needs to be born again.

Anyways.

We often think of people needing to be born again as a result of their sin and shortcomings and distance from God, but I'm wondering today in what ways our understandings of Jesus need to be born again into our lives and our world as a result of (Evangelical, in particular) Christianity's elitist theology that holds Jesus up as the Savior for a select few who believe the right things and the judge and ultimate destroyer of everyone else.   

When the angel announced the birth of Jesus in Luke's Gospel he said that with Jesus' birth "Good News" had come for "all the people".

Good News.

For all people.

And although Jesus' Good News started out for everyone - the Jews, the Gentiles, people who believed one way, people who believed another way, people who lived holy lives, people who lived sinful lives, people who believed in God, people who didn't believe in God - the Good News has (over the last 1500 years or so) devolved into a message that is filled with all kinds of stipulations and theologies and ideas that are used to control and manipulate and force people into submission, force people into a tribe of sorts that acts, thinks, and believes the same way ...

"You're only saved IF you believe a, b, and c."

"You're only a real Christian IF you ..."

"You're only born again IF you ..."

"You're only going to heaven IF you ..."

Ugh.

For a religion that insists that only God can save a human, it also insists that humans need to do a whole lot of things in order to be saved and (to me) that seems completely backwards and whacky.  

And so today I'm wondering in what ways that Jesus needs to be born again into our midst so that the Good News that was originally for ALL the people can become (once again) for ALL the people.

How about you?

What are your thoughts on this?  In what ways does Jesus need to be born again not just in our world and our churches, but in you?  In what ways does he need to be born again in you as a result of toxic theologies and doctrines that you've encountered over the years that have made their way into your heart, mind, and soul?  

Much love.

--

PS - you can read more about Teilhard in John Philip Newell's book, "Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul".  

Glenn Siepert