chappell@vega (Glenn Chappell) (01/25/91)
Y'all, I was doing a little research recently on the term "born again". I was rather curious because the New Jerusalem Bible translates it (in John 3) as "born from above". Further, the NIV, which renders it as "born again", has a footnote "Or born from above ...." Now, the NIV has lots of manuscript variation footnotes, but this isn't one of them - it's an alternate translation for the same words. I couldn't really think of any way the same words could mean either "again" or "from above", so I checked it out. Apparently, the word (and it is a single word in the Greek) used in John 3 does mean, literally, "from above" - or "from the top", "from the beginning" thus, by implication, "again". I'm not much of a Greek scholar, but it seems to me that the best translation, in light of all this, might be "all over again". Thus: "In reply Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born all over again.'" (John 3:3 - modified NIV). Or, to think about it another way, consider the director of some sort of performing group, be it musical or dance, or whatever. He's running a rehearsal and things aren't going too well, so he explains what's wrong and then tells the performers to start over - he says, "Okay, everyone, from the top ....", and it no longer matters how bad the last rehearsal was anymore, because they've started over. [Note: you can't really take the analogy much farther than this.] So, then, that's what happens to our lives when we become Christians - we start over "from the top" with all our wrongdoing behind us. -------------------- GGC <><
henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl scribe Henning) (02/16/91)
Glenn Chappell writes: >... to think about it another way, consider the director of some sort of >performing group, be it musical or dance, or whatever. He's >running a rehearsal and things aren't going too well, so he explains >what's wrong and then tells the performers to start over - he says, >"Okay, everyone, from the top ....", and it no longer matters how >bad the last rehearsal was anymore, because they've started over. >[Note: you can't really take the analogy much farther than this.] Actually, I think you've hit on an excellent analogy. The director takes time in the middle of the rehearsal to try to improve some aspect of the performance. When the rehearsal resumes, the group is going to try to incorporate those corrections ... but it's NOT going to sound like a group of ten, or twenty, or however many utterly different people; the piece before and after the corrective interlude is going to be substantially the same (hopefully with the gradual -- seldom immediate and entire -- assimilation of the corrective elements). It seems that a lot of christians let themselves in for a lot of unnecessarily self-destructive disappointment when they're "born-again", and they find that they're substantially the same people they had been before, after all. kph -- "The shrewder mobs of America, who dislike having two minds upon a subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by which means a world of cold and tedious speculation is dispensed with." -- Washington Irving
lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (logan shaw) (02/19/91)
In article <Feb.15.19.03.36.1991.643@athos.rutgers.edu> henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl scribe Henning) writes: >It seems that a lot of christians let themselves in for a lot of >unnecessarily self-destructive disappointment when they're "born-again", >and they find that they're substantially the same people they had been >before, after all. Could be true. You can't expect yourself to be instantly perfect. But, I can claim that I'm a significantly different person than I was when I wasn't a Christian. Indeed, in the last year or so trying to be a _committed_ Christian, I've changed alot. It's not that I'm perfect, but I have caught of glimpse of perfection, which to me is pretty amazing. The revelation could be said to have made me new. I feel born again because I have new _goals_. (If anything, the more I know about God, the worse a person I seem to myself and the more I know I need to change my actions.) >kph >-- >"The shrewder mobs of America, who dislike having two minds upon a subject, >both determine and act upon it drunk; by which means a world of cold and >tedious speculation is dispensed with." -- Washington Irving -- =----------------Logan-Shaw---(lshaw@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu)----------------= "A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right...You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping" - C. S. Lewis, _Mere_Christianity_