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The writer Alexander Pope, generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the 1700s, muttered, "O Lord, make me a better man." Pope's spiritually enlightened sage replied, "It would be easier to make you a new man."
E. Stanley Jones, a great missionary and a writer, spent many years ministering to Hindus and Muslims in India. Later, he did missions in the United States and Asia. In Conversion, Jones writes, "People need not to be patched up, but to be made over, to be converted, to be born again."
The great evangelist George Whitefield was asked why he so often preached on the passage from the Gospel of John, "Except a person is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." Whitefield looked the man in the eyes. He said, "Because you must be born again."
The Colossians epistle speaks beautifully of the motive of being a new person in the Christ-Life. Colossians 3.9-11 (ESV) has:
9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
The Colossians passage offers us some salient points on this new birth. First, the new birth gives a basis of speaking truthfully to one another. Spiritual virtue, the very Life and Mind of Christ, is grounded in a radical, spiritual conversion of inwardness (Indeed, all great faiths, at their truly spiritual level, teach of a necessary inward conversion, and religion as essential to help awaken and unfold spiritual potentials truly Divine>. The new person has a fresh inward motivation for perception and behavior.
Also, this reborn-spiritually person is not a static self, but a be-ing in progress, a dynamic centering and emanation of divine energies, or graces. Knowledge, or intimate, spiritual knowing, is the form of the renewing, after the image of the One, Who shaped a new person through rebirth.
This reborn person, also, does not have an essentially separate self-identity. He or she has an image defined only by Christ being All, Who is in all in the Body. Again, this ultimately affects the attitudes and actions we take, for we are not thinking of a separate-self, like protecting myself or saving myself or improving myself, as isolated person with individual rights. Christ being the Mind of the True Self, the renewed person, forms within a growing awareness of responsibility to and for the whole Body, and we seek, with Grace, to speak and act so as not to bring needless harm to the Body.
Jones claims, based on his much experience, that only one out of three professing Christians are truly new persons: of the other two thirds, one third is simply, positively un-Christian, the other third plainly indifferent.
To Jones, then, one of the great mission fields is our churches. Why would he say this? Truly converted, born again, being renewed persons will show a growing likeness to Christ. Born-anew persons will have, also, a growing empathy for the whole context of being in a Body with Whom they are one flesh, to Whom they aspire to behave responsibly pertaining to thought, attitude, and act.
We need more stress on being born anew as a communal process. A static, over-individualistic treatment of spiritual conversion among most evangelicals has done much harm to the thought and life of churches. A "born again" experience is an incipient deposit of Grace that holds within It the process of a whole investment of our lives, over our lives and beyond. And, one is offered the new Life in the same offer to do so only within a spiritual Body.
George Harnack, the great Christian historian, spoke of what Jones calls an "inner evaporation," that is, the failure to keep being renewed over the long haul of our Christian journey. This exhaustion is antithetical to the whole teaching of spiritual conversion. What takes its place in our inner lives, relationships with others, and public devotion? Jones quotes the words of Harnack, "The original enthusiasm evaporates and the religion of law and form arises."
The enthusiastic Christian life, which is a dynamic, flowing, ever-unfolding, and flexible spirituality, where Christ is All to and in all, devolves to a faith of mentalism, moralism, and ritualism. The heart is denied for the goods of the head. Love dissipates in who is right and who is wrong. Grace goes underground below the heavy weight of superstitious rite, done in the manner of a magical incantation devoid of engagement of our deepest selves, thoughts, motives, and acknowledgement of sin. Faith becomes only religious, and religion without the Spirit is stifling and deadening to the human spirit.
If a man or woman thinks and acts habitually in a manner blatantly devoid of the influence and aroma of spiritual Life, I can only conclude that he or she has either not known Christ or has removed his or her heart from Christ.
Of course, those who claim "spirituality" and not religion or think my critique of churches is support for their indifferent or antithetical position ought not think I advocate against the positive necessity of churches and institutional expressions of faith. Rather, resistance to religious faith and its pubic expression, accompanied by caustic criticism of those in the churches, or other religious faiths, only proves the self-deluded pride we can exhibit, looking down our arrogant nose at a Body that is at least one-third, likely much more so, in a truly spiritual process of becoming more the true Christ. And, I bet you cannot get close to one-third or two-thirds in true spiritual renewal anywhere else. So, for these persons, I would say get in or be quiet. Join and participate in Christ, or, at least, look at your own selves and see how your critique of religious persons likely reflects your own arrogance and ignorance more than institutional faith expression, be it the church or of another faith, that is to a great extent truly the Body of Christ, the Church in spiritual process. You who so gladly criticize persons of religious faith, examine yourself, for possibly your criticism is an inverted criticism, a cry from your heart for true conversion of your self. Possibly, in running from the Body, you are are running from Christ, from God, from Love, from the self that needs to die to know the treasures of the open Heart, of Amazing Grace.
THANK YOU, MY FRIENDS, FOR READING ONELIFE, MAY THESE WRITINGS DRAW YOUR HEART TO THE BLESSED CHRIST, THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD.
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*Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major booksellers.
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his two beloved dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, in Southwest Florida. He serves the Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in South Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a more intimate relationship with Christ. Brian advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons, along with empathic relating with other world religions, East and West. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry, for all spiritual seekers.
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