Oh dear...does anyone else find it disconcerting that my school's library carries no poetry by Emerson, no Cummings, no Melville, no Nabokov (too controversial)...yet it carries at least five different versions of the Christian bible. Since it's the only literature my school's library provides, I decided that I would read the new testament. I was looking for a nice traditional version, when I noticed a psychadelic blue book called The Way that was apparently given out on college campuses in the seventies. It involves lots of photos of hippies who are filled with Christ love and illegal substances praying in harmony, and the text is translated into hippie-speak. I just read Mark. It was quite amusing.
I remember
The Way. This version came out about the time the phrase "born again" was born. At the time, the phrase had an innocence implied, that the person who was "born again" had experienced a spiritual rebirth, a revelation as heady as a drug experience, through the teachings of Christ. These people were fully genuine in their beliefs.
I've often felt that the "born again" experience has been diluted by people who have taken the phrase as part of a social one-upsmanship, who have not had that spiritual rebirth. It's the popular thing to do in their community, so they plaster on the smile and talk the talk and walk the walk.
But then, I'm one of those people who look at a person's eyes more than his or her mouth. Eyes don't lie, but mouths can be twisted into a smile.
The saddest part of this is that there are those out there who
do have that spiritual rebirth, even now, who feel "born again," but the phrase has been co-opted and made suspicious. I wish I were meeting more of this kind of person.