Words that bug.

Some words associated with Christianity really turn people off.  These words have the power to alienate, confuse, and create hostility—so strong are the reactions at times.  I’ve seen the expressions on faces time and again when the words are used in a religiously-integrated or even denominationally-mixed group.  (Hey, I like that, “religiously-integrated”)

Born again.  The first time that I remember the term ‘born again’ being negative was when I was a freshman in college.  Mind you, I was attending a Christian liberal arts college in San Francisco---and one of my buddies, a brilliant transfer student, son of a Methodist minister, said, ‘my dad said they are going to tell me here that I have to be ‘born again’.  He said it derisively, and at 17, I was totally confused.

Another time stands out in my mind when someone I dated recounted how when he was in college in the late 70s, and the ‘born agains’ were people who partied like he_ _ during the week, and then picked up their big Bibles to go to church on the weekend, looking down their noses on those who did not head out on Sunday mornings.  ‘They were no different than the rest of us, but sure acted like they were better—and they said they were ‘born again’…ha.  They were phonies.’

Having founded and led two different groups of denominationally-integrated and ‘unchurched’ folks, I am keenly aware of the power of words.  Christianese or Christian jargon has the power to set up an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality that can undermine the purpose of the group—to grow people in their relationships with God and each other.  See, when people have been in and around church for a long time they do not even realize that they communicate in ways that outsiders do not understand; they use words peculiar to the church crowd, and leave others keenly aware of their separate status.

That said, two terms, ‘born again’ and ‘saved’ need to be debugged.  Both refer to the same thing—

       someone who has put their faith in Jesus Christ as their leader;

both terms are Scriptural, coming out of the gospels.  In fact, both can be found in the third chapter of John.  Here’s the scene—one of the Jewish religious leaders came in the cloak of darkness to ask Jesus some follow-up questions to his teaching.  “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”1  Ah, so it was a term or expression that Jesus himself used.  In the subsequent verses, Jesus continues to unpack what he means by that.  And then Jesus says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”2  Jesus uses ‘born again’ to refer to a spiritual rebirth, and ‘save’ to mean to keep them from eternity without God.  The process of becoming born again or saved is often referred to as salvation. And somehow ‘evangelicals’ (another dirty word in our culture) are those thought to be connected to these concepts.  

Apart from people like ‘the born agains’ on the 70s college campus and others who may be seen as phonies, there is no reason for the words to alienate.  Nonetheless, they do, and only Christians can change that.  Understand where the terms originate (explained within this text), understand that they are ‘hot’ words to some folks, and because of that, use them wisely.

Don’t believe me?  Yesterday my friend recounted a story in which her 15- year-old daughter came home from a midweek church youth group, and said, “I got saved tonight!”  To which the ticked-off mother said, ‘you already were saved!’  (And she harrumphed about the Christian youth group making her daughter feel she hadn’t been saved in her Catholic church-upbringing … the nerve!)  But in the year and a half since her daughter’s initial declaration, mom has noticed a difference, a marked change in the course her daughter has taken—choice of music, reading her Bible, getting baptized, etc.  Hmmm … all very interesting, isn’t it?

So, I’ve been thinking—when words ‘bug’, perhaps they deserve a little more attention, just a bit more thought as to ‘why’ … I’m quite sure it is the people we have associated with such words that bug, and not the words at all.

Christine