For years now, it's been a common experience to hear of people, even politicians, boast of being reborn; that they have a personal relationship with Christ. Yet they never act very Christ-like. What are we to make of this?
Buddhism teaches that we are all born with a luminous mind, with the true Buddha nature inside us. But as in the Garden of Eden, we partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which is learned experience, and so are drawn into the world of conflict, insecurity, and suffering.
In Buddhism, spiritual rebirth is a mind-altering experience. It takes you back to that time when you were freshly born and were free of all judgmental thoughts, all learned emotions and cravings – free of the products of your temporal mind – and were at one with Buddha nature, your divine essence. While anyone can have this experience, few do because it means disavowing all one's learned experience, all one has learned from the prevailing culture. It requires not just deep faith but great discipline.
To be reborn in Christianity means something quite different. The Evangelical community is particularly rife with people saying they are reborn and have a personal relationship with Christ because it is a rite of passage. But Evangelical rebirth means being saved; it is a commitment to Christ in the form they have been taught. While they thus may no longer be "sinners" and have this personal relationship, and in that sense begin a new life and are reborn, they have not connected with their divine essence, with the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ, and so they are not spiritually reborn.
The proof is in their actions. The God they connect to, as they have been taught he exists, is a God who views with skepticism if not contempt those, including other Christians, who do not accept his truths as stated in the Bible, which they view as His word and inerrant. They thus have a holier-than-thou, a self-righteous attitude towards both other Christians and other religions. They are prideful.
And on moral/cultural issues, anyone who argues against their view of God's truth is viewed with prejudice and hatred for they are not just against God, but they are trying to influence others in their belief, which is a threat to the Evangelical's duty to spread the word. This threatens the salvation of those who as a result, in their view, walk in error.
Thus the reborn Evangelical will typically express emotions that are not reflective of divine essence. It is quite astounding to a non-Christian, and I'm sure disconcerting to many Christians, to see people who claim to be fervent followers of Jesus Christ act and think in ways that are massively contrary to "what Jesus would do" as evidenced by his teachings and actions as related in the New Testament.
On one level, you could say, "So what." To each his own. But Evangelicals feel it is their duty to spread the word, which has come to mean forcing others to follow their belief in God's truth through the force of law.
For example, in the abortion debate, from their perspective, any threat to the mother's health by not having an abortion is irrelevant; saving the unborn fetus, not murdering it, predominates in importance. Thus right-wing pro-life legislation of late does not provide for an exception if the mother's life is endangered.
To be convinced that you have a lock on the truth, and that those who disagree are not only wrong but therefore against God, anti-Christ, is a dangerous state of mind. Certainly if one is a leader with enormous power, such as President George W. Bush.
His religious conversion, being reborn, was a major influence in his life; he thought that God wanted him to run for President, and he thought in the Presidency that he was doing God's work. There was thus no ambivalence; there was a moral certainty to his actions that was scary. And he brooked no disagreement . As he famously said, "You're either with us or against us."
This feeling of moral certainty among the religious Right is one reason why the current political divide in our country is so deep.
