THE FEMININE GOD
Born Again
Rediscovering God’s Feminine Side: Part Nine
Hiding in plain sight in the New Testament, beloved of evangelists everywhere, particularly since the renewal movement of the 1960s, is one of the most powerfully feminine and intimate metaphors in the whole of the Bible. I am referring to that bit in John’s gospel where Jesus tells Nicodemus:
Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again…no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:3–6)
This, of course, is where we get the idea of ‘born again’ Christians from. It’s not a term we hear so much these days. When I was getting interested in faith as a teenager in the 1980s, it was a very common way of describing a particular kind of Christian, used variously as an insult, a compliment or an entry requirement, depending on your perspective.
Often, and this is somewhat ironic, I think you’ll agree, the people who talk most enthusiastically about the need to be ‘born again’ are often the same people who talk about the Spirit being ‘a gentleman’. Without ever noticing that there might be a contradiction between these two statements. And I have to confess that I didn’t see it either for a very long time.
In my experience, this idea of “new birth” has been made into a somewhat academic concept often connected with a spiritual experience that follows a certain kind of introduction to the Christian faith linked with accepting certain beliefs and expressing a desire to repent and follow Jesus. Although the words ‘born again’ are used frequently — often by some of the most trenchantly masculine-dominated Christian communities, who wouldn’t really entertain the thought of God being anything other than male — they tend to be rendered sterile and separate from the rich metaphor of pregnancy and birth. And certainly not linked at all to the awareness of the feminine nature of the Spirit who gives birth to this new life inside us.
The idea of dying to old life and beginning a new life of faith runs throughout the New Testament, and this verse in John’s gospel is not the only place where the metaphor of new birth turns up. John mentions it in the prologue to his gospel:
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:12–13)
Peter, too, uses this metaphor of new birth:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)
and Paul frequently talks about Jesus’ death enabling us to be recreated and begin a new life.
There are so many layers to this symbolism. The idea is that before finding faith, we are held — tenderly — in the womb of God. The sense that finding faith, becoming aware of God, and being born, might not be a comfortable process. It will shake us from familiar surroundings into something breathtakingly new. The fact that the effort and the pain and the travail are God’s, not ours.
We are used to the idea of an almighty God. We sometimes forget that God chooses to be vulnerable. A God who gives birth is certainly vulnerable. In ancient times, when John was writing, pregnancy and birth were not only painful but also dangerous. To give birth is to risk death.
As we noticed earlier, having been born of God, we are invited to ‘crave pure spiritual milk.’ To be nursed by God.
For many people, finding faith is followed by the discovery of a deep, intimate closeness to God. A sense of being loved and held and cared for in a way that fits very well with this metaphor of being ‘born of God’.
I have been part of a faith tradition that emphasises the experience of a sudden coming to faith, for which the birth metaphor is a particularly good fit. Not everyone experiences finding a faith that way, of course. For many, it is far more gradual. And I don’t think it is necessary to limit the metaphor of new birth to the moment of encountering God for the first time. The Holy Spirit is often birthing new things within us. God’s midwifing work in us continues. The old dies, and the new is born. Again and again.
There are riches to discover in this idea of God as a mother. The one who gave you birth and held you tenderly before you even existed. Paul tells us that we were ‘chosen in him before the foundation of the world’. We are invited to rest in the love of the God who holds us with all the gentle affection of a mother nursing an infant, who loves us with all the affection and stubbornness of a mother who will not stop loving no matter how far her children wander.
Who will visit us in prison despite knowing that it was our own actions and choices that landed us there?
And bring cake.
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