Born Again Christianity is Not a Sect.

prior to writing this article, I was confronted by an angry person who informed me that my being "born again", meant that I was involved in some kind of sect. This person even went so far as to ask me which sect I was involved with. At the time I couldn't help but wonder, "is there more than one? How many are there?" You see, I did not have the faintest idea what this person was referring to. I am not now, and I never have been, involved in a sect. I just looked up the word sect in a little electronic dictionary and the only definition it would give me, was "religious group". Okay, that proves it right there, because I have never been a member of a religious group in my entire life.

Actually, I have always thought of sects as being full of crazies and weirdos, people who worship Unidentified Flying Objects, and shave their heads so they can tattoo the face of Mr. Spock on their Occipital lobes. I have never thought of any ordinary church denomination as being part of a sect, or even worse, a cult. The little dictionary defines a cult as two things: A religious system, and a faddish devotion. That must be the politically correct definition because it certainly does not cover all of what a cult means in the minds of the lay-persons. In my mind, a cult is where someone kills a chicken, pokes pins into a little doll that looks like you, and prays to the weeping willow tree in the back yard while sprinkling chicken blood on little fetish symbols, hoping to increase verility or fertility or something like that.

When I think of a cultist or a member of a sect, I certainly do not envision a Follower of Christ. But since that was what I was accused of, I want to take the time right now to explain a few things. First of all, being born again, has nothing whatsoever to do with cults or weird sects. When a person becomes born again, all it means is that the person in question has accepted Jesus as their personal savior. It means absolutely nothing else. What I am trying to say here is simple: If Jesus is your savior, you are automatically born again. That's all the phrase actually means. There are no magic rites that must be followed, no special chants or specific deeds that must be accomplished. It does not require crawling down the Via Delorosa on your knees, or visiting a particular shrine, or saying a particular prayer so many times.

In fact, becoming born again is the simplest thing in the world to accomplish. There are no rules to follow except those that are written in the Holy Bible, and nobody is capable of following those perfectly their whole lives. There's no special jewelry one must wear to be born again. In fact, the most popular symbol of born again Christianity is the cross, and not necessarily any particular design of cross either. Some Christians wear a crucifix, some wear real fancy crosses studded with real gem stones, while others of us go simpler with a plain, gold or silver cross. Still others wear a bunch of nails tied together in a cross shape to symbolize the nails that pierced the hands and feet of Christ on the cross. There really are no rules to follow in regard to the form or type of cross worn. Me, personally, I seldom wear any jewelry at all.

Christians often identify each other by certain symbols drawn on bumper stickers that are placed on cars. Usually this symbol will be the fish, and some Christians get pretty creative with that fish. I've seen them depicted about to eat Darwin, or with the cross of Christ superimposed over them. But I've never seen a bumper sticker showing a person down on his knees praying to that fish. Christians pray in the name of Christ, which is the most powerful name there is. Christians do not practice a form of organized religion. What they actually practice is simple faith. We have faith like a child to believe in the things that we cannot see, while non-Christians have to rely only on what they see in order to believe.

If I worshipped the moon, the family cat or the neighbor's cow, that would be a cult or a sect, but worshipping God Himself? Who else are we supposed to worship? Of course Christians worship God. To us there is no other that can take His place. Just because we think of God as being a Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that does not turn us into cultists. We know who and what we are, and so does God and all other opinions be hanged. Of course, harassment of Christians is nothing new, and the more outspoken you are, the more likely you are to recieve it, but sometimes I think we go just a hair too far in our weird ideas of what really makes a Christian.