Here’s the passage:
“Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was
a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said,
"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." "How can someone be born when they are
old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely they cannot enter a second time into
their mother's womb to be born!" Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell
you, 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. You
should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'” [John 3:1-7]
Recently I realized that Jesus was speaking
metaphorically, while Nick – not understanding metaphor – was trying to
understand his words literally. No wonder Nick had such trouble figuring Jesus
out.
“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not
understand these things?” [verse 10]
Then I recognized that those two facts are related: Nick
did not understand how Jesus was teaching because he was Israel’s teacher:
because he spent his days studying the scriptures. He approached scripture very
literally, and that literal way of interacting with the scriptures kept him
from understanding what God was doing right in front of him.
That has been me often enough. I’ve approached scripture
so terribly literally that I have misunderstood my Father who speaks literally
sometimes and metaphorically sometimes. I’ve prided myself for not being afraid
to interpret scripture literally, and yet that very literalist approach has
often kept me from seeing, from understanding what God was doing in me, right
in front of me.
Because God does not always speak literally.
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