Once and Twice-born Christians
William James distinguishes one-born from twice-born believers. The latter are those who had been through “dark nights of the soul” and had their faith threshed to within an inch of its life. Harold Kushner, the death of whose son nearly cost him his faith, described that latter, the twice-born, this way. “Instead of seeing a world flooded with sunshine, as the once-born always do, they see a world where the sun struggles to come out after the storm but always manages to reappear. Theirs is a less cheerful, less confident, more realistic outlook. God is no longer the parent who keeps them safe and dry; He is the power that enables them to keep going in a stormy and dangerous world. And like the bone that breaks and heals stronger at the broken place, like the string that is stronger where it broke and was knotted, it is a stronger faith than it was before, because it has learned it can survive the loss of faith.” That, friends, is a description of spiritual maturity, faith...