I just received my copy of John Piper's new book Finally Alive: What Happens When We Are Born Again? One of Piper's reasons for making the biblical case for born-again Christianity is to guard the term against its misuse in popular culture, especially in the sociological research of The Barna Group. Piper writes:
"When the Barna Group uses the term 'born again' to describe American church-goers whose lives are indistinguishable from the world, and who sin as much as the world, and sacrifice for others as little as the world, and embrace injustice as readily as the world, and covet things as greedily as the world, and enjoy God-ignoring entertainment as enthusiastically as the world -- when the term 'born again' is used to describe these professing Christians, the Barna Group is making a profound mistake."
They are using the term "born-again," Piper says, "in a way that would make it unrecognizable by Jesus and the biblical writers." What the research shows instead, according to Piper, "is not that born-again people are permeated with worldiness," but "that the church is permeated by people who are not born again."
