“You must be born again. You must be born again. You must be born again. There was something wrong with your first birth so you must be born again.”
— Morris Venden, Retired pastor, teacher and author to a group of Pacific Union College theology professors and students during the tensions of the Ford controversy in 1978-79.
A group had rented a facility off the campus (“so everyone can have freedom to speak their conscience”) and organized a “symposium” with each religion teacher given opportunity to present a “scholarly paper.” After a series of presentations of papers 20-30 pages long parsing the Greek and Hebrew, Morris Venden, at the time the college church pastor and teacher of one class, presented a 2 ½ page paper that began with the words above. For those of us present it was a simple and profound reminder that true Christianity is not about how smart or clever or deep you are but about how much we all need a complete change of heart and attitude before our awesome God.