[Note: Brother Traill wrote the text of this pamphlet, the earliest version of which appeared in 1976, if I remember correctly.]
Probably you have often heard about "getting saved" and being "born again," and you may have wondered, "Just what is so smart about getting saved anyway--and why?" Well, in this passage, we aren't even going to try to explain it to you, but rather just introduce you to some things about it, and then we'll let Colored John do the explaining for us!
As a young person just starting out in life, you have probably often been bewildered by the world around you--a world that places the greatest values on a material success--and never tries to explain why! From time to time, you may have paused in your own search for meaning and purpose, and seen and felt the pointlessness of the empty routines of the world around you, and yet, at the same time, felt a strong force within you pushing you in the same direction! You may have feared that force and noticed that your conscience hates its results. You may even have fought against it, and yet you see yourself losing anyway, because it always comes back and makes you more like the world--little by little every day. And you may have wondered if you are finally going to be trapped by it altogether, and never really know why, when all you want is that your spirit might be free. Now, just exactly how the word "sin" fits into all this is probably beyond you--so we'll leave that till later. But right now let us begin at the real beginning for you . . . How can you avoid the empty routines of this world, and have a really meaningful and fulfilled life?
There really are many forces acting upon and within you of which you may be totally unaware, although you can see their results! One of these forces is called "hope," and you must have noticed its patterns in your life. Surely, you can remember "hoping" in Christmas morning, or finding meaning in childish toys, or looking to "being grown up"--as you now finally are! Undoubtedly, your life is already a continuing cycle of looking for and finding something interesting to do and worth living for--only to have it collapse and lose its meaning to you. This only happens because we tend to "look to" and hope in wrong things in the first place! But the frustrating search for lasting meaning in a world that offers only fantasy will always lead to an unhappy and unfulfilled life in a wasted desert, because people always finally tire of chasing rainbows and being led on by an elusive "carrot on a string." They learn to stop asking real questions in a world that gives no answers, and they quietly settle for a pointless, routine treadmill, in a world that cares nothing about them. This is a bleak picture indeed and yet, it tested, it is seen to accurately describe the "life" that we see in the great, big, wide wonderful world around us! And the answer is that, instead of deceiving ourselves by hoping in things that cannot continue to provide meaning, in a world in which everything finally gets boring and in which we have no lasting future anyway, we must somehow hope in the good things shown and offered to us by our Creator and Father, from whom we "came," and to whom we are going again!
But hoping in God instead of Christmas morning may not sound very inviting, so let's consider another approach to Salvation and the New Birth. Separating between right and wrong things in which to hope is sometimes hard, but the desire to have meaningful relationships with other people is one that God put in us, and which He uses. This is why solitary confinement in a prison is such a hard punishment, yet "life" in this world is often just as bad, as people ignore each other and their needs, and act as though they aren't even there! This is also part of the reason why young people look to each other so much today--they see no hope in right relationships with anyone except each other! But over a long enough period of time, the forces within us will work through our slowly changing interests and feelings, and will break down those relationships, and render them meaningless, unless they are based on unity in something strong, true, and permanent. Only if they are coming from a true sight of human nature as it really is can these relationships have any chance of continuing to be fulfilling to our basic human needs! So the desire to enter into relationships with other people can be disappointing, because of our tendency to blindly settled for "imitation relationships" that are based on faulty, short-sighted human ideas or feelings about ourselves and our future. On the other hand, God knowingly made us with a need to "belong" in order that we might belong to Him and love each other as brothers and sisters and that we might all look to Him as our Father. Yet once again we see ourselves led astray by wrong desires within us as our own selfishness only causes us to care more and more about ourselves and less and less about caring for other people, and giving ourselves for their good, and being united with them in working together at the meaningful purpose for which God made us! From this point of view, Salvation and the New Birth should be easier to appreciate as you come to see how it is no more than entering into a right and loving relationship with Him and with His Son Jesus, and how this then leads us to right relationships with all people through the understanding and direction that He gives us. This shouldn't be surprising, because after all, nobody understands us better than God does, because He made us all!
Yet, sad to say, even this kind offer may be unappealing, as we see ourselves only wishing to be left alone to be torn apart by conflicting feelings, as our relationship with Jesus seemingly becomes more and more distant. This deep-seated tendency within us to look at things wrongly, to be affected by wrong things, and thus to do wrong things, should become more apparent to you as you come to understand yourself and the Bible more clearly, and as you begin to understand the real nature and force of sin, and its source! It finally appears to you that you cannot actually do what your "better judgment" says you ought to, and that you just cannot listen to your own conscience for long. You begin to see that you have been "had" by something bigger than your reason, or even your will power, and out of fear you try to laugh it off, but it doesn't work, as you feel more and more trapped by this "thing" inside you. The awful truth finally dawns upon you as you see yourself unable and even unwilling to save yourself from wrong forces inside you, and you continue to be overwhelmingly attracted to wrong things, and you more and more knowingly choose them. You become like the man who says that he can stop smoking anytime, only to find out that he cannot, and you see that we can no more help ourselves, than we can lift ourselves off the ground by pulling on our belts!
After seeing and admitting this tendency within you, and finding yourself powerless to resist it, you will finally be able to see your need for Salvation and the New Birth, because sometimes, when you quietly think about all this, there is still a small voice within you that is unhappy about it all, and that still tells you to look for help elsewhere, and that's where Salvation and the New Birth can come in and really help you! You badly need to be set free from these wrong forces within you, and to start life all over again--and this is what the New Birth is all about! Now, the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus loves us so much, that He came to this world to use His strength and wisdom for our good! Through Salvation and the New Birth, He is able to break the power of sin in our lives, and to set us free from the "prison" of this world, and to teach us to lead loving and meaningful lives! To all who ask, (and only to those who want it enough to ask), He gives a new spirit! Unlike your present spirit, which is selfish and rebellious, the new spirit loves Jesus and listens to Him, and so can be led by Him and can come to know Him as a friend!
[Note: The above text in the Understanding Life tract is followed by the text of John 3:1-21, which is in turn followed by an explanation of the Colored Bible Method.]
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