To Simple To Understand?

There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
~John 3:1-9

Nic was one of those HIGHLY educated guys.  He was smart in the "book sense" sort of way.  After all, it takes a lot of intelligence and degrees to become a Pharisee.  People looked us to the Pharisees, because they were the ones who were supposed to know everything about everything.  They were considered the brightest of the brightest.  Nic would have had no problem solving word problems.  

So when Nic comes to Jesus, he does it at night so none of the other Pharisees would see him.  He respected Jesus enough to call Him "Rabbi" (which is Teacher).  And then says, "We all know that God has sent You to teach us."  So Nic understands that God sent Jesus to bring a message and Nic wants to know more about the message.

Jesus gives Nic the very simple truth of His message by saying "unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God."  Nic took this very literally and you can almost see his mind explode thinking he's going to have to tell his Mom, "Brace yourself, I'm heading back it to be birthed again."  Nic had trouble understanding the simple message of faith and forgiveness.  

And so do we sometimes. Think about it, how many times have you heard "I don't like Christianity because being a Christian means I'd have to stop doing what I like doing!"  My experience has been that I didn't have to stop doing anything because the things I liked to do changed.  

What about "Christianity is just a bunch of rules!"  If you think about it, our entire society has rules we are expected to follow and there are consequences if we break those rules.

Then there's "Christians are nothing but hypocrites!" True, many "christians" are hypocrites.  But many more are not.  You find hypocrites in every segment of our world.  

The message of Christ is very simple: "Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.  Love others as you love yourself."  Yes, it is just that simple!