" This is a bitter irony. That a faith based on staggering mysteries –the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Cross and Resurrection, the imparting of the Spirit — should have become shorn of mystery, so plodding and prosaic, so mundane and managerial is a bitter irony.
It’s an irony that Jesus’ famous statement to Nicodemus, you must be born again, has in our hands been turned into a slogan and a formula.
Out of Jesus’ mouth, in Nicodemus’ ear, that statement proclaimed a staggering mystery.
It was the ultimate antiformula. "
― Mark Buchanan , Your God Is Too Safe: Rediscovering the Wonder of a God You Can't Control
