Kobe Byrant, former basketball stud muffin of the Los Angeles Lakers, passed away yesterday in a fiery helicopter crash near Los Angeles.
The tragedy included eight others who were onboard the craft, which included Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter, Giana.
Before anyone really knew anything about the crash itself, Kobe was being lionized as a “legend,” “idol,” and a “king.”
What is completely missing from the conversation is the question, Was Kobe born again?
No, not was Kobe Roman Catholic, knew of a higher power, or did he meditate frequently with a favorite Hollywood spiritual guru?
You see, it doesn’t matter if Kobe Bryant was the greatest thing since sliced bread, as a basketball player; he may very well have been—although in my opinion, he was simply exceptional, not the greatest.
What matters is whether God looked down upon Kobe, sometime during his life on earth, with the grace necessary to bear him into His kingdom, thereby granting him forgiveness of his sins and newness of eternal life.
Because if God never did what only He can do to give eternal life through a mysterious act of His Spirit that Jesus said was the equivalent of knowing from where the wind commences to blow and then terminates, then all the lauding or mourning of Kobe’s life or death will be done in vain.
Jesus said as much when he told a very religious individual by the name of Nicodemus the same thing.
Jesus emphatically declared, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:3), which ought to be the ultimate goal in every human being’s life; to live with God in eternity after a person closes his eyes in death.
In fact, Jesus was so emphatic about the necessity of being born from above that he repeated himself three times to Nicodemus and then told him, “Don’t be amazed” (Jn. 3:7).
It is a thought that often gets lost during times when high-profile individuals pass from this life into the eternal realm.
Maybe it is because too many individuals do not want to think about their own mortality that they refuse to think about what really matters when it comes to the temporariness of life and the certainty of death.
Yet, according to Jesus, being born of God is what really matters; not whether someone belonged to a certain religious social club, or has performed all kinds of seemingly benevolent deeds to better humanity, or could dribble and dunk a chunk of cowhide filled with a rubber bladder through an iron hoop with the greatest of ease to the awes and accolades of those who cannot.
Judging by what the “black mamba”—a rather dark designation that Kobe seemed to embrace as a description about himself—has said most recently, it would seem that the answer to the question is unfortunately negative.
Kobe was not born again, which is something that ought to cause every human being to mourn far beyond knowing of his sudden passing.
His death should cause everyone to pause and reflect upon his or her own eventual mortality and ask, “Am I born again? If so, how do I know for sure? If not, then what can I do to make sure that when my time comes to pass from this life to the next that my destination is God’s kingdom and not the devil’s hell?”
Those are questions I will explore later.
For now, though, it saddens me to think where Kobe Bryant most likely is and how many are going to try to gloss over or ignore that reality with words or arguments that will attempt to make Jesus out to be a liar.
