Essays on Religion

Topic 7: A New Creation After the Flood

 

To an alien, it would seem very strange. The priest lifts up a baby, sometimes merely weeks old, and dunks it in water, as if to drown it. Surely they know that babies can't breathe underwater! Even in our species the gills haven't developed that young. But far from being stopped by some vigilante parishioner, everyone rejoices at this act.

Humans, am I right?

Baptism can strike us as odd even if we're not from another planet. A lot of people—even Christians—will balk at the ritual of it all. A formal, unchanging rite that hasn't changed in thousands of years.

What is baptism? Let's start with the basics. All four Gospels report that a man named “John,” a desert ascetic who proclaimed the coming of Jesus, would baptize Jews wishing to repent.

Sidenote: It's unclear to me when this practice stopped being a Jewish thing, but we know for at least a couple of years the practice existed among pious Jews.

And he said, quite simply, “I can only baptize you with water. The one who is coming—“ with John, always a reference to Jesus, “will baptize you with the spirit.”

Okay. So baptism is the immersion in water by a human, it has some connections to repentance, and Jesus baptizes in the spirit. So far so good?

This is really as good a time as any to talk about “Sacramental theory,” which people generally either get immediately, or they worry about it for months. Sacramental Theory says, in it's most basic form, that “God uses the material world to give grace to us.” No one has an issue with that, per se, but they can radically upset when that line of thinking is brought through the Bible.

“This bread is my body,” says Jesus. “Here, eat it.”

If we truly believed that the physical world was as “good” as God pronounced it, if we truly believed in the transfiguration of Christ being an elevation and transcending of his physical form, if we truly believed that it is no more scandalous for God to come in the form of a man than in the form of wheat, we would have no problems whatsoever with the Eucharist. It's when we are so shocked by God's love of the physical world (well, it is one of his masterpieces!) that we worry obsessively over whether grace can be split from the physical vehicle.

Therefore, it has been a belief of the church for nearly two millenia that the act of immersion in water carries with it the grace of a Baptism. Jesus did not ask John not to use water. His connection to all thing material is actually a nice point of study if you ever find yourself TOO familiar with the Gospel stories.

Now a Baptism is usually a bit more than a simple immersion in water. There are hymns and scripture readings and psalms and whatnot. But the key to a a) Baptism is the pouring of water, and b) The Trinitarian formula.

(That is, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”)

That is all. And it carries with it the grace of connecting your soul to God welcoming you in the church. Because of these similarities, baptism might be a unifying link between different Christian churches, since many of them accept each other's baptisms as valid.

I should point out here, very clearly, the Baptism is in no way a commitment. You do not “become Christian,” at that moment. There are other rituals for that.

We could go on about the symbolism of water for another 30 pages. Instead, I'd like to point out just one Old Testament parallel, from which I picked my title.

The flood. Think of this: The world is covered in two types of Adam's descendents. His bloodline through Noah's family, and people who choose—like him—to disobey God through everyone else.

God sends waters to cover the earth, killing the second type and letting the first survive. No imagine yourself as carrying two traits of Adam: First, you are made to live in Eden, and in the image of God, and second, you are exiled from Eden by sin and rebellion against God.

JUST like with the Flood, one of those will be wiped out and the other allowed to live.

And just like with the flood, it will only happen once.

The only other Old Testament parallel I'd like to point out is that baptism is the Christian version of circumcision. Any passage in the Old Testament referring to circumcision can be nicely read about baptism. For the curious and interested.

Baptism is largely criticized by atheists who claim that a young child can't chose baptism, and so having one baptized is a form of brainwashing.

This is the argument most often used by people who have never had children; they don't choose much of anything, and rarely something sensible. I suggest considering Baptism in the form of vaccinations (to a Christian, there's little difference). If you support vaccinating your child EVEN IF they later in life become staunchly anti-vaccine, then you can support baptizing.

I've saved for last the question you've all been asking. What does a baptism actually accomplish?

The way I see it, two major things.

First, it changes the ontological make up of the human being. Bit grandiose? Maybe. But I stand by it. Baptism grants to your soul the ability to can be continually forgiven any sin. In other words, it prepares you to enter heaven (see Jesus' response to Nicodemus in chapter 3 of John's Gospel).

The human soul, muddied by original sin, will not fit through the door to heaven, if you like that image. Baptism re-shapes it.

Second, it's kind of like a harvest ceremony in old cultures. People were grateful to the earth for giving them food, so they had a big party with all the food and celebrated the earth. It's so natural, and so reasonable.

God, giver of life, deserves our thanks above all for granting us living human creatures. This may be more fitting at a funeral, but it's so much harder then. With a baby, we celebrate the gift of life. With an adult convert, we celebrate the gift of belief in God, which is (to borrow from a popular phrase) “being born again.” Both are examples of the life bestowed on us, for which our community ought to be have a celebration.