Which Baptism to Choose?: My Story

With a child on the way, I have had to start confronting some of the realities of raising a child in the church. I already have some ground rules: no lame Christian music, no WWJD bracelets, and no corny Christian t-shirts.

Beyond that, I have been wrestling with the concern of baptism. I lean toward infant baptism (I’d say I’m 60% for infant baptism and 40% for believer’s baptism), but have a more open stance on the issue (which I’ll get to in a later post). For now, as an introduction to this series on Which Baptism to Choose?, I wanted to share my baptismal stories, because I think that has had a lot of influence on my own thinking.

I was recently asked by a friend about my thoughts on baptism, and to really explain my stance on baptism I have to start with my baptismal stories. I say stories because I have more than one: I was double dipped.

I grew up in the Lutheran church (both LCMS and ELCA), and so was baptized as an infant, which is customary in the Lutheran tradition. “The understanding of baptism in the Lutheran church is: Baptism begins a life throughout which we grow in faith and service through instruction, reminders of God’s love, and the support and example of the Christian community” (Baptism: Lutheran View, ELCA). This is basically how I grew up in the faith—I didn’t have a major salvation event or pray the sinners prayer, I just continued to grow in faith and service through participating in the church, and made the decision gradually to own my faith.

In high school though we began attending a non-denominational church where believer’s baptism was taught. I felt some pressure to be baptized again when I heard the testimonies of those who were being baptized again “for real” this time, but I never felt any pressure from the church or the pulpit itself. Part stubbornness and part confusion, I decided to not be rebaptized—even in high school I had a theological understanding that baptism was baptism no matter what denomination and should be mutually respected (I was adamant about church unity from a young age, I think).

Then came college. I started helping out at a baptist church as a youth leader and immediately felt pressure to be rebaptized. I was told on numerous occasions that my infant baptism didn’t count, and that I needed to be baptized again. I kind of balked at the beginning, but the guilt and confusion grew until I decided to be baptized again just to make sure I covered all the baptismal bases.

Getting baptized again didn’t lead to a peace of mind, it just made me a little bitter. I began to think I should have taken it back, because I was baptized for the wrong reasons, even though so many had said it was the right thing to do! In a supreme case of irony, I had turned what those eager baptists said was an act of faith and turned it into a personal work toward my salvation.

This remorse for my second baptism led me to retrace my roots through theology, and I came to terms that I preferred infant baptism to believer’s baptism, especially since I had begun to reclaim a higher view of the sacraments. I have had to revisit these views all over again recently though, because I don’t want my child to have to go through this same baptismal tug-of-war that I went through. Have any of you had a similar baptismal experience to me?

In the next post, I’ll dialogue about my understanding of believer’s baptism today.

MatterCon Recap 7: Peter Rollins, “Lessons in Evandelism”

Last week I was at MatterCon ’09: A Theological Creativity Event featuring Pete Rollins and presented by Shechem Ministries at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX.  I am recapping the event by publishing my notes for your fondest enjoyment.

In Peter Rollins’ final session he discussed the more practical ways we need to respond to a call theopoetics.

-the church is not about convincing us of something.  The point is we don’t do it even though we know we should.

-irony: you intellectually ridicule something you do in practice.

-some people lose the ability to desire.

-how do we as a community live in a counter-cultural way?

-sometimes the only way to get someone to change is to desire on someone’s behalf, to want someone to belong.

-what you need to take away from someone is the object that is not allowing someone to change.

-when we participate in the life of Christ first at conversion we are born into new life.

-liberal theology goes wrong by finding Jesus’ centrality in morality and not in death and resurrection.

-Paul is always focused on the death and resurrection, the core of Christianity.

-Jesus on the cross is stripped of everything, unplugged from everything—even from God—and becomes completely the Other.

-after conversion our identity becomes contingent because we find our true identity in Christ.

-we are the system.  We are part of the injustice.  We have created it and we re-create it.  We are enslaved to a system that oppresses us, but when we find faith in/of Christ we are stripped away from the system.

-behind the world system is blood spilt and exploitation.

-we as Christians realize the system because we have stepped outside the system in Christ’s crucifixion.

-in Christ’s crucifixion we have the veil torn and are liberated from the system.

-Christ’s death and resurrection sets us free to have a new identity in him.

-there are so many possibilities of being counter-cultural as communities unplugged from the dominant, worldly system.

-the Church is an insurrection, an institution that tries to change the world structure.

-our feeling we can’t change anything can kill us.

-we should not want revolution, hoping for change, but instead be the insurrection, living the change now.

-we show an alternative way of being, a light in the world of freedom and liberation.

-(prohibition generates the desire to transgress)

-being part of the radical contradiction of the church is to be part of the radical unplugging from the world.

-what happens in the Eucharist is not intellectual affirmation but a feeling that you are disconnected by the world.

-don’t make poverty history, make poverty voluntary: we should joyously enter into poverty.

-there is a point in Christianity where your possessions no longer possess you.

-the heart of resurrection is that Jesus leaves the Holy Spirit, that we now find God in each other as a community in action.

-if we want to know Jesus better don’t come forward to the altar, go out and find God.

-Bonhoeffer calls this religionless Christianity: religion grounds human activity while religionless living sees God as the weakness of the world, the weakness that is stronger than the world’s strength, a community that is the weakest yet changes the strongest.

-the Eucharist captures the unplugging of our community that allows us to be transformed and open to new possibilities.

-what makes Christianity so amazing is that we are a community living in the death and resurrection of God.

-in participation with the incarnation we are living the faith of Christ.

-the dichotomy of faith and works should be synthesized between the conservative thinking of conversion and the liberal thinking of the social gospel: the social gospel needs to integrate the necessity of conversion, a faith based in love of doing works without the need of exchange or the law.

MatterCon Recap 4: Peter Rollins, “Performace Dis-courses”

Last week I was at MatterCon ’09: A Theological Creativity Event featuring Pete Rollins and presented by Shechem Ministries at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX.  I am recapping the event by publishing my notes for your fondest enjoyment.

Peter Rollins, "Performance Dis-courses"

-equal opportunity evangelism: we all still have aspects of our lives that need to be renewed.
-the crucifixion has become a product.
-the role of the pastor changes with an educated congregation—now the pastor becomes a dispensor.
-the pastor should instead become the poet of God, asking questions.
-the Church is good at taking a radical voice and finding a place for it to tame the message.
-Points on the question "Is Christianity true?:

1. We are starting with different definitions of truth.
2. Is God an object we can contemplate like a biologist contemplates animal life? Can we name God?
3. Theologians try to name God by creating theological systems.
4. hypernimity: the opposite of anonymity; we don’t know God because there is too much information, the light of God is so bright that it blinds us, an overwhelming mystery we cannot contain.
5. Everytime we name God we are saying something about ourselves (or who we want to be).
6. God transcends all of our thoughts because he is imminent (so close).
7. The incarnation is the mystery of God coming close to us, a secret that remains secret in the sharing.
8. all our beloveds are universal to explore; we never know everything about our beloveds.
9. GODISNOWHERE= God-is-no-where or God-is-now-here
10. In light of new experiences we always have to rewrite the law.
11. Christianity is a religion without religion.  Both priest and prohpet together.
12. How can something exit but not be objectified?
13. Our life cannot be objectified—we can see because of light but never see the light.
14. theology becomes a theopoetics, a discourse inviting you to a new form of living.
15. the truth of Christianity is that you are changed as a result of it.  Knowledge of Christianity cannot be divorced from our modes of existing.
16. our theological discourse must be a dis/course that sends us off course and reminds us we cannot know God (absolutely).  "I pray God rid me of ‘God.’"
17. The early Christians were "athiests" in port because they rejected idolatry but also because they rejected their own inadequate conceptions of God.
18. God as holy is set apart and Other—he is Father but not like our definitions of father; he is Love but not like our definitions of love.
19. theopoetics is a discourse that opens up multiple possibilities.  The point is not to have the right interpretation but to always come back for different understandings and meanings.  We should not interpret Scripture to find one meaning but instead wrestle with and love with Scripture.  Israel, to wrestle with God, is a metaphor for how we should approach the Scriptures and God.
20. if we want to understand wisdom we have to give up the belief we can nail down one answer.

-success in theopoetics is to always return to the event that gave birth to the early church, Pentecost, and not to the early church itself.
-in theopoetics we know no more or no less than any other saint or theologian: we are all present to the event of Christ.
-our creeds are belief oriented and not praxis oriented—we should have praxis creeds, too.
-in the Bible we find a lack of belief: "we cannot know God," and an excess of belief: "God is a warrior, God is a peacemaker; God is love, God is wrath; God is unchanging, God regrets…" too much belief that it does not always hold together.
-We should have both faith in Christ (belief) and the faith of Christ (participate in life as he did—be Christ).

 

MatterCon Recap 3: Peter Rollins, “From Theo-logos to Theo-poetics”

Last week I was at MatterCon ’09: A Theological Creativity Event featuring Pete Rollins and presented by Shechem Ministries at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX.  I am recapping the event by publishing my notes for your fondest enjoyment.

Peter Rollins, "From theo-logos to theo-poetics: Re-imagining the language of faith"

-the problem with fundamentalism is not that it is violent but that it is not violent enough.
-the real violence of Christianity is in its objective violence against the system of oppression.
-life is lived forwards and understood backwards.
-if you know what you’re doing it’s probably rubbish.
-we are told to fulfill our dreams, yet our dreams reflect our present context—the most radical move is not to fulfill your dreams but to put yourself in a place to dream new ones.
-theological revolutions never come at the right time—you can’t justify what critiques the whole system
-God can become the object we use to satisfy our own desires—if some want comfort we give them God to make things neat and tidy.
-at the point you don’t need God is when you meet God.
-when you meet your beloved it creates the eternal need of the beloved: the need is retroactively constructed.
-our flesh opens to a world of infinite proportions.
-the arrival of our beloved  is still to come (and is always coming).
-we all have doubts—the important point is not to always have total belief but to participate in the tradition andd belong to community
-God rid us of "God"—everytime we think of God we must remind ourselves that God is so much bigger and so much more mysterious.
-the least important part of a gathering is the gathering itself: the pre-gathering and post-gathering are most important.
-a leader cannot take responsibility for belief: believe on the other’s behalf makes the church uniform and the congregation passive, with those who believe the pastor staying and those who don’t agree leaving.
-the role of the pastor is to offer multiple interpretations.
-symbolically leave yourself at the door and create a liturgical space without individual identities, laying down our identity as Christ emptied himself.
-only in Christianity does God doubt God: "Why have you forsaken me?"
-Christ was unplugged from everything.
-in consumer culture we allow groups/advertisers to hold inappropriate beliefs so we can believe rightly but not act rightly (i.e., we allow ourselves to disagree with the philosphy and operations behind businesses like sweatshops and slavery yet still buy their stuff.).
-Bruce Wayne does not connect how his company Wayne Industries feeds the subjective violence of Gotham City as a behemoth of the military-industrial complex and weapons supplier.  Batman fights the very people he arms with weapons or supplies with poverty and a culture of violence.

 

MatterCon Recap 2: David Versluis and Kevin Meaux

Last week I was at MatterCon ’09: A Theological Creativity Event featuring Pete Rollins and presented by Shechem Ministries at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX.  I am recapping the event by publishing my notes for your fondest enjoyment.

David Versluis, "Christian Relationships: our relationship with God through Art and Text"

-a painter must fail in Christian art; perfection is not the goal of the Christian artist.
-if you try to copy the Bible you will become a faker.
-God’s world, along with the elements of design, typography, pattern, colors, lines, etc. are all created by God or God’s image bearers and unfolded in time.
-Design geek note:triangular serifs are characteristic of Latin fonts.
-there is something about the physicality of paper that cannot be captured digitally.
-shock is not fitting for liturgical art.
-the artist must be conscious of what the audience is willing to accept within a religious gathering.

Kevin Meaux, Poetry Reading

Kevin read several of his poems from his book Myths of Electricity (I believe) and his notes, as well as a poem published as a broadside with Shechem Press.  Meaux’s poems were absolutely breathtaking and heavy, in the sense that his poetry is much more weighted and stressed then other poets today, who take longer to elaborate and stress musicality more then efficiency.  Meaux’s poems were short, pithy, and condensed—like Ted Kooser’s poetry.  Meaux has the rare ability to write in new and tantelizing ways while rooting his poetry in the poets of the past.  His reading filled the chapel with images of churchyards and electricity.  It is one of the best readings I have been to in a while.