Anabaptism

I recently had a conversation with a friend who was thinking about getting re-baptized.  She had been baptized as an infant in a presbyterian church, but somehow she feels it is good to do so again as a “believer”.  I use to think like that.  In fact, I was baptized as an adult TWICE.  The first time was in high school and the second time was in college.  The reason I decided to get baptized again in college was because I wasn’t sure if I was a “true believer” when I went down into the water the first time.  Baptism was suppose to be a sign of my faith and committment to Jesus.  It was my public profession of faith and the first step in my obedience to Him.  This was how I once thought.  So when my friend told me she was considering getting re-baptized, I knew where she was coming from.  It’s a bit ironic though since both my friend and her parents attend PCA churches.  As a presbyterian myself, I encouraged her not to be re-baptized and to consider what her actions would imply about the nature of baptism.  First, by getting baptized again, she would be implying that infant baptism is not valid.  By her actions, baptism is only valid if the one being baptized is “saved” and professes true faith.  I don’t think you will find any proof in Scripture for such qualifications.  Second, she is implying that baptism is about us and our faith in Jesus.  As important as that is, this is not what baptism is about.  Baptism is not so much a sign of our faith and trust in God as it’s a sign and a seal of God’s faithfulness to our parents, to us, and to our children to a thousand generations.  It is God publicly professing and affirming His covenant faithfulness to His people.  That’s what baptism is about.  It’s about God, not us.

Food For Thought:

What is my friend saying about God if she decided to get re-baptized?

What is she saying about those christians who were baptized as infants?

If it’s about us, what’s keeping someone from getting baptized a third or fourth time?

What makes baptism valid?

Sunday Sermon

(Here is what happened in me at church today)

Me: I’m so stressed and tired. Final exams are here. There’s so much going on around me. My church is going through uncertain and uneasy times. I feel like a Judas in some ways. I’m messing up some of my relationships and not being faithful to other. I should be more diligent in my studies, but my mind is elsewhere. Emotionally, I’m being drawn in a thousand directions. I feel like running away. I feel like crying. I feel like a failure. I feel like a disappointment. I don’t know what to do. What’s going to happen?

God: I love you.

Is It Really A Wonderful Fact To Reflect Upon?

“A Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?”

Sayers, the Church and Secular Work

“In nothing has the Church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand

and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become

separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as result, the secular work of the

world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the

world’s intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in

religion.

But is it astonishing? How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems

to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an

intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and

disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church

should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon

him is that he should make good tables.

Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly – but what use is all

that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad

carpentry? No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of

the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they

were made by the same hand that made Heaven and earth. No piety in the worker

will compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its

own technique is a living lie.

Yet in Her own buildings, in Her own ecclesiastical art and music, in Her hymns and

prayers, in Her sermons and in Her little books of devotion, the Church will tolerate

or permit a pious intention to excuse so ugly, so pretentious, so tawdry and twaddling,

so insincere and insipid, so bad as to shock and horrify any decent draftsman.

And why? Simply because She has lost all sense of the fact that the living and eternal

truth is expressed in work only so far as that work is true in itself, to itself, to the

standards of its own technique. She has forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred.

Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church;

that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work

must be good work before it can call itself God’s work.

Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in

his profession or trade – not outside it. The Apostles complained rightly when they

said it was not meet they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their

vocation was to preach the word. Bu the person whose vocation it is to prepare the

meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the

service of our tables to preach the word.”  -Dorothy Sayers (Why Work)

Spring Break…Beware!

When school is in session, my life is pretty much relegated to my desk and computer, without much time for anything else.  It’s fairly exhausting and so I try to take a breather once in a while.  So now after 8 grueling weeks of school, spring break is here at last.  This is a great time to catch up on everything you’ve had to put on hold or missed.  Whether that be TV shows, movies, friends, or sleep, the break gives you a chance to indulge in all of them.  In this way, spring break is a wonderful blessing and provides much needed rest.  Enjoy it while you can, but don’t let your guard down because sin, unfortunately, does not take a break.  It has plans of its own, and idleness is one of its greatest weapons.  Even a man after God’s own heart can be slain by it.  So, avoid idleness.  Be active.  It doesn’t have to involve school, if that’s what you’re taking a break from.  Do what you haven’t had time to do.  Catch up with friends, get out of the house, spend time with family.  And if you haven’t had time to spend with God during your busy season, this would be a great time to do that too.  So, during this break, get out and run, serve, and by all means, pray.  Your desk will still be there when you return next week.