Hot Tubs and Baptism
For those of you who have been baptized, do you remember everything about it? I remember I was seven, it was at Zoar Baptist Church in Shelby, North Carolina, the water felt like hot tub water, and that the preacher later got fired, but that is about all I remember. I guess it is safe to say I don’t remember much about that experience because honestly it wasn’t that meaningful then.
I wish it had been more meaningful for me. I don’t like to think that this major experience that I went through has been reduced in my mind to something that happened long ago and didn’t have much significance. For real though, all I had to do was say that I knew Jesus died for me and that He was Savior of my life and then I was good to go for the baptismal pool. It seems ironic to me that it was this whole experience that paid my price in full to join the Christian church.
I guess I need to make it clear that I’m not against baptism. I’m totally for baptism because at its best, it is a great symbol of our becoming washed clean of our sins. The problem is when we as a church pressure kids into it by preaching that baptism is required for salvation, or at the very least is what keeps us from going to Hell (and that thought scared me to death!!!). I don’t know how pushed I was to becoming baptized, but I definitely knew that it would make my parents proud of me and that all the cool kids I looked up to where doing it.
The Bible doesn’t tell us the age of all the people John was baptizing in Mark 1, it just says he was out there baptizing. After baptizing the people, Mark 1:8 says he would tell them, “I indeed baptized you with water, but He (meaning Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” What does this even mean? What does it look like, or better yet feel like, to be baptized by the Holy Spirit? Wanting to know more, I looked this word baptize up. Merriam-Webster says that it is, “a Christian sacrament marked by ritual use of water and admitting the recipient to the Christian community; a non-Christian rite using water for ritual purification; purification by or submergence in Spirit; an act, experience, or ordeal by which one is purified, sanctified, initiated, or named.”
In our verse today we see at least two types of baptism, water and holy spirit, but throughout the Bible it comes down to about six different types: Jewish baptism (Ex.19:10-14), John’s baptism (Mark 1:4-8), Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:9-11), Spirit baptism (Romans 6:3-4), Christian baptism (Matt 28:19), and baptism by fire (Matt 3:9-12). John’s baptism in particular was an act in which Jews showed their belief in the coming Christ and their desire to turn away from sin and live a righteous life. I guess my point, is that they weren’t being baptized to be a part of a community. They were baptized because they wanted to show others the desire of their heart.
As a young child, I desired a lot of things: going to Heaven, G.I. Joes, pizza, dogs, cowboy boots and pistol, friends that would wrestle with me, and my parent’s approval (to name a few things). Sure I believed in God and Jesus, and all the stuff that goes along with being a Christian, but I know I never fully had the desire to seek righteousness till a few years ago. For the Christians of that day and for us today, baptism signifies the ending of our old self and the beginning of our new self as Christians and the spiritual process. As baby Christians we must grow and through our growth comes hardships (kind of like growing pains). I can’t even pretend to understand God’s timing and ways of doing things, but as I sit here I wonder why it seemed to take the Holy Spirit a long time to take affect in me to get me to want to move from all my selfish desires to being more of the servant we as Christians are to be. I guess the beauty of it all is not that it took me 15 years to want to be a Christ-follower, but that I have gotten to this point at all.
The truth is that desiring to be good and seeking righteousness, to whatever level we are seeking it, is proof enough that God is working in our lives, for we all naturally seek selfish desires. As we continue to try and live the Christian life, the transformative process we undergo after we have become a Christian may seem and most likely will hurt at times, be scary, and sometimes may lead us down a lonely path, but through it all we can find hope for the Holy Sprit is what gives us the power to keep on keeping on. Christ never promised us an easy life, but He did promise He will never leave us nor forsake us. Praise God for sticking with me when I didn’t deserve it!