When I get baptized a week from now, it won't be my first time.
Not technically, anyway. My parents did baptize me as an infant.
That means some minister held me in his arms and sprinkled some water over my forehead while my parents pledged to raise me in the faith. The ceremony likely concluded with the congregation agreeing to support my parents in this endeavor.
My parents did raise me in the faith and many fine people within the church did give support over the years. And for that I am – and will be – eternally grateful.
And in that sense, that baptism ceremony 55 years ago proved to be the genesis of something beautiful. My faith became my own during my college years and I have had ample evidence throughout my life of God's goodness and His capacity to forgive.
The more I knew of God, the more I wanted to know. I completed a Master of Divinity degree in the late 1990s and now I am working on a Doctorate of Ministry degree.
But it's funny - the more head knowledge I have gained about the Christian faith, the more I value heart experience.
I think it's interesting how often the Apostle Paul uses the word "know" in his letters, mostly in reference to what his audience already knows or should know. When he speaks about what he personally wants to know, he says this:
"I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil 3:10-11)
The knowledge Paul sought was experiential knowledge. His faith was never merely comprehending a set of propositional truths about God and then giving mental assent to them.
Similarly, I have no desire to debate the necessity or the appropriateness of being "rebaptized" or the merit of sprinkling versus full immersion or whether it's proper to baptize infants. None of that is of ultimate concern to me.
It is simply the experience of baptism I am seeking. I was too young to appreciate it the first time around.
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