I Stand Baptized

Sometimes I think we find it easier to imagine that our baptism was some curiosity of our personal past, that it was something that happened, it’s over with, and we move on; or that we don’t grasp the level of depth of what it really means that we have been baptized.

Can we really categorize the segments of our life, like a pie chart, and in our religious, Christian pie section we have been baptized, but the rest of us remains less than wet? When we were baptized, it was not that just we were baptized, but that the whole of everything we are was baptized.

We were not merely baptized in the moment, but baptized in the whole, our past, present and future were all brought together, in a holy moment, all our dreams and our ambitions, all our sins and our failures, all the possibilities, all the potential that lay before us, every sphere of who we are, every area of interest, every last bit of us was buried beneath and within the Sacrament, and the rock was rolled over, and it sealed us within. Grace buried itself deep within us, a life transplant was made, we died, and as the rock was rolled away, we came out of the joyous mystery something different than we were when it had begun.

We are baptized.

That’s what we are, it’s not just a curiosity of a past moment, but an enduring and irrevocable reality, we can no more become unbaptized than we can become unborn.

The whole of ourselves, with all our problems, weaknesses, dreams, ambitions, interests, hobbies and ideas was brought down into the sacred waters with us.

So can we really live a life of discipleship thinking our baptism only applies to a single sphere of our being? Rather the whole of ourselves was baptized, we are baptized.

There’s a reason why for hundreds of years a baptized person would take upon themselves a new name, it symbolized that in their baptism they were a new person, a “new creation” as St. Paul says. While I was not baptized in a tradition that kept alive that tradition, I sometimes wish I could have taken upon myself a baptismal name, though it’s been quite a few years since that day.

In some sense, perhaps because I’ve used it for so long, I’ve come to see “Xristocharis” (Christocharis) as less than a cool looking moniker, but a name embodying what I long to become in Christ, that is, in a sense, a baptismal name. If I could adopt for myself a baptismal name, it’s likely I would choose Xristocharis to be that name.

Our name, our identity, our very being and self was baptized.

I stand baptized, my whole identity bound in Christ, every part of me captive to Him. Every sphere of being in which I operate as a person is Christian, baptized in Christ, crucified to the world, dead and alive.

I’m not sure there can be any other way. I am baptized, I stand before the world today, baptized. It’s what I am, it’s all I can ever be, it’s all I want to be.

-Baptized

Abandonment to Love once Crucified

In the ideological war, where the isms clash against one another for dominance, where in a post-enlightenment and post-modern globe, Jesus stands alone, whose only militant position was that of radical love, far away from militant ideology, to suffer the world its indulgences, Jesus commands attention who breaks away from our vitriolic metaphorical cannibalism; standing alone against the war of man versus man proclaims the cessation of conflict, and marks the death of cannibalistic religionism and ideologism. If Jesus is ever to be compared to a military general it is only in His proclamation that we follow Him heel and toe toward endless and unceasing love toward one another, even to the point of dying. He is not merely some martyr for a movement, but a Movement Himself, a movement away from the world, and a movement toward unconquerable self-giving love and theocentric humanism.

For it is God who stands in Christ, suffering the abominable iniquities of the world, crucified in the world by the world and for the world; and it is through the greatest defeat that the greatest victory is achieved. For the Crucified Christ disarms His enemies by letting them simply run out of ammunition, and after all their hostile energies are spent, He wraps them up in all-embracing forgiveness, leaving even the most sadistic tyrant powerless.

Caesar for all his power and violent might, marching through the world and enslaving whole nations simply can not overcome the Crucified Man, who holding all judgment in His hands pronounces upon the Tree, “Father, forgive them.”

For there is no power which can disarm Him who has never been armed, and the weaponless can never be destroyed by the machinations of war.

Thousands of philosophies, ideologies, theologies and tyrannies all stand poised to annihilate one another, the Crucified Jesus stands alone, having overcome them all, robbing them of their might.

To all who question if love can ever overcome hate, they need only to look to the One who embodies love, and is Himself the Love of God; for all our hate, and all our anger, and all our prejudice, for all that we might, we could not stop the Son of God, who rose from the dead, overpowering and disarming Hell and Hades and leaving Death in a slump, has stood upon the dragon’s head and defiantly swallowed up the world in the Grace of God. Not only shall love overcome hate, Love has already overcome it.

And He has established His Revolution, the wildfire of forgiveness was set to blaze once and for all upon silent cruciform silhouette, the naked Body of the Son of Mary hung in the distance upon Mount Calvary; the fire it rages and it continues to ignite the hearts of those who come into contact with it. For despite all of the world’s tactics, nothing has come close to extinguishing this fire, and it ignites and consumes and burns down all that it comes into contact with, and shall, one day, at the time of His Coming, engulf the world in a final roar, and all our swords will have become plowshares and all our spears pruning shears. Even the lion shall lose his carnivorous bite and shall lay gently with the newborn lamb; the child shall play near the viper’s den and shall fear nothing.

For despite all that we may witness in the world around us, the hate and the wars and the sufferings of the innocent, the power of tyranny is failing, and our “culture war” rhetoric and all our ideological and philosophical disputations are its evidence. Though it may increase, it is all doomed to futility, the Cross has already happened, the grave has already been defeated, Death is already dead, and the Gospel is already being preached.

Behold He comes with the clouds, and every eye will see Him on that day.

And then the trumpet sound, and the Judgment, the Resurrection of all flesh, and the Age to Come forever and ever; and God will be our God, and we will be His people, and Death and Hell itself shall be thrown away like rubbish, never to be heard from again. And the Voice of Grace shall speak, and His Peace enduring forever, and the reign of the nations shall become the Reign of our God and of His Christ, forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

-Jon

Why I can’t be a Docetist

Jesus pooped.

-Jon

Holy Time-Traveling Jesuit Conspirators Batman!

It’s true, see, Jack Chick never fails, never! He’s brilliant!

-Jon

Science and Scripture

In the wild fire that is the Creationism vs. Evolution debate I find that so much is assumed, and so much is missed–often at the expense of Scripture, of science, and faith.

The way the issue is polarized on both sides just seems to make everyone talk past one another, and thus anyone who doesn’t exist on the polar ends of the “debate” seem to be left out or misunderstood altogether.

I’m neither a scientist nor a biblical scholar, but I am a thinking Christian layperson with an interest in being honest and having a view of the world and of faith that neither requires me to abandon my Christianity nor my plain reason.

First of all I see those who insist either:

A) We must conform our natural science to the words of Scripture, anything observed in the natural world must be bound to what we read in the Bible. Or

B) We, having observed what we have observed scientifically, must abandon the superstitions of ancient religious writings penned by ignorant ancients.

Neither of these work for me, both make assumptions that I hardly think are justified. In the first case I see neither honesty in regards to Scripture nor honesty in regards to science, rather both are cast away entirely in favor of a preconceived idea; in the second I see a similar dishonesty in assuming that the ancient authors of Scripture were somehow more interested in being scientific according to western, post-Baconian standards than in their faith and God about whom they write about.

What I mean is that the Scriptures are not scientific, they were never intended to be scientific, and to treat them as though they were–whether positively or negatively–is an injustice to them. And science is science and there is nothing to fear about the natural mechanics of the universe–and if Scripture makes no dogmatic claims about science then allow science to be science, and Scripture to be Scripture.

To this end I also see a third, equally, dishonest route which ones seeks to take, that is to try and reconcile Scripture and science such as to make the two same the same thing–once again this does no justice to Scripture. Thus those who take what they know of science and attempt to read it back into the Creation Narrative of Genesis chapter one are doing nothing good, they are desperately trying to make Scripture credible in such a way that it must be credible in a totally modern way–an act of futile eisegesis.

Here my crypto-Lutheranism is seeping through, because the paradox of accepting what Genesis 1 says and of evolution doesn’t escape me, but neither does it bother me. I simply see no reason to choose one over the other, I see no reason to try an force Scripture to be scientific or science to be scriptural. The paradox is fine, and I can live with it, and no injury is done to my faith nor to my reason.

Luther warned against trying to rationalize Scripture, he argued that if two passages of Scripture say different things one must accept both as true, even if that leaves one believing in a paradox (indeed Lutheranism–and Christianity at large–embraces many paradoxes of faith). Luther also warned against trying to rationalize Scripture so as to force an interpretation that artificially made one passage or another trump the other or say something it wasn’t really saying.

I want to apply that same principle here. Allow Scripture to be Scripture, allow Scripture to say what it has to say, accept what it says in good faith, but not at the expense of having to reject plain reason in regard science and the natural world nor allowing ourselves to change what Scripture says in order to conform to what science informs us of the world.

Thus the Scriptures say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and that He purposefully and organizationally fashioned all things through His Divine Command, calling into existence all things, and that He created humankind in His own image, and breathing into man’s nostrils making him a living being–and that there was a fall from paradise, a fall from grace, and so on and so forth–and this is all true; it is likewise true what science informs us about the world around us, that through time life has evolved, over the course of millions of years, and we have the fossil record to prove it.

Why I must choose one over the other makes no sense to me, why must I be dishonest to either my faith or my plain reason? And to force either into something they are not, well that would be the most dishonest of all.

I understand how absurd this position must seem to many, and I’m aware of its seeming absurdity, but I’m convinced it’s the least absurd out of all the alternatives, and it’s the most honest.

Let Scripture be Scripture.
Let science be science.

“And may God be found true, and every man a liar.”

-Jon