A Social Dimension of Baptism

Man is a social animal. Both our bodies and souls are shaped by the other bodies and souls around us. We largely adopt the habits and beliefs of the people around us. This is true in proportion to how common a habit or belief is. This is why we sing “Be careful little eyes what you see” to our children.

This is why conservatives oppose same-sex “marriage” and sexual degeneracy. The public celebration of these things subverts and undermines chastity and marriage, even among those who were taught to honor chastity. “Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” Especially as that company is increasingly the dominant force in society, advertising, and politics. Because we are social animals, none of our individual habits affect only us individually. No habits of particular groups remain only within those groups. It’s no surprise that after the Supreme Court forced all the states to recognize same-sex unions as the same as real marriage, popular acceptance and celebration of sodomy and other degeneracies increased, even among communities who have traditionally rejected those things, and who even still formally reject them.

Marriage is supposed to be a stable institution that cultivates healthy sexuality, childbearing and rearing, and joyful companionship, as well as testify to the mystical union of Christ and His Church. We should be able to look at our own marriages and the marriages around us and see these commonalities. And seeing those characteristics in other marriages is helpful to our own! This is how baptism is supposed to work, too. Baptism is a testimony to you of God’s love for you. It’s His Word to you. It is supposed to ground you. It’s something solid God gives you to remind you to Whom you belong. According to the orthodox teaching, It’s no different if you were baptized as a baby in a Christian home or converted later in life. Further, when you see other Christians receiving baptism, it should remind you of your own; it should reinforce the testimony you’ve already received. The Church should constantly call to mind the promises we’ve been given in our baptisms.

But exposure, especially constant exposure, to Baptistic criticisms and practice subverts this. Where your baptism was sure and steady, a true window into Heaven through which you could see God’s smiling face, now it’s uncertain, unstable. “Was it real? Should I do it again?” When Baptists and their practice are socially accepted and displayed publicly, the man baptized as a baby has a great aid to his faith undermined. The Baptist practice becomes a stumbling block. As such, it would be way overstated and incorrect to say that the prevalence of Baptistic Christianity in America is the main driver of doubt and apostasy in American churches, even in those that practice infant baptism, but it’s not overstated to say that Baptistic Christianity does contribute to that problem, even in those that practice infant baptism.

I’m not claiming that if we recovered a uniform practice of infant baptism all of the Church’s problems would be solved. There are plenty of ways sin comes in and Satan destroys. But it would be a mighty blow against the Dark Powers if every man, woman, and child they met were marked – and knew they were marked – by the Light Himself.

Sex and the Love of Money

Sodom, Late Greece, Late Republican and Imperial Rome, Weimar Germany, 21st century USA – in each place extreme wealth is gathered, sexual perversion is prevalent and prominent. Why? I think the answer to that also answers why the love of money is condemned by the prophets and apostles in ways love of glory and power and family are not.

Money is an abstraction. Like any technology, it creates a degree of separation from the world. Consider two men wishing to mow their fields. The first man is a cash-poor man. He has to get up at dawn, take his scythe, and cut the field by hand. He is in direct contact with the field, the grass, and the tool. He can see the health of the grass. He can tell when the scythe needs sharpening or repair. He can see that he has cut too thin over there, left grass too thick here. He can see that he shouldn’t have struck that sapling with the scythe-blade, since the blade is now nicked. He feels the human cost of the work he is doing in the sweat running down his brow and the fatigue in his legs. He has a clear view of what he is doing, what it truly costs, and what it truly causes. The second man is cash-rich. He hires another man with a tractor to mow his field. He is removed from the field by two degrees of separation, which the money makes possible. He doesn’t know how the grass is doing; he doesn’t know how well the cut has affected the field. He doesn’t really know what went into transforming the field from thick, tall grass to low, neat grass. The first man knows the consequences of his action, because he feels them directly. The second man does not, not like the first man does. If something goes wrong, the first man will be able to respond immediately, and therefore limit the damage done to his field or to himself. The second man cannot respond immediately, and so problems will tend to go further and become more destructive.

You could also think of the Wall Street trader manipulating stock tickers. He has no clue what real world affects those tickers mean. He doesn’t know what families he is depriving of work or what towns he is sentencing to slow death. The money that he works with doesn’t have any straightforward or obvious connection to those things. He does not feel the consequences of his decisions. Someone else bears that burden because the abstraction of money has shifted it off him. A people who are used to manipulating money will become accustomed such burden-shifting. It becomes integral to their social and economic life.

Sex has momentous, natural consequences in the world. Maybe the most momentous and consequential. They are of an emotional, social, biological, economic, domestic, and religious character. Living in extreme wealth, though, forms you sexually in two related ways: first, it trains you to separate yourself from the consequences of your actions generally, and second, it lets you remove yourself from those particular consequences of sexual adventure which you deem inconvenient. Kids? Daycare, or abort them. Disease? Medical treatments. “Unfulfilled marriage”? Divorce. These are all very costly means of consequence-avoidance. Money becomes a shield between a person and the natural consequences of his sexual perversion. Those natural consequences are a gracious feedback mechanism in Creation. When we do something destructive, it hurts. Ordinarily, we’d stop doing that thing. Sodomites, for instance, get diseases and do not reproduce, so their lives ordinarily are short and unattractive. Extreme wealth, though, makes undermining the natural hurts of sodomy possible, so a people is able to pursue sodomy to ever greater degrees, because it never feels the painful consequences. That’s the link between money – excessive accumulation of money – and sexual degeneracy.

Moar Willpower

Two things I think are related:

1) For reasons I don’t entirely understand, it has become normal in certain parts of the Christian subculture to join the secularist crusade against any concrete application of the biblical exhortations to modesty. Suggesting that bikinis or skin-tight yoga pants are not proper public attire has been castigated as legalistic and “abusive.” It isn’t a woman’s responsibility if a man lusts as a result of seeing her curves or other anatomy. (One extreme anti-modesty zealot asserted that a Christian man ought to be able to stand in front of a string-bikini-clad woman and not think a thing except something like “this could be my daughter.”)

These anti-modesty activists wholly discount the psycho-physiological realities of male sexuality. They view people, men particularly, in this case, as brains on sticks.: detached, sovereign wills that have unlimited power to act. The only factor in what a person thinks, says, or does is what they choose. External stimuli either have no effect, or can be completely conquered if only a man chooses it.

2) More understandable to me is the increasing (or so it seems to me) interest in libertarianism. Or, at least, a popular expression of libertarianism that I’ll call market fundamentalism. For the market fundamentalist, the answer to every social and economic problem is to deregulate something. Are monopolies dominating markets and undercutting mom-and-pops? Deregulate them. Are peddlers of smut delivering their wares to ever-younger victims? Deregulate them. Are corporations polluting the commons? Deregulate them. All these problems are somehow solely the fault of the government.

The market fundamentalist cannot conceive that the market might reward or encourage evil behavior, or if it does, that a person might not be able to resist those enticements. No, if we see problems in our society and economy, then those suffering under those problems are to blame. Their only recourse is to muster up their willpower and make a better decision.

Both of these errors, along with LGBTism and transhumanism, share the same wrong-headed view of man; they all have a false anthropology. They see man as unlimited will. The only thing that matters is what he chooses, and he can choose whatever he will. There is no consideration of his limits. He is not embodied. He’s completely self-made.

We need to shore up our understanding of nature, custom, and human limits.

Scattered Thoughts on Forming and Filling

The following are things I’ve picked up from others, mostly from Alistair. I’m spitting this out here to hopefully help myself and others connect some dots. (Forgive my liberal capitalization; I’m learning German.)

God’s Work in Creation

At the beginning of Genesis 1, the earth is without form and void. It has no shape and is empty. God creates in seven days. This solves the problem of formlessness and emptiness.

Days 1-3 are days where God “forms” a particular realm, or sphere. He does this by dividing and distinguishing things. Light from darkness. Waters above from the water below. Waters from the dry land. He also named things on these days. “And God called…Day, Night, Heaven, Earth, Seas…” On these days, as I said, He is forming the creation. He is giving it structure, rigidity, making it a definite arena in which things can take place. He has established hierarchies in the very structure of the cosmos. Heaven is above Earth is above Sea.

Days 4-6 are days of “filling.” The realms which He has made, He now fills with living, breathing, communing creatures. The greater and lesser lights, along with the stars, inhabit the sphere of Heaven and govern Day and Night. The sea creatures dwell in the Sea, the waters below, and the birds dwell in the expanse of Heaven. The livestock, beasts of the earth, and Man himself walk upon Earth. Again, filling is the primary activity of the latter three days. He is imparting life and bringing communion into the cosmos. Here again, He establishes hierarchies: Man is to rule, to subdue and dominate, the other creatures.

There is then Day 7, on which God rests from His labor and hallows the seventh day.

Days 1-3 correspond individually to Days 4-6. That is:

• Day 1 > Day 4: Day and Night are formed, then filled by Sun, Moon, and Stars
• Day 2 > Day 5: Waters and Expanse are formed, then filled by sea creatures and birds
• Day 3 > Day 6: Dry land formed, then is filled by livestock, beasts, and Man

Additionally, the first, fourth, and seventh days are all concerned with Time. On the first day, the rhythm of Day, Night, Day, Night, is begun. On the fourth, the Day and Night are regulated by the Sun, Moon, and Stars. A pattern of seasons, days, and years is established. On the seventh, the weekly holy day is established as a day of rest and contemplation of the Lord’s work. So the first set of “forming” days begins with a focus on Time, the second set of “filling” days begins with a focus on Time, and the final day focuses on Time.

Man’s Mandate in Creation

In chapter 1, when Man is created, they are commanded to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and dominate the earth. This follows the forming and filling pattern. They are created in the image of God. They are created male and female. The fundamental unit of mankind is the male-female pair. Sexual dimorphism is the one differentiating factor between types of humans highlighted at creation. That means it’s very important. No other difference is noted in the creation accounts.

Chapter 2 zooms in on the Man and the Woman, so to speak. Here, the distinctions are set forth.

The Man is created from the earth. He is the man of dust from the ground. God breathes the breath of life into him, and he comes alive. He is formed outside the Garden. There was yet no bush or small plant of the field, and no man tending it. God then plants the Garden and places the Man in it to work it and keep it. God also delivered His Law to the Man there: “Do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

God saw that it wasn’t good for the Man to be alone, for the Man could not fulfill the Creation Mandate alone. The Man could tend and enlarge the structure area of the Garden, but he could not fill it by himself. God brought all the animals to the Man, partly to demonstrate this, and he named them. The Man is associated with God’s activity of Days 1-3. He copies his Father in forming the Garden and naming its inhabitants (including the yet to be introduced Woman). He provides structure and rigidity to his domain and makes authoritative pronouncements over it on God’s behalf.

The Woman is created from the Man. She is the rib, the one who comes from the Man’s side. She is formed inside the Garden. It was already planted and being cared for. The Man had already received the Law from God, and delivers it to the Woman, who does not hear it from God.

The Woman is created for the Man. She is fit for him, she corresponds, complements, and glorifies him. She is united with him to become one flesh. Her creation allows the “filling” part of the Creation Mandate to be fulfilled, and so she is associated with God’s activity of Days 4-6. She copies her Father in filling the Garden. Her gifts allow her to bring forth new life and establish communion in the Garden. Now there can be new worshippers.

Man:

• Forming (And naming)
• Works the ground
• Created outside Garden
• Made from earth
• Given Law by God

Woman:

• Filling
• Bears children
• Created inside Garden
• Made from Man
• Given Law from God by Man

Man’s Fall

The natural order is overturned in the Fall. Where God speaks His true Word to the Man, who speaks it to the Woman, who together rule over creation, the Serpent (identified with the beasts of the field, and so part of the creation) speaks falsely to the Woman, who speaks falsely to the Man, who then hides from God. The chain of authority is exactly reversed.

• Natural order: God > Man > Woman > Creation
• Sin-marred order: Creation (Serpent) > Woman > Man > God

In this, God curses all involved. The Woman, specifically, is cursed in her ability to fill the cosmos and is set to be tyrannized by her source, the Man. She was brought out of Man to receive the benefits of his labor and be a help to him. Now she will harry him and he will harry her. The Man is cursed in his ability to form the earth as he was taught and is set to be tyrannized by his source, the ground. He was brought out of the ground to receive its fruit by his work. Now the ground will turn against him.

Man and Woman are cursed in distinct ways. The Man’s task of forming the earth will be frustrated. Where he would have an orderly, beautiful, fruitful Garden, the ground will bring forth thistles and thorns. He will obtain bread, but only with great toil. The structure that he would bring to the earth will be disrupted at every turn. The Woman’s task of filling the earth will be similarly thwarted. Childbearing will be very painful. Where she would have many children in joy, there will be agony, sorrow, and death. Life in communion, her gift to creation, will be thrown into confusion and division.

God’s Work in Redemption

Christ forms the Church. He gives it structure, rigidity, boundaries, the Law. He purchases it for Himself. He subdues and dominates sinners, making them into His brothers. His work is as a king, a gardener, a shepherd, a priest, a prophet, a carpenter. He speaks God’s true Word.

The Holy Spirit fills the Church, indeed. His work is associated with the new birth, baptism, communion, nurture, peace, and unity. He brings new members into the household of God. He joins them to Christ. He imparts life to them.

The Temple is a symbolic Garden of Eden. The Church is God’s Temple. The Temple is God’s house and household. The Church is God’s house and household. (Eph. 2:19-22, 1 Pet. 2:5, Heb. 3:6, 1 Cor. 3:16) So there is a strong tie between God’s work in creation and His work in redemption. The symbols of one are just as useful in one context as the other. In redeeming mankind, He does not do away with the natural order. Rather, He puts the natural order back together again. Where before we were under the reign of sin and the curse, He frees us from that bondage so that we can walk as Man and Woman were originally intended.

Why?

All this tells us a few things, at least.

1. God created us in such a way that our vocations as both Man and Woman parallel His work both in creation and redemption.
2. There is in fact a natural order to which we should conform ourselves. Christianity, rather than doing away with such an idea, commits us to it all the more strongly.
3. Since this natural order and our various vocations parallel God’s own work, we have no just cause to denigrate that order.

I think this background will be very helpful in studying what nature and Scripture have to tell us about questions of authority, submission, sexuality, household order, and so on. Pronouncements of how things ought to be will be more compelling and persuasive if we can explain the ‘why?’ of it. Knowing the cosmic significance of our work will hopefully aid us in our performance of it.