I will be preaching on the baptism of Jesus this Sunday and it’s caused a lot of self reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n
I have been looking for a word that describes how I feel regarding my own baptism as an infant.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Resentment <\/i>feels too strong, but it is appropriate in a sense – I do wish my parents had allowed me to choose my own baptism when I was ready.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Discontentment <\/i>might be a better choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Disquiet <\/i>or vexation <\/i>could work as well. (Yes, I am using an online thesaurus to help me figure this out.)<\/p>\n\n\n
Misgiving<\/i>?<\/p>\n\n\n
Annoyance<\/i>?<\/p>\n\n\n
A little bit of all of those?<\/p>\n\n\n
Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n
And it’s not just because I have switched theological teams. It’s true I grew up Methodist and now pastor an American Baptist Church, but these feelings have long been with me.<\/p>\n\n\n
Don’t get me wrong. I am all for new parents bringing their babies before the church, asking for prayer support, and pledging to bring the little one up in the faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But let’s call it “infant dedication”, not baptism.<\/p>\n\n\n
Because dripping some water on an infant’s head seems to reduce baptism to a ritual.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And if it’s nothing more than a ritual, why is baptism stressed so often throughout the New Testament?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I will be preaching on the baptism of Jesus this Sunday and it’s caused a lot of self reflection. I have been looking for a word that describes how I feel regarding my own baptism as an infant.\u00a0 Resentment feels too strong, but it is appropriate in a sense – I do wish my parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7720,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7719\/revisions\/7720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}