I’m lousy at
remembering the details of conversations with people, but this is what I
remember as closely as possible about a conversation I had this morning.
I received a phone call this morning from what sounded like
an elderly woman. ‘Are you the
traditional Church of Christ’? Uh oh.
I wanted to flesh this out, so I asked her what she meant. ‘I mean, the one that doesn’t have
music.’ ‘Well, we have music. We sing.’
‘That’s what I meant. I was just
wanting to make sure that you didn’t use instruments.’
After she mentioned that she had thought we had two Churches
of Christ in our town, we then proceeded to talk about why this was so. Historically we can see this division being about
personality and ‘issues’, but to me, it’s a shameful mark about the disunity of
the body of Christ. Eventually she
asked, ‘Was this the church that was
identified with J__ ______’? ‘Yes
ma’am, I knew J__, but he passed away a few years ago.’ ‘Oh, OK, J__ was the man who baptized my
husband and me, and I think it was at the church in your town.’
Side note that will
become increasingly important: I didn't know J__ when he lived here, but I have heard stories of his baptizing people, and I'm grateful for that. But from what I gather he was something of a legalist. I do know that J__ was a
contentious old guy when I knew him, who preached in a small town near here after
leaving this church. The few
conversations I had with him gave me the impression that he believed his own
church was the only right one, and that there weren’t any faithful, ‘sound’
churches anymore, except his own, including the one at which I preach. When he died, his little church was only a
handful of people who were likely as legalistic as he was. I’m not sure if it even exists anymore.
After a bit more talk about the two churches, she got to her
point. ‘I was wondering if you were
available to baptize somebody today. My
husband wants to be re-baptized because he doesn’t feel that his first one was
for the right reasons.’ Oh boy. ‘We can, but I’d like to meet with him
first. Can I talk to your husband?’
Eventually she put him on.
I could tell he was very hesitant.
‘So, why do you want to be baptized again?’ ‘When I first started attending church with
my wife, she would take the Lord’s Supper and I did not feel as if I was able
to do so. So, eventually I decided to be
baptized. After all these years I don’t
feel I got baptized for all the right reasons.’
Right reasons. What is this, an episode of the
Bachelor?
‘Can I ask you something?
Are you a believer?’ ‘Yes, I
am.’ ‘Do you believe in God’? ‘Yes, I do, and in things like that.’ Things
like that? ‘Do you believe that
Jesus Christ died for your sins?’ ‘Yes,
I do.’ ‘Do you believe you are saved
now?’ ‘Yes.’ There were a few other questions I asked
along this line, but again, I stink when it comes to remembering this word-for
word.
‘Can I ask you one more question? Do you and your wife attend church
anywhere?’ I was starting to get the
impression that he had not attended church in awhile, because I’ve met more
than a few folks who justify not going because in their minds no church is truly
faithful anymore. ‘Yes, we attend in
W_______, but we live in B_______.’ ‘Maybe
you need to talk to the elders or the minister of the church there about
this.’ ‘I’m a private man. I don’t want the show that they have when
they baptize somebody, with cameras and all that.’
The beginning of the end of the conversation likely came
from my response. ‘One of the truths I
have learned about baptism is that it is a very public act. If you aren’t doing this publicly, then would
this really be an acceptable baptism?’ Really,
would he keep from his church family that he did this?
He started pulling away for good at this point and was
working to get off the phone. But as he
did I tried pulling this train wreck of a conversation back onto some tracks.
‘Sir, let me be honest with you. It
sounds like you don’t need to be baptized again. It seems pretty obvious to me that you need
to talk to somebody at your church in W_______ about this, the elders or a
minister or somebody. Baptism is not your problem. Trusting in God’s salvation through Jesus is. In the end baptism is not showing off your
own goodness. It is trusting in Christ,
allowing him to save you.’
Somewhere in the conversation I mentioned my own ‘imperfect’
baptism at the age of 11, and how I have in the last 30 years grown in my
understanding of baptism and the grace of God.
We’re not saved, I told him, because we have perfect understanding. We’re saved by God’s grace; if I got
re-baptized every time I learned something new (and wonderful!) about baptism,
I’d have been baptized a dozen times.
At this point he said goodbye and hung up. My suspicion is that he (or actually his
wife, who likely is the one reminding him of his unworthy baptism and calling
into doubt his faith) will be calling other Churches of Christ in the area, a
traditional one (we’re all traditional around here, mind you, but that’s a
post for another time) that will re-baptize him with no questions asked. By the time I finish writing this, they’ll
probably already be in their car on the way to a traditional, faithful church
for him to get dunked for all the ‘right reasons’.
Over the course of this 10-minute phone call I confess that
I never got their names. I already
feel bad about how I handled this, and I am thinking about all the things I
should have said, how I should have quoted Scripture about the grace and mercy
of God and how only Jesus is our hope, not our goodness.
Hindsight makes us replay these conversations in our mind and makes us
feel guilty for not getting it all right.
But more than anything I feel especially bad, because this
man, likely because of his wife’s ‘concerns’, lives his life in a constant
fear. Some go to one extreme in their
thinking of ‘Once saved, always saved’…but far too many Christians I have come
across over the years think ‘Once saved, barely saved.’ In a way, I can understand why they think
like this…they’ve probably heard too many guys like J__ ________ talk about how
everybody else is wrong, and you had better be certain you get it all
right. How can you ever be sure of your salvation? More than anything, though, many never take
time to understand even the very basics of God, and ‘things like that’. Many have taught that faith is not about a relationship
with God…it’s simply a list of propositions to believe and actions to prove
their worthiness. They’re so focused on
what they think they have to do that they forget what it is that God does.
I’m not sure what I’m more upset about, though…is it the
legalism that brought him to this crisis (which is not entirely his fault), or
the fact that he has to keep what he is doing a secret from his home
congregation? Legalism can be cured over
time…but to think that faith is only a private matter, how sad is that? How has he become so suspicious of the family of God that he wants nothing to do with the church when he is being baptized?
Maybe I'm completely wrong about this. Maybe I should have just dunked him and made him feel better and gone on. He doesn't live here, so I'd never see him again likely. But regardless, I need to pray for this man:
not because he is not saved, but because he doesn’t feel he is
saved. There’s probably been little joy
in his Christian life to this point, and even less genuine Christian community
with whom he can share his concerns. And
even after he gets re-baptized, probably later today, he still won’t know any of
those things.
