Just Because You Can Explain It, Doesn’t Mean You Understand It

About ten years ago, the denomination to which my church belongs, was deciding on whether to accept and perform infant baptisms. Not all church groups accept infant baptism. Baptism is a ceremony of water where the person is – depending on church tradition – either immersed and taken back out of a body of water like a pool or a stream or something like that, or they have water sprinkled on their heads by hand or even by pouring with a bowl or other implement. Baptism serves to represent one’s death and resurrection. It’s also meant to represent one’s washing. Baptism is an identification with the death and resurrection of Christ. In baptism, we identify with the death of Christ, saying that our old life is dead and we are resurrected, born again into the new life. Baptism is the primary sacrament of the Christian tradition.

Thus, some churches disallow infant baptisms, saying that a kid doesn’t know what’s happening. Obviously, a baby doesn’t know what’s going on, except that he is getting wet. Thus, the reason some churches do not accept, endorse or practice infant and child baptisms is because they say that a child is unable to understand what he is doing, and therefore, to understand the significance of the death and burial and resurrection of his old life into his new life and identification with Christ. And that’s a valid argument.

On the other hand, scripture records that when Mary, mother of Jesus, went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth was about six months pregnant with john the Baptist (or John the Baptiser, as he’s come to be known in modern times). And here is this six-month-old foetus in Elizabeth’s womb. And what did Elizabeth say? Elizabeth said that when Mary showed up and greeted her at the door and said whatever it is they say – I don’t know, Aleichem shalom? – and greeted Elizabeth at the door, the baby in her womb jumped because he knew that his messiah had come.

Think about that for a moment. A six-month-old baby and a younger-than-six-month-old baby – not even babies, they were unborn foetuses – but in the womb as a six-month-old foetus, John the Baptist knew that Jesus was in Mary’s womb, and that he had come to visit.

If you were to speak to a baby, of course you wouldn’t get any answer. If you were to speak to a child, the child would not be able to explain to you in a rational manner, what on earth baptism means. The child may not be able to explain much of anything in a rational manner to you. But is that to say that they do not understand entirely what’s going on?

There is understanding that is done in the intellect, in the rational mind, and there is understanding that takes place on a subconscious level, a feeling in your gut. A feeling and understanding, a knowing in your non-rational mind. It’s clear that the heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of. I can’t remember who said that quote, which I believe I’m paraphrasing, but it’s clear.

You may be in love with two different people and you don’t know which one to choose, so you put both their names down on two separate pieces of paper, divide the paper into two columns each and on one side you have the pros and on the other side the cons. And then you list out the pros of person A and the cons of person A, and then you list out the pros of person B and the cons of person B. And at the end of it, it’s very simple, isn’t it? You tally up the pros and cons of both persons. You subtract the total number of cons from the total number of pros of each person and you see which person ends up with the higher integer and that’s the person that you choose to spend the rest of your life with.

Obviously, you know that’s not how it works. Such an exercise may be helpful basically to get your mind out of the way to realize what your heart already knows. Your heart already knows which person you have already chosen. So, there is a knowing that is deeper and higher, at the same time, than rational intellect. Intellectual knowing is only ten percent of what you know. That’s a generous proportion, by the way.

Back to history of ten years ago, when infant baptism was being debated – the debates had been concluded and the denominational headquarters, the centre, was trying to work out how to explain their position to the rest of the individual churches in the denomination. And the arguments for one side was that the children don’t understand what’s happening in baptism. And on the other hand, there is the argument that understanding goes beyond intellect and rational thinking to subconscious spiritual knowing that even a foetus in a womb – and let me just digress here for a moment to say that this is not fables and fairy tales. In psychology today, people do examine prenatal trauma. They say that what happens to you in the womb could have a bearing on why you’re so screwed up as an adult. So, it may not be an exact science, but clearly there is knowing even in the womb. And beyond the womb, even as a grown adult, there are things you know that you cannot explain with your mind.

So, back to this friend of mine who said that if we argue that children should not be baptised because they don’t understand what baptism is, then we are assuming that just because we are adults and we are able to think rationally, that we understand what baptism is. Just because I can write a paper to explain to you the parables, the allegory of baptism, and I can write you about some historical background of baptism, and I can write to you some assumptions of what baptism means, it doesn’t mean that I understand baptism. Because understanding goes so much deeper than rational, intellectual capability. It comes to a point where you know or you don’t know, and sometimes you can’t even explain why you know. So, when you’re dealing with certain things, things of the spirit for example, they are mysterious and they are mystical.

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Alpha Lim
Mystic Preacher Man
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Feel good. Do good.

#FUELGOODTRIBE 2017-05-08