Thai
Your honesty is refreshing, and your self-awareness is to be admired. I think you hit the nail on the head when you wrote, “I can’t fathom putting more importance on a relationship with someone I can’t see, and more importantly, someone I’m not even sure exists.”
Baptism is life’s most important commitment, not unlike the promise of marriage, and it would be ridiculous to marry someone sight unseen. It took some time for you to really get to know Alex and then decide that you wanted to make the commitment “till death do us part.” It took a lot of time together and working through issues and determining how your relationship could work. Then in the final analysis it was a leap of love and faith once your knew what you could learn about Alex, his character, his motives, his dreams, and his love for you.
Learning about God, our Father, and Jesus, our Saviour is a similar process. Baptism should be the beginning of an ever more profound deep, personal, and loving relationship with the creator of the universe. I have known many people who have jumped on the baptism bandwagon for many wrong-headed reasons: to please friends, to look good with the minister, to please family, to feel part of the group, to get married, to gain “power,” to have status in the church etc. But over time these people have not grown closer to God rather God and his way have become less and less important to them and what the world offers has become their focus. That is a very dangerous place to be, as God does expect us to keep our promises to him.
Baptism is not just a “till death do us part” it as a commitment for eternity, so you are right in not taking it lightly. There is only one way that I know of to come to love God and have faith in Him and that is similar to what you did before you married Alex. You learned all you could about him, you spent time with him, you talked to him and eventually through this personal experience you came to believe he loved you and you loved him…above all others.
With God we have the bible, that tells us all about God and his plans, his hopes, his dreams for us. It tells us about his love and his faithfulness and his promises to us and to our children. We learn of his actions in history with nations and individuals. And the more we learn about his nature, and we act on his instructions the more confidence we have – till we reach the point that we can in full assurance make that leap of faith and love and begin our journey to eternity with God.
Baptism is just the first step, the beginning of the journey as spiritual children. I don’t think of it as “now I don’t have to worry about people” though I am sure some people do. In fact, the stakes are much higher, the path is a hard and narrow one, and failure has the gravest of consequences. Yet the hope is so great and the promises so wonderful and Christ says he will never leave us nor forsake us. You are right to take your time and really “know that you know” I have known people who have been baptized three times, somehow thinking that the dunking didn’t take the first or second time, and maybe another dip in the water will give them the feeling they are looking for. This is nonsense. Baptism is only a symbol of a state of heart and mind and an acknowledgment of our need for forgiveness and our hope in God’s promises. When you come to that point in your life there will be no mistaking the change of heart and your understanding of God nor will there be doubts about the course you need to pursue.
In any case, God’s instructions work for our good, whether we believe he exists or not, and in this physical life there are physical blessings for doing the things God says to do. Sometimes as with young children, it is in the doing that we come to understand why parents require certain behaviour, and so it is with God. As we do what he asks our understanding will grow.
Love, Rebecca