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some thoughts on baptism (part 2)

This is a continuation of my series of posts on Christian baptism, unpacking my thoughts and supporting my reasoning for getting baptized. Specifically I am digging into the 8 statements I made in Part 1. Today, Statement 1…

1. Baptism is not necessary for salvation
There are very few denominations within Christianity that support baptism as a necessity to salvation (most notably the Church Of Christ), so I’m not going to spend too much time digging into this one.

Among some of the verses that are used to support a view of baptismal regeneration include Mark 16:16…

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned.”

At first glance it appears that this verse supports the idea that both faith and baptism are required for salvation. But notice the difference in the second half of the verse – while it is indicated that both ‘belief’ and ‘baptism’ will lead to salvation, it merely says in the second half that a lack of ‘belief’ will lead to condemnation. This verse teaches that ‘belief’ is essential to salvation – it does not teach that ‘baptism’ is.

One prominent example that comes to mind when considering faith as the critical element of salvation is the conversation had between Jesus and the criminal on the cross (Luke 23:40-43). Here Jesus promised a sinful man that he would “be with him in paradise” simply through belief – no opportunity for baptism.

There are a multitude of verses that support the concept of “faith alone” as the requirement of salvation, among them John 3:16, Acts 16:31, Romans 3:28, Romans 11:6, and Ephesians 2:8-10.

While browsing the web for some articles on baptism, I found one particularly interesting which de-constructs the primary verses of baptismal regeneration. If you’re interested in reading further, feel free to check it out here.

2007
11/20
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CATEGORY
baptism
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in defence of bear grylls

Earlier this summer there was a lot talk in the media about Bear Grylls, his Discovery Channel show Man vs. Wild, and the accusation that he staged and faked some, if not most, of the events depicted in the show.

In truth I should have written this post a few months ago to lend my support to Bear, but the media reports kind of blew over, Bear made some statemtents on his own behalf, and so I let it go. Then Jon had to go and get me all worked up over it again last week, so this is for you Bear:

Many who have taken hold of the media reports on the Man vs. Wild point to three primary areas of question, which I’ll outline below. But first, those same people often point to a similar Discovery Channel show, Survivorman, as the better and “more pure” alternative to Man vs. Wild, and to that I will say this…

Man vs. Wild and Survivorman are different shows with different intents. I liken it to this analogy: Survivorman is a show about enduring the wild, purposefully, with only the bare essentials – kind of like a road trip without a map. Man vs. Wild on the other hand is like a wilderness “worst case scenario” – like a road trip where your car goes flying off into a ravine, completely destroys everything, and now you have to fumble your way out back into civilization. They’re both fine shows, and personal preferences may lead you to watch one over the other, but keeping in mind that the end purpose is different in each, and I think it’s a stretch to say one is intrinsically better than the other.

Anyways, the critics of Man vs. Wild have pointed primarily to the following three issues:

  1. Bear Sleeps In Hotels: They say that Bear sets us up to believe that he is surviving in the remote wilderness for a week, but instead sleeps in a cozy luxury hotel and eats blueberry pancakes each morning. However, the show has always stated in the opening sequence that in instances of severe danger or in matters of “life or death” Bear can receive help from his team, producers, or outsiders. If I take that for what it’s worth, then yes, there have probably been some pretty extreme nights out in the wilderness, and in the interest of human life someone made an executive decision to get the team out of danger. On the other hand, there have been plenty of documented nights in the wilderness where Bear legitimately set up camp and suffered through the night, and during some pretty rough weather as well. Case in point, Episode 3 – The Coasta Rican Rainforest – downpour all night long, and he was sick as a dog too. These instances of sleeping in hotels every night and eating pancakes are a little over dramatized by an overly-zealous British press.

  2. Bear Can’t Make His Own Raft: In one episode Bear escapes from an island using a hand-built raft, but whistleblowers “outed” him by indicating Bear had to be shown how to build the raft first, then it was torn apart and Bear built it again for the camera. I wouldn’t call this an earth shattering discovery… It is no secret that in each episode Bear relies on the wisdom of local survival experts at each location he is in, and these survival experts are credited in each show. Furthermore, Bear has indicated that he goes to each location several days early to get a lay of the land, meet with local experts, and confer on particular items that he may encounter while shooting the episode. I liken it to a reporter doing research – Bear does research by engaging with the locale first and then presents his findings during the episode. Bear just happens to be very qualified for this particular genre of research… it’s not like they threw Matt Lauer out there.

  3. Bear’s Remote Locations Not So Remote: Another aquaintance who is evangelistic on Survivorman being better than Man vs. Wild [what is it about you Surviorman people?] pointed out this YouTube clip. The clip shows a location on a Hawaiian lava field where an episode of Man vs. Wild was filmed, and then pans far to the left to show a road with cars driving on it, implying that Bear’s remote wilderness locations are in fact not so remote. We have to remember that Man vs. Wild is a television show, and this particular show is not intended to be a “diary” of a week in the wilderness [Survivorman]. This show is intended to demonstrate survival options – tools to employ if you are ever caught in a similar situation. Secondary to this, I believe, is the idea that Bear is out there on his own trudging through all of this hundreds of miles away from civilization. And so if on certain outings the camera has avoided showing certain roads, or buildings, or telephone lines for dramatic emphasis, then fine – it allows the episode to maintain consistency and keeps us focused on the actual content, which is how to protect your hands by climbing through the lava fields using your socks as gloves.

I’ll concede that the nature of the show likely set us up to believe certain things that weren’t necessarily 100% true. I’ve come to the conclusion that this wasn’t done with any deliberate malice, but rather was done in the effort to create a captivating and engaging television show to demonstrate “worst case scenario” survival techniques. Since the allegations I believe Bear has been very forthcoming regarding the history of the show, and specifically I would want you to read this very transparent posting from Bear on his personal blog as well as this article in Outside Magazine which clears the air on a lot of the issues above.

So let me end with this… Say what you want about Bear Grylls – call him a panzy, a fake, or the “adventure equivalent of a cheese souffle” for all I care – but first I want you to go visit your local zoo, find a fresh pile of African elephant dung, hold it above your head to squeeze the juice out and take a long hard drink.

… Until then, enjoy Man vs. Wild for what it is as you sit comfortably in your couch watching the Discovery Channel in your warm and heated house, eating pizza and drinking Coke. As for me, it is DEFINITELY time to be getting back to work….

2007
11/19
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CATEGORY
unsolicited rants
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fresh young turkey

This is our Thanksgiving turkey! We chose him last night:

We’re really excited!!

2007
11/17
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CATEGORY
steph
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some thoughts on baptism (part 1)

A friend recently asked me about my thoughts on baptism, knowing that I was recently baptized as a step in becoming a member of my church, Grace Community Church. I grew up Methodist, as did he, and like myself was wrestling with some of the implications that went with the Methodist practices of baptism vs. your typical Baptist practices (and of course, the ultimate question includes scripture’s view of baptism).

So here are some basic statements regarding these two views of baptism:

  1. Methodist’s practice the concept of “infant baptism”, which is to say, several months after a child is born within the church the baby is baptized via a public ceremony which generally involves the sprinkling of water over the baby’s head and some words of dedication spoken by the pastor.
  2. Baptist’s practice the concept of “believer’s baptism” and is only viewed as official when the believer is baptized via full immersion
  3. Neither denomination claim that baptism is essential to salvation. Both view it as an important outward sign of dedication to the Christian faith and an integral part of our Christian heritage.

The truth is that I have wanted to fully unpack this subject for quite a while, and I get to rambling on these blog posts so I’ve decided to break the topic up into a few segments that I will post over the course of the next couple weeks. But to kick things off, below is a quick breakdown of my thoughts on baptism that ultimately led to my decision. I will support these statements in the posts to come…

  1. Baptism is not necessary for salvation
  2. Baptism is a powerful symbolic gesture that publicly indicates faith in Christ
  3. Baptism completely lacks meaning if it is received prior to making a conscious dedication of faith, therefore I fully support the concept of “believer’s baptism”
  4. Baptism does nothing to “cleanse” children of original sin
  5. The Methodist standard for baptizing children is misguided and lacks a solid scriptural foundation and fails to capture the spirit for which baptism was originally intended
  6. Baptism is intended to symbolically capture the transformation that happens in salvation – death to oneself, and new life through Christ. Baptism by immersion captures this the best and I find the practice of “sprinkling” or “pouring” particularly lacking
  7. Baptism needs to be understood from a historical perspective – including both foundational Christian and Jewish thought – not just the perspective protestant denominational differences
  8. It is a church’s own prerogative whether or not it requires baptism as part of church membership, and this is an acceptable practice

A few years ago, when I first started attending a Baptist church, I was actually offended to hear that I would need to be re-baptized if I intended to join the church as a member… as though my original Methodist baptism as a baby was not good enough. I put it off for a couple years, changed churches in the process, and after a lot of thought came to the conclusion that my theological upbringing had not given me a solid scriptural view of baptism.

Scripture treats baptism as a public declaration of faith, a symbolic gesture of the death of the sinful self and rebirth as a child of God, and the beginning of a life of ministry devoted towards God.

Since I was baptized as a baby I did not have the chance to make a public symbolic declaration of my faith as part of my eventual conversion experience. In retrospect, if I had my say when I was 6 months old I would have held off on my baptism until 10th grade which is when I made my first conscious decision to become a believer. That wasn’t the case of course, so I found myself caught in this odd place where I had already been baptized, I had made a public declaration of faith multiple times later in life, and yet my original baptism did not stack up to the standards of Baptist church membership.

Ultimately I came to the personal conclusion that my original baptism lacked the symbolic meaning that I felt it should carry. It was little more than a dedication ceremony involving a handful of water and a few lines of recitation on the part of the congregation. And while my current church “required” that I be baptized according to their standards, I had come to the personal conclusion that those standards were more in line with what God originally intended and therefore I made the decision to be baptized again – as a believer, fully immersed, and grasping the full weight of the symbolic practice.

That’s the topic in a nutshell, and I hope to dig into this a little further and explain some of my 8 statements above… it will be good for me personally, and for the purposes of discussion. And if you have any personal thoughts about those 8 statements, feel free to respond and start the discussion… it’s certainly an interesting topic.

2007
11/10
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CATEGORY
baptism
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ok fine… maybe

OK I concede, sometimes my job has its high points… I’m posting this from my new iPod Touch… so ha, suckers!! On wait, I forgot for a moment that I still sit in a cubicle.

2007
10/29
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CATEGORY
music
work
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autumn in five hundred words or more

Autumn does weird things to me. Autumn is the best season of the year, but I find that I’m generally the most dissatisfied with life during these months. Something about the changing colors of the leaves, the coolness in the air, rainy afternoons, darkness coming earlier. It makes me quiet.

Autumn is the season of time slipping away.I find myself listening to highly emotive music during autumn: Sigur Ros, Fionn Regan, The Frames, the new Radiohead album. This music seems to capture everything I feel, but I can’t tell you what those things are. That’s just between me and the song.

It’s raining right now. I’m sitting at a coffeeshop outside of Chicago. Radiohead’s song “Reckoner” sounds like the sun rising.

I wonder if artists ever give thought to the time of year that they release their albums. Music has a season. Well, I should say, that certain types of music remind you of certain seasons of life. Autumn is not the season of pop music. Autumn is for Sigur Ros, Fionn Regan, The Frames, and the new Radiohead album. This is when they should release their album. Matchbox20 should have waited until summer. But labels don’t think about that – they just want to get it out in time for Christmas so that their stock price goes up and shareholders are happy.

Work has difficult recently. With so much music, much of it sounding the same and mediocre, it’s easy to get jaded. Many of these artists are legit, and they mean what they write, but I’m so far removed from all that that it’s often hard to tell the difference. “Can you get me homepage on iTunes?” I don’t know… maybe… can you make your album not suck?

I think I’ll get some coffee.

I’m not sure what I’m passionate about right now. Some days it’s music, some days it’s climbing mountains. Some days it’s theology, and others it’s… well, whatever… I feel mediocre at a lot of things. I hate mediocrity. I have trouble staying focused on things. Time is slipping away with the autumn and I want to keep moving. I do not want to sit in a cubicle anymore.

I’m in Chicago this weekend helping Beau book some gigs with college campuses. I love talking to the college kids, I wish we had more time to do it. That’s hands on music industry right there.

If I could make some of these side businesses profitable I could easily get passionate about that. They don’t seem to want to be profitable right now. I might be stuck in the cubicle for a while.

I think we should move to Montana, live off the land, and climb mountains.

And study theology.

And write music.

Autumn just makes me feel empty. I’m happy that the colors are changing and that the air is cool, but I don’t feel happy. The rain and darkness do not make me feel sad. It’s just quiet and quiet equals empty, and I’d rather not talk about it. It’s good for a drive, across Indiana – long, flat, boring, endless Indiana, with the rain coming down and Radiohead’s song “Reckoner” playing asking the sun to rise.

2007
10/26
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CATEGORY
life
work
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anniversary weekend recap

So we made it two years! Celebrated our annivesary this weekend in Charleston / Savannah. It was good times and we had a lot fun. This is a week late, and this is probably much too long for a blog, but here’s a recap:

To start, somehow Steph and I have this uncanny ability to enter every city we visit via the ghetto. I’m not sure how this happens, or how we continue to put ourselves in danger like this… we’re gonna get mugged someday for sure. St. Louis, New Orleans, Tuscaloosa, Pensacola, Columbus, St. Louis, Atlanta – Steph and I can give you narrated tours of the ghetto in each of these fine American cities. This trip was no exception – add Charleston, Savannah, and the ‘burbs of Atlanta to the list.

THURSDAY:
We drove to Conyers, GA, just outside of Atlanta, simply to spend the night and get us halfway to Charleston. Let me tell you – Conyers, GA, yeah, ghetto. Hotel in Conyers, GA? Ghetto. But we’re really cheap and we shouldn’t have expected anything else when paying $36 for a night.

FRIDAY:
Drove to Charleston. Checked into hotel in North Charleston. North Charleston = ghetto. North Charleston is definitely the armpit of South Carolina – the stench emanating from the area around our hotel was both incredible and mind boggling. We pinpointed 3 distinct smells, each of which ranked near the top of the list of “worst smells ever in the world”. So we didn’t spend too much time at the hotel and got ourselves down to Charleston.

Wow. Charleston, amazing city. Vintage and beautiful. Really cool downtown, and very active even at night. I loved the fact that the main streets of town were essentially like a shopping mall turned inside out… you entered all of your typical “mall” stores (Bananna, J-Crew, Pottery Barn, etc.) from the street, so you didn’t have to spend half your day walking around stale mall halls with flourescent lights… rather, you spend it walking around the streets of beautiful Charleston.

The Battery was really cool, and the houses just amazing. Really neat park at the end of the penninsula with the old Civil War cannons.

SATURDAY:
Spent it wandering around Charleston, just relaxing. Went over to Fort Moultrie in the afternoon, a fort used in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Saw the ocean there, and then drove a little bit farther to an actual beach and watched the ocean for a bit.

Supper was at Joe’s Pasta back in Charleston… relatively unmemorable, except for the fact that we had the most forgetful waitress ever… how ironic. Then we spent a relaxing evening at a Starbucks that was converted from an old bank building (large vault included).

SUNDAY:
Started things off with a very enjoyable breakfast with our good friends Brad and Joy Pitner at the Charleston Cafe (best stuffed french toast ever). Brad and Joy used to work at Gotee and moved to Charleston to start a kitchen store called The Coastal Cupboard, which is definitely the funnest kitchen store we have ever been to. They’ve got a great (and unique) thing going – I’ve never seen so many choices for spatulas – and we’re very proud of how well they are doing. They were kind enough to provide us with a few tasty treats for the road – they were great, thanks guys!

Post Coastal Cupboard we headed on down to Savannah and spent the afternoon downtown hanging out under some really cool (what I think are) Cypress Trees, walking amongst really old moss covered buildings. Another fascinating, historic city. Did you know John Wesley, founder of the Methodist denomination, got his start in America in Savannah? Niether did I. Do you care? Unlikely.

We spent the afternoon at Tybee Island, on the coast again and saw a cool lighthouse and took some pictures on the beach. Apparently the Air Force lost a nuclear bomb off the coast of Tybee in 1958 and never found it. Oops. We ended the evening with a fantastic dinner at Pearl’s Saltwater Grille back in Savannah, which included a marvelous tuna steak for me and the BEST hushpuppies I have ever had in my entire life. Before we left I had the waiter fill up a to-go box with all the hushpuppies he could find and I’ve been eating them for the last week.

So that’s the trip. We drove back Monday, narrowly escaped rush hour in Atlanta, and got home just in time to go to bed. Don’t stay in Conyers, GA. Happy Anniversary to us!

2007
10/17
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
steph
travel
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dear radiohead

Thank you for the new album. I was pleased to be able to download it from your website this evening and pay whatever price I desired to purchase it. I happened to spend $5.00, and I hope that’s ok with you. You made the purchase process really simple and I was happy to find that the entire process took less than four minutes. So now I’m about to load the tracks onto my iPod and listen to the album for the first time. I’m looking forward to it and I’m sure it will be great.

Thanks
Matt

2007
10/14
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
music
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the big plunge

For the past year and a half Steph and I have been going to Grace Community Church, an incredible church which we enjoy very much. Pastor Scott is amazing, the music is great, and we’ve made a lot of great friends (who are actually our age, married, and don’t have five kids… not that there’s anything wrong with kids).

So we figured, this is the place, so we’re going to become members. Well, Grace Community is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Baptists love their dunk tank. That’s all fine and well, but for a guy who grew up Methodist (and was baptized as a baby 26 years ago) that’s always been a bit of a hurdle for me to get over. I mean, what, was my orginal baptism not good enough? What’s the difference if I get baptized as a baby, or if it’s actually by immersion?

Well, this Methodist was finally broken. Baptism was originally intended to be a public symbolic act of believing in Christ, once they became a believer. And the death and resurrection of Christ is symbolized through the going-down and coming-up from the water through baptism.

So today I got baptized and became a member of Grace Community Church! A cool experience and worth the 26 year wait. As I was telling someone earlier, the Methodists got me on the Heaven waiting list with infant baptism… glad I’ve got my reserved seat now though. Thanks Stephanie, Brian and Krista, and Rachel Ray for coming!! Here’s a post-dunk picture for ya, note semi-wet hair.

2007
09/30
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
baptism
2 comments

i’m actually posting about weather…

Finally, a cool enough weekend where we can actually turn off the freakin’ air conditioner and open the windows. This summer has been long enough. The hottest on record they say, and I for one want to be done with it.

So, to celebrate, I’m going outside to play.

2007
09/15
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
unsolicited rants
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