More Than Meets the Eye

The scriptures referred to are Colossians 3:1-11.

One of the Great Courses I'm listening to is called The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience. Last week I listened as the lecturer, neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg, spoke of a study in which very distorted photos were shown to believers and non-believers. They were supposed to tell the researchers what they saw. The religious subjects tended to see more of what was actually there in the distorted photos as well as things that weren't. The non-believers saw nothing that wasn't actually in the pictures but they also missed some stuff that was there. The interpretation researchers took away from the study was that people saw what they were inclined to see. But to me the overlooked finding was that those who did not believe in the supernatural didn't even see everything that was actually there. They weren't more acute in spotting the concrete, which is all they believe exists; they were less observant than the believers. To me it says that having a very narrow view of reality makes you miss parts of it.

You can believe that the material universe is all that exists or you can believe that there is more to existence than what can be detected by the senses or by instruments. If you believe the former, then what is just is and what ought to be or how one ought to act is entirely up to your personal tastes. You may choose not to indulge in theft, rape, or murder because of the inconvenience of running afoul of society's laws and norms but if, through deception and power you can get away with such things, why not? You are not doing anything other than what certain animals do. And you are just an animal, are you not?

But if you believe that there is more to this world than meets the eye, and that the natural laws that govern the physical universe have analogs in the sphere of the spirit, you act differently. And if you are a Christian, who believes that God is love, that we are made in the image of that God and that the highest law is to love God and love other people in all we think, say and do, you will find yourself not only refraining from harming others but going out of your way to help them. Not because the law or society demands it but because that is the way things ought to be and the way we ought to act, and because that is in harmony with the optimal way God intended things to work.

I find it interesting that 51% of scientists, those who study the universe and discover the laws that govern it, believe in God or some higher power, and that the highest percentages of believers are in chemistry, followed by the biological and medical sciences. My guess would be that they find it hardest to believe we are merely the result of an unimaginably long series of fortunate accidents. The laws of chemistry and the way our bodies work together admit for very little randomness. Chemicals will only combine in specific ways and while an organism's chemistry and functions can vary somewhat, if they fall outside certain ranges, that lifeform will not survive. In fact there are a number of cosmological constants like gravity, the strong nuclear force, the neutron to proton mass ratio, and others that, if they were only a bit different, either stronger or weaker, they would make life in this universe impossible. Either we have won the biggest lottery against all odds—or there is a reason for our fine-tuned universe beyond what we can see.

We Christians think that there is more to this universe than measurable matter and energy. We believe the patterns science finds are real patterns created by a pattern maker and not like the pictures we only think we see in clouds. We believe the laws of nature have a lawmaker. We believe there is a purpose to life. And we believe the one who created that purpose has communicated it to us.

In a few minutes we will, to the skeptical eye, merely pour water over the head of an infant and say words which, to the materialist, correspond to nothing in this world. So they will miss the significance of what is going on here. And even we Christians, who are so used to living in the secular world most of the time, may not pick up on everything that is about to happen. So let us reflect on it a bit beforehand.

The words said at baptism are not magical. They don't change people or reality simply by being said. The whole thing only works if you understand it and take it to heart. In fact if you pay attention you will get all the elements of the gospel laid out for you: beliefs, behaviors and belonging. So we ask a lot of questions to get at and emphasize the fact that all this has a greater significance.

We will ask Sili, the child's mother, if she intends to bring up her daughter Azania in the Christian faith and life. We all know people who were last in church when they were baptized as a child. But baptism is a long-term commitment, like marriage. In marriage you are committing yourself to living a different life than if you only had to take yourself into consideration. In baptism you are committing yourself to living your life taking your Lord, Jesus, into consideration. And if you are offering your child for baptism you are committing yourself to see to it that the child is raised to grow in Christ and that you model that life for her.

Next, in the form of 3 questions, we ask the parents and godparents if they renounce all evil influences, external and internal. You cannot indulge in thoughts, words and deeds that harm yourself, harm others or harm your relationship with God and still follow Jesus. You have to make a choice.

Then we ask 3 questions about your relationship with Jesus. Do you accept him as your Savior, put your whole trust in him and promise to follow and obey him as your Lord? There are people who said the “sinner's prayer” they found in a pamphlet or book or that they said with someone who was evangelizing them and then thought, “I'm glad that's over and done.” But it's not. Jesus invites us to be born again, not to be stillborn again. Baptism is the beginning of your life in Christ. You've just signed up for a tour of duty that will last all of this life and into eternity.

Then we will turn and ask the community if they will give those entering into this commitment their ongoing support. Because the child is not only entering into the eternal life of Christ but also into the body of Christ, his church. She will from now on have brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world. Wherever she goes, she will have family nearby.

Then we all will renew our baptismal covenant. First we reaffirm our faith by reciting the Apostles Creed in question and answer form. These are the basics of what we believe. The creed summarizes the saga of God creating the world, sending his Son to redeem the world and sending his Spirit to empower us to follow Jesus and spread the kingdom of God.

We follow those 3 questions about our beliefs with 5 questions about Christian behavior. We ask if all present will follow in the apostles' teachings, which is to say the Bible with special emphasis on the New Testament. We are called to be disciples, which is just a fancy word for students. Reading and studying the Bible, discussing it with others and hearing it preached weekly is how we learn and grow in our understanding of God.

We ask if you will continue to participate in Christian fellowship. Just as it is hard to recover from alcoholism without being part of a support group or 12-step program, it is hard to be a Christian without being part of a group of others who are trying to follow Jesus. Besides, the primary command in Christianity is to love God and to love others. The church should be a community where we can practice loving others and learn how to do it better, so we can bring that knowledge and experience to the harsher environment of the world.

We ask if you will continue in the breaking of the bread, which refers to the Eucharist or Communion. As the body of Christ, we share the body and blood of Christ in remembrance of him till he comes again. As ordinary food sustains our physical bodies, the Lord's Supper nourishes our spiritual lives. It reminds us who he is, what he has done for us and how dependent we are on him for growth in the Spirit.

We also ask if you will continue in the prayers. This means both our communal prayers and worship as well as speaking to God privately and regularly in prayer. If we don't connect to him personally, our faith can become merely an intellectual exercise. So we share with him our concerns for others and for ourselves and we thank him for all he is, all he has done and all he will do.

We ask if you will persevere in resisting evil. We do not live in a world where all problems are small and easily fixed but in a world where things can and do go very wrong and do so often enough that it is tempting to simply go along with things as they are. And the temptations can be subtle and persuasive. Nobody ever says, “I am going to do an evil thing.” Instead they convince themselves that it is not that bad or it won't hurt just this once or that, after all the good they have done, they deserve a break and a little self-indulgence. We can tell ourselves that while what we are doing or letting happen is not perfect, it is a good thing...for the people who really count. And we try not to worry or even think about those for whom it will be a bad thing. We need to remember that if we look the other way, we are complicit in the evil being done.

And then we are asked whether, whenever we do fall into sin, we will repent and return to the Lord. People may refuse to repent because they persist in thinking they were right despite all evidence to the contrary. Or they may not repent because they give up on themselves. We worry that we are inducing “forgiveness fatigue” in God. But he is more forgiving than we can imagine. The important thing is to repent, to rethink our actions and way of living, to turn from our destructive and self-destructive ways and to turn to the source of all love, forgiveness and restoration. Like people in 12-step programs, God knows you might slip. The vital thing is that you realize it, acknowledge and ask God to forgive you and empower you to change. Think of it as periodic course correction.

We ask if you will proclaim the the Good News of God in Christ by word and deed. The word “gospel” simply means “good news” and originally it meant the proclamation a king's herald would make, like “Long live the king,” or “The king is coming.” Our good news is that Jesus, not Caesar or any earthly leader, is the true King of kings and Lord of lords. Our good news is that his kingdom is one of true justice and deep mercy. Our good news is that his kingdom exists wherever 2 or 3 gather in his name and act in his Spirit. Our good news is that Jesus will come again to make the kingdom a fully realized creation. The reason we say that we proclaim it not just with our words but with our deeds is not simply because talk is cheap but because we are following the example of Jesus. He not only preached the good news; he demonstrated it in his life.

We ask if you will seek and serve Christ in all persons. That's because God created all people in his image and Jesus died to redeem them all. And Jesus said whatever we do to the least powerful and privileged of his siblings we do to him, even if they are sick, imprisoned or aliens. We serve him by loving our neighbor as we do ourselves. And Jesus revealed our neighbor to be anyone we encounter. His rule of thumb was that we should do for others what we would want others to do for us.

Finally we ask if you will work for justice and peace among all people. These 2 are basic Biblical virtues. Without justice we can't have peace. But peace also requires forgiveness and repentance, rather than rigid absolute justice. And both require us to respect others as fellow creatures made in God's image.

After this we will pray for this little girl, that God will protect her, fill her with his Spirit and send her out to do his will. We will then give thanks for the water of baptism. Again this is not magic. We are both physical and spiritual beings. We are, as C.S. Lewis put it, amphibians, at home in both realms. So in the sacraments God uses what is physical to give form to the spiritual and he uses the spiritual to give meaning to what is physical.

We will then baptize her, seal her with holy oil and welcome her into the the household of God. She will be one of Christ's own forever.

To the skeptical and the unaware, none of this makes sense. But then neither does life to those without a spiritual frame of reference. We are born and we die. Nothing more. In comparison to the age of the universe, we are mayflies. However, if Jesus is right, we can live forever. And that makes everything that merely exists in time, however long it may endure, a blip in eternity.

And if we live forever then how we live and what we ultimately become is of vital importance. We can devolve into narrows souls, focused inward on ourselves and our concerns, on our regrets and reversals, eventually turning into spiritual black holes. Or we can grow into larger souls, focused on the outpouring of God's mind-expanding wisdom, ever abundant grace and neverending love, radiating his light into the darkness like a thousand suns.

We are witnessing and participating in something that is more than meets the eye. There are spiritual depths here that we have not begun to plumb. With this water we are launching this child into the center of the eternal Love that created and sustains her and all that is. Her adventure begins. And like love, it will never end.