Bigger Than Me

On our car ride home from a weekend visit to the Big Apple, Amy and I
talked about getting Jada baptized. To be truthful, neither of us
have strong doctrinal impulses about the importance of infant baptism.
We understand that Jada has to own her own faith, and that ultimately
the responsibility is ours and not the church institution to teach her
the truths of the Christian faith.

For me, though, the importance of baptizing Jada at our church was the
notion of teaching her that being a Christian is more than adhering to
a distinct set of rules, more than her own personal relationship with
Jesus Christ, more even than the Christian household she is being
raised in. Rather, it is all of things in the context of a community
of people – frail and fallen and funny as they are. In fact, the
thing I like the most about the baptism ceremony at our church is when
the congregation has to stand and affirm that we accept our
responsibility in nurturing the one(s) being baptizing in the ways of
the Christian faith.

The Christian faith journey is not primarily an individual one, much
as our Western mindset would want to make it that. It is not
primarily a moral one, much as our legalistic mindset would want to
make it that. It is bigger than me, bigger than my personal
connection to God, bigger than my adherence to a specific moral code.
It is a living, breathing journey with a living, breathing people. As
an individualistic, independent person who came to faith outside of my
family upbringing, this is a challenging truth for me to accept and
live by. But in spite of that, or perhaps because of that, it is
something I want our children to understand about Christianity.