Surrender: Baptism

I wonder if you have been baptized, or Christened? I am a British Baptist. So as you can imagine I have a particular view of Baptism. It’s a view that’s held by a lot of other Christians too these days but, back in the day, these views would have gotten you killed. Usually by drowning – because people back then had a weird sense of humour.

 

Anyway, I’ve been asked to do a blog on baptism. And I want to start by having to get a bit technical about two Greek words. We often hear the phrase “believe and be baptised associated with baptism”, and it’s these two words “believe” and “baptism” that I want to quickly look at before we get to the fun stuff. Πιστεύω or pisteuó is the Greek verb that is translated as believe. The problem is that “believe” seems to have come to mean: have certainty in. So the opposite of belief is doubt. But, a truer reading of pisteuó is “to trust”. So it’s not about certainty; but trust. But trust in who or what? Well GOD of course, in who GOD is, and what GOD promises to do. Secondly, baptism. The Greek word here is βαπτίζω or baptizó. For some reason this word hasn’t been translated to English, but instead it’s been transliterated. Now I’ve come to treat transliterated words with some suspicion because they’re usually quite mundane words that have been churchified: Pastor=shepherd; deacon=servant; eucharist=thanksgiving; evangelize=to tell someone some good news; baptize=a ritual bath. 

 

If you trust GOD, have a ritual bath. 

 

As usual the church spends its time arguing about the wrong stuff. Like, should you baptize people more than once? The point isn’t whether you should or shouldn’t but whether you need to. Another part of baptism is the image of death. We go under the water like we are being buried, and come up made alive again – like Jesus. The symbolism is that we (like Jesus) only have to do this once – but it doesn’t matter if we do it more than once. 

 

Anyway theological rant over – let’s talk about Bono. You know the chap from U2. 

 

I’ve just been reading his book. And I was surprised to find that he’s a full on GOD-following fellow. I knew they’d had some Christian beginnings, but Bono is a full on Jesus-follower to this day. And even better – he seems to have been wy ahead of the curve (or at least me) and he never really got caught by the trap of church and rules. He’s always mistrusted people who have too much certainty, and preferred to live his faith from a place of doubt. 

 

In his book “Surrender” he describes his whole family going to the Jordan river and swimming at the spot believed to be where Jesus was baptised. He describes it

 

“The symbol of baptism is about submerging into your death in order to emerge into new life, a powerful poetry… The baptism site, Bethabara, or Al-Maghtas—“immersion”—is where the river meanders through reeds into a natural “pool, and my eyes follow some ancient steps down from red clay into clearer, brighter water…“In local lore,” [the guide] explains, “John the Baptist was a man in the wild living off locusts and honey so that some thought of him as the ancient prophet Elijah returned once again. But all around you will find the present and the past dancing around each other.”… “Elijah’s stream,” he says, describing how the Jordan is drip fed from many streams including one from the little hill of Hermon, or Elijah’s Hill… the physical landscape seems to surrender to the storytelling. These details first written down on animal skins and then papyrus and now presented as fragments”

Bono (2025), Bono: Stories of Surrender, 305-306, 6Penguin Random House,

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/kshare?asin=B0DZSZKB45&id=ov3vz3t6xzc2ljfhlkm6ekcvhq

 

Later in the book, referring to this and other experiences he talk about how, for him, life led up to a moment of surrender which he defines as: 

 

“the moment you choose to lose control of your life, the split second of powerlessness where you trust that some kind of “higher power” better be in charge, because you certainly aren’t.”

Bono (2025), Bono: Stories of Surrender, 335, Penguin Random House,

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/kshare?asin=B0DZSZKB45&id=ab2yf647tvfenbhawvvjoolzey

 

If you were baptized I guess it was in a church, with a minister or leader, sprinkled or immersed in water prepared for the moment, words prepared for the moment, people invited for the moment. You may have been on a journey to get there where thoughts, concepts. Rules and outcomes were set out for you – so you were “prepared”. But, I feel like Bon’s understanding points towards a diving unpreparedness. 

An undoing.

An unknotting. Carefully picking at the hard tangles to straighten out the loops and work out the tangles. Boy, as I write this I could do with some of that. 

          Deep breath, water, immersion, death, surrender, darkness…

     Light, freedom, life, surrender, air, breath.

Interestingly when I searched for antonyms for immersion, surrender was an answer. 

 

We are a community of faith

Strandlopers on a Journey

 

At this time, in this place, we are one

My story is larger than just me

We are joined through our connection 

Choosing to be vulnerable 

In the stillness or in life busyness

We feel the friendship of each other.

1 Which is to say I want to distance myself from American Southern Baptists who have a common ancestry but seem to have reneged on everything I hold dear as a Baptist. 

2  I apologise profusely to those who find this kind of stuff all too intellectual and theological, but I think its important.

3  A foreign word changed to the closest representation in another language.

 

Q’s

1. Bath, Shower or enjoyably stinky?
2. What’s the best bath/ shower you’ve ever had?
3. Have you been baptised and if so what was it like?
4. Have you ever wanted to be baptised again?
5. What’s your reaction to the word “surrender”?
6. Is there anything you feel you need to surrender?