Monday Musing: Why I decided to get baptized (again)

About 31 years ago, I was baptized.

On Sunday afternoon, I was baptized again.

On that first occasion, I was still a baby. Couldn’t walk. Couldn’t talk. And, in my mind, I couldn’t then consciously make the decision to commit to a life built on Christian foundations and ideals and make a daily effort to strive and meet them. It’s for this reason that I think baptizing babies is a bit silly. It’s more the peace of mind for the parents than it is for the children; the kids have no idea what’s happening.

To this day, I couldn’t tell you what day or year I was initially baptized, who performed the baptism, where it happened. And, in that moment, I certainly couldn’t have told you why all of this was happening.

But on Sunday, and now for the rest of my life, I will.

It’s been something I’ve been turning over in my mind for some time now. I grew up attending churches of various denominations as a kid – Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, even sprinkling in a few Catholic masses in with some friends here and there – but can’t recall ever opening the Bible. I was confirmed Lutheran, but to be honest, I don’t even know what that means, and it certainly wasn’t something I opted to do on my own volition (my brothers can say the same).

It really wasn’t until the fall of 2015 when I began pursuing faith on my own accord. I had recently moved to Southern California. I knew only a handful of people – beach volleyball players I knew who happened to know a guy who knew a guy I should meet out in Huntington Beach.

One of those men was Graeme Cowgill. At the time, Graeme, a 6-foot-8 bear of a man and one of the best men I know, was a youth pastor at Mariner’s Church in Huntington Beach. He had previously lived in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, which is where I had made the move from as well. Everyone – literally everyone – told me I had to meet Graeme.

One Sunday, Graeme was speaking at Mariner’s.

It was the most powerful 45 minutes I’d ever heard.

I started going back. Every single Sunday. But unlike church when I was a kid, I wasn’t going out of obligation, or because my parents wanted me to. I wasn’t going with the dread of inevitable boredom to come. I was excited. Thrilled, even. Because just as good as Graeme at speaking, inspiring, delivering the messages of the Bible in such an absorbable, engaging manner, was the lead pastor, Caleb Anderson.

Shortly after meeting Graeme, I met Jordan Cheng. Like his now-wife, Kelly Claes – excuse me, Kelly Cheng! – I cannot tell you the first time I met Jordan, or the specifics of the matter, but I can tell you that soon I was heading into Huntington Beach multiple days a week: Once to hang out at Jordan’s for his barbeques, once to attend Mariner’s. Conversations with Jordan, and the community he was building in Huntington, inevitably turned to faith, spirituality – the big questions of life that still remain very much questions, but what a blast it was and continues to be to explore them. I began reading and exploring those questions on my own, devouring books on faith, reading both those for and against Christianity, diving headfirst into the works of C.S. Lewis. I have yet to come up for air.

I read the Bible. Read it again. Wrote weekly about my own journey through faith, the concepts I loved, the ones with which I was wrestling.

At some point, I knew I wanted to get baptized again, on my own terms. Much of this desire came from hundreds – maybe even thousands by now – of talks of faith with my wife, Delaney. She’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and in that church, they don’t baptize kids until they’re 8 years old, or what’s known as the age of accountability. Prior to eight years old, the belief goes, kids aren’t capable of sinning, and therefore wouldn’t need to be baptized to ascend into heaven when they die. Prior to eight, the belief goes, they don’t truly understand what they’re committing to when they get baptized. I don’t know how that age was picked, but I dug the concept: That they’d only baptize kids when they could at least walk and talk and have a basic understanding of what’s happening.

At 31 years old, I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew what I believed in.

And I wanted Graeme, the man who galvanized a latent faith, to be the one to do it.

Jordan got married on Sunday. Graeme flew in to officiate the ceremony. When I asked if he wanted to take a minute and baptize me, there was never a question in his mind.

He’d be honored.

And so, after setting up the tables and chairs for Jordan’s wedding, Graeme and I went out to the Pacific Ocean — there was nowhere else I was getting baptized other than the Pacific Ocean — and, together, we renewed my covenant with God.

What I felt is a bit like one feels when he gets married: The ceremony changes nothing; the ceremony changes everything. Your love for your spouse does not explode the night you’re married – but your commitment level does. My faith did not explode on Sunday – but the external commitment of deciding to get baptized as an adult changes matters.

There’s an entirely new level of accountability there.

That’s the beauty of baptism, and marriage. The ceremony does not suddenly make all things perfect. I am just as human and fallible today as I was on Friday, just as Delaney and I are just as capable of disagreeing today as we were prior to February 8, 2020. As Graeme said right before he dunked me in the Pacific: “This isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning.”

Baptism is about the striving to be something better. Something more. Something closer to the image of Christ and the principles he laid down, every single day.

These are principles I believe in, and principles I felt, at 31 was time for me to declare on my own.