Never Too late! (Thoughts on Baptism and Life Right Now)

     Today I find myself in the strange position that happens every now and then when the video game news cycle slows down a bit, and I haven't played enough of any games or watched anything enough to truly give my two cents on them. I'm forced to sit a little while with myself and think on some of the important things that are going on in my life, and in the lives of so many. I've recently made my decision to join the church that I'm active in, and getting baptized on top of that. I'm now 30, and many are baptized in the Baptist tradition when they're in their teens if not before. I've been thinking a lot about this decision for a long time, and I'm not sure why right now is the right time, but I'm glad that I'm doing it. I hope that I'll be able to state my intent here and my reasoning in a meaningful and concise way. If you've read my stuff before, you'll know that keeping things concise is something of a challenge for me, but we'll see how this goes!

What Have I Learned?

    I have always been a deep thinker (perhaps even an overthinker) and a slow contemplator. As a child, I had my questions about faith and why things were done the way that they have been. I saw so many of my friends and family make their decisions to follow in the way of Jesus and to be baptized, but I still had so many questions that it seemed like no one was willing or able to explain in a way that I was able to understand or accept. The interesting thing is that I couldn't really even put the questions into words myself. I heard about the promise of "the gift" my whole life, and that Jesus offers all of us a gift to go to heaven, and all we have to do is simply to accept it. Considering I also was very worried about the concept of Santa Claus as a small child, so it makes sense that I was not willing to accept the gift unless I knew exactly what it was that I was accepting. I was once told that "You won't have to give up video games, or anything like that." First of all, I didn't think that I would have to do anything like that, but also to bring it up in those words kind of minimized the point of the decision. I knew that it was supposed to be a big deal, but I just wanted to know what all it entailed. It had to be a big deal, or else why would so many adults have been talking to me about it? There was a lot of pressure on me, especially as a small boy, to make this massive leap of faith that I wasn't able to comprehend, just with the information that I had been given, and vague reassurances from friends who had already made their decisions. It's always been a deeply personal decision, but many thought the fact that other people have done it, or because someone else was going forward on a particular Sunday, it would somehow help me to make the decision for myself. So much of this experience is centered around the concept of being part of a larger body, and it's something that I wasn't able to understand until I was already a part of it.

    I've been working at my church for over a year now, it'll be two in August, and in that time, I've had the experience of working with some pretty exceptional students as well as a lot of ministers and very smart people who really know what they're talking about. I have been invited to Princeton to meet with some incredible leaders of different churches and to discuss the importance of play and young adults in the church. I've taken some classes with folks all dealing with similar difficulties in understanding their calling to what I've had, and through all this, I've been slowly getting the answers to these questions that I couldn't put into words. It's something I can't even really state here, but I finally feel like I'm ready for this massive commitment. Maybe it's just the ability to accept that there are always going to be questions when you're dealing with something like this.

    Yes, I work at a much slower pace, especially when the decision is one as monumental as this, but that's the thing. There is no one time that is "right" for this type of thing. At least in our tradition, where it is up to us to make a decision of faith, just because most people do it when they're younger, that doesn't mean that you'll miss the boat if you don't do it when you're young. You're constantly growing as a person, learning new skills and new things about yourself every day, and the same goes for spirituality. We shouldn't stop growing just because we have made the decision to follow, and by the same token, we have no way of knowing what goes on in the mind of someone else. It's amazing the number of people who have come up to me and said they didn't know that I wasn't baptized, and I guess that's because I made this decision a long time ago, even though I didn't make the public profession until just now. I think back to the boy who was scared to go forward and wanted all of those questions answered, and I'm just happy to be where I am on my spiritual journey now, even if I would be lying if I said that I knew all the answers. I have done a lot of work and lived a lot of life which led into making this decision, but I'm glad that I'm finally here.

    Thanks for reading this post, friends. I know this is a bit of tonal whiplash, after spending the last few weeks discussing different Nintendo Direct presentations, but I feel like this is a good time to talk about this. We're coming to the end of the season of Lent, with Easter coming up this Sunday, and I hope you don't mind me giving some reflections on my life this week. As I said, I'm pretty happy with where I am right now. That doesn't mean that everything is great, obviously a lot of elements are less than desired, there are lots of things that aren't going so well, I'm still enjoying what I do for work and the people that I'm around a lot. Thanks again for all of the support, and I hope that you'll have a good rest of the week. Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed believer, and I'll talk to you again soon. Always remember that it's never too late.