Current mood:	conflicted
Entry tags:	personal, religion

Agnostic baptism
There's been another addition to my household recently, so we're talking to start baptism. All fine and good, but now the pastor is inquiring if it might be a pair of baptisms. You see, while my wife and kids (except the new one) are all baptized, I'm not.

I was not brought up in a religious home. My father calls himself an agnostic and is simply apathetic towards religion. My mother was apparently fairly religious when she was younger (through college), but now just doesn't talk about it. I tried to engage her in conversation about it once lately, but it went nowhere. As a result, I guess, I find the topic of religion fascinating, but do not consider myself a believer.

My wife grew up with religion, but was non-practicing when we met, dated, and married. A few years ago, however, some friends invited our oldest to join their child at their church's summer music camp. Since then, we've become regular attendees and, after some months, my wife and children were baptized. I opted not to do so at the time because of my conflicted views.

At the end of 2006 I went through a tough process of deciding just what I believed. I ended up deciding to label myself agnostic, simply because so much of the atheist views I was reading seemed just as smug about God's non-existence as the theists' belief that He does. In short, I came to the conclusion that Christianity (and other religions) seem like an awfully complicated set of steps for a supreme being to go through to gather believers, but there's still that nagging question of where the universe came from and just how improbable the evolution of sentient life would seem to be. In essence, the "atheist with doubts" definition of "agnostic" pegs me.

I have not shared this with anyone who actually knows me, including my wife. I wanted to talk to her at the time, and made my mind up to do it several times, but never followed through. I fear it will crush her. The topic has brought her to tears before, which I can understand when you think your loved one is going to, well, at least be denied entrance into heaven when he dies. The fact that I simply don't see any evidence that there is an afterlife at all will hardly be comforting. "Live and let live" only goes so far when it's believer vs. non-believer.

Obviously, the simple solution is to get baptized. If I truly don't believe in God, it shouldn't matter, should it? I tell myself that I just don't want to be hypocritical, but there's more to it. There's an element of doubt. What if I'm wrong?

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.

1 Corinthians 11:27-29 (New American Standard Bible)

So, to summarize, I'm attending a church almost weekly, but except for the fact I'm not baptized and therefore don't take communion, no one knows I'm not truly one of the faithful. Seems I'm already fairly hypocritical, so why not get baptized? Fear, it would seem. So what now?