A
asteroid
Guest
This little thought has been amusing me and causing me pain in equal measure.
I was confirmed last night. That’s not the thought. This is. I’ve moved from churches that only really had two symbols - baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And moved into a church that has lots of symbols - but baptism and the eucharist aren’t included among them for while they may have symbolism they are part of a living reality in which Christ is present and in which something happens. Not phrased well, but you get the idea.
It makes me laugh. My old baptist church (and pentecostal ones) taught that baptism was a symbol and sign of our faith, not really doing anything for anyone except to get them wet because Jesus said to do it. It makes me laugh (and cry) that as a baptist I treated baptism so lightly, even in a church named after the practice. However did I miss the verses about being baptised into his death, burial and resurrection, or being baptised into the church. Why as baptists did we never make any study of most of the verses relating to baptism? Maybe baptist churches elsewhere teach something else, but that’s what we believed.
Can you believe the following? I still almost can’t. The church I was part of here immediately before converting had a statement of faith. The section on “Communion” did not mention Jesus at any point. We share in communion to show our unity it said. Nothing about the Last Supper, the cross or anything like that. I did mention it a few times to the church leadership but never got much of an answer beyond “it doesn’t really matter”.
In the baptist church we did not use wine for communion. We used very diluted blackcurrant squash. I queried this. As a deacon I sort of had a right to! I was told that some people didn’t like the taste of wine. The facts that wine was used by Jesus and that I didn’t like the taste of diluted blackcurrant squash didn’t seem important. Another church I was in didn’t use wine often because of the number of recovering alcoholics in the church which seems a better reason especially when combined with the number of people in the church who had been in prison for stealing things!
I am now amazed at how we used to insult the symbols used in catholicism while turning the sacraments into pure symbols.
I was confirmed last night. That’s not the thought. This is. I’ve moved from churches that only really had two symbols - baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And moved into a church that has lots of symbols - but baptism and the eucharist aren’t included among them for while they may have symbolism they are part of a living reality in which Christ is present and in which something happens. Not phrased well, but you get the idea.
It makes me laugh. My old baptist church (and pentecostal ones) taught that baptism was a symbol and sign of our faith, not really doing anything for anyone except to get them wet because Jesus said to do it. It makes me laugh (and cry) that as a baptist I treated baptism so lightly, even in a church named after the practice. However did I miss the verses about being baptised into his death, burial and resurrection, or being baptised into the church. Why as baptists did we never make any study of most of the verses relating to baptism? Maybe baptist churches elsewhere teach something else, but that’s what we believed.
Can you believe the following? I still almost can’t. The church I was part of here immediately before converting had a statement of faith. The section on “Communion” did not mention Jesus at any point. We share in communion to show our unity it said. Nothing about the Last Supper, the cross or anything like that. I did mention it a few times to the church leadership but never got much of an answer beyond “it doesn’t really matter”.
In the baptist church we did not use wine for communion. We used very diluted blackcurrant squash. I queried this. As a deacon I sort of had a right to! I was told that some people didn’t like the taste of wine. The facts that wine was used by Jesus and that I didn’t like the taste of diluted blackcurrant squash didn’t seem important. Another church I was in didn’t use wine often because of the number of recovering alcoholics in the church which seems a better reason especially when combined with the number of people in the church who had been in prison for stealing things!
I am now amazed at how we used to insult the symbols used in catholicism while turning the sacraments into pure symbols.
