It’s Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten journey in the Christian tradition. I did not go to a service or get ashes on my forehead today. Instead, I find myself reflecting on the night I got baptized, in 1987, at a little fundamentalist bible church in Orange County, California. Back then, I held many strong convictions that I have since rejected. I no longer believe that non-Christians are going to hell or that queer folks are condemned or that the bible is perfect or that America is uniquely blessed by God. In the spirit of Lent, I have given up on these ideas. Forever.
I now believe that my baptism was a radical act of breaking rank with imperial identities that say a certain race, religion, country or creed is supreme. My baptism, as I now see it, was an initiation into a process of dying to the destructive ideology that God ordains a human hierarchy of value—that some people matter more than others. Lent reminds me of this renewed vision of baptism, a continual immersion into the love-soaked, hierarchy-subverting way of Jesus—who died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves.
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