What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. – Romans 6:1-14

That’s a long passage which I’ll break apart in a minute, but first I wanted to talk about baptism in general.

Christianity, like most ancient religions is full of woo, like the thought pretending to partake in cannibalism by eating a cracker and drinking some grape juice will make you a better person.

Baptism, the idea that dunking yourself in water has some effect other than cleansing your body of dirt, is one of those silly ideas. That a priest can say some magic words over a vat or jug of water and turn it into something more than your basic h²o is no different than voodoo.

The chemical structure of the water remains h²o, so what exactly changes between holy water, and your generic water from the tap? Absolutely nothing.

Yet for 2000 years, Christian clergy has been pushing this miracle solution as the truth, much like peddler’s pushing their cure-all quack medicines in the 1800s.

Until they can present a scientific explanation for how their holy water is different, and exactly how that difference changes a person’s behavior, you are best to avoid them and their cures just as you would the purveyor of quack medicines.

They are lying to you for exactly the same reason. They know their are gullible people out there willing to pay them for absolutely nothing.

Ok, now for the dissection of this week’s bible quote. I know I promised I was going to do a line by line analysis of it, but reading it thoroughly, there’s just too much woo there to make any sense of it. My brain hurts just trying to make sense of such gibberish. AI writes better paragraphs than that crazy mixture of words.

That last sentence though sure seems to be taken to heart by the right wing, who have thoroughly tossed aside the idea of rule of law in this country in favor of doing whatever they feel is right, according to their own personal code of behavior.

Don’t like a book title. Make your school board censor it in violation of the first admendment.

Don’t like how an election turned out? Run a conspiracy to overtun the will of the people.

Baptism into Christ does not set you free from sin, as the countless number of baptized prisoners in this country will attest. The only thing baptism does is get you wet. You don’t need to pay an immoral pastor for that privilege.