What's baptism done to us? Seriously? I haven't devoted enough thought to this at all because I've spent too much of my life in some weird quasi-Christian state, with an uncomfortably strong tendency to think about sin, and maybe I should think of it as a curse.
A friend of ours (@Noxulous) has written memorably about...how to put it...horrific feelings in connection with baptism, which has spurred me to thinking. Another curious detail is that my elder sibling, who was baptised in infancy as a Lutheran (I have the certificate somewhere), went on to develop a strong fondness for Garrison Keillor and the news from Lake Wobegon, which is streaked with humorous anecdotes about dour Scandihoovian Lutheranism. Now that might be a silly coincidence, but it's tempting to think the baptism did something to them.
And I voluntarily sought baptism! I wonder if I would have been satisfied with anything less, once I decided to move towards Christianity. It's scary to think that I was, in my way, like those unpleasant aesthetic Catholic converts who pepper right-wing politics, who love Catholic pomp and ritual and the antique vibe. That's what I wanted too, because I was still beguiled by classical paganism and inclined to believe (at the time) C. S. Lewis's assertion that Christianity was the true inheritor of classical traditions. Anyway I got dunked in holy water in 2004.
Like...am I now possessed by all the ghosts of the abused kids in the parish, haunted by St. John the Evangelist, or something? That would be inconvenient.
~Chara