A trend on college campuses and atheist conventions is to celebrate the rite of Debaptism. It comes with a lovely certificate and includes a ceremony with a blow dryer, to dry those baptismal waters right off of you. This ceremony acts to symbolize atheist’s belief in reason over superstition (“reason” meaning logic or human knowledge). After her Debaptism, Jennifer Gray said, “It was very therapeutic. It was a chance to laugh at the silly things I used to believe as a child.” [Click here to read the USA Today article or here to go to the National Seculare Society’s page on the certificate.]

  The rise of atheism in the world is in part to do with science and knowledge. All of our technology has given humanity a self assurance that we can control our destinies. But it has even more to do with us, those who follow Christ. On his blog Zachary Moore writes, “I predict my Debaptism (walking under a blow dryer) will have precisely the same effect as my actual baptism.” Meaning the effect will be… nothing. [Click here to read his blog.]

  This morning Emma Tom and Anna Messick are being baptized. As they are dipped below the waters there is not a magical saving power that will come upon them. They will not rise up as super Christians, soaked in powerful grace of Christ. The waters symbolize the action of God in their hearts. Which is magical and in fact they should already be dripping with the powerful grace of Jesus… yet in reality accepting Christ as our savior often has “precisely the same effect” as De-baptism… nothing. Our lives are not changed, but are lived just like all the people around us.

  And in this nothingness the points of atheism ring true. Christianity without life change is unreasonable. Without life change our faith is only superstition. Our symbols become only a dip in a pool… something that can be dried off and blown away.