Death By Baptism

I stumbled on this news story on the paper the other day and then saw a link to it on the net today.

Basically this pastor was about to baptize a woman when he got electrocuted by a microphone.

Wow, that's pretty funny. In a sick way of course. Put yourself in the pastor's shoes (I knew I shoulda worn rubber soled boots today). Here you are, about to begin a baptism. A very holy ritual where that symbolizes "the cleansing (remission) of sins, and the union of the believer with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection so that he becomes one of Christ's Faithful" You reach out to grab the microphone when suddenly hundreds of volts of electricity shoot through your body, stopping your heart and killing you. That's gotta suck. I mean here you are, about to declare someone clean of sins and then God strikes you down with a bolt of lightning. When his life flashed before his eyes, I bet he was rethinking all those nights he spent alone in confession with little boys. But I digress.

actually, I thought this was pretty interesting because I didn't really know what a baptism was. I knew it was some Christian ritual that involved sprinkling water on babies or something. It turns out that Baptism can be done at any age (I'm quite glad the Jewish ritual of circumcision is done on an 8 day old drunk baby) and isn't necessarily done by sprinkling of water. Pouring of water or even full immersion (like in this case) is also practiced. Not only do Christians practice this ritual but so do the Mandaeans and the Sikhs and it evolved from Jewish rituals involving the mikvah. So the death of this pastor actually served as a learning experience for me. Could someone pass the bagels and lox?