Baptism and Christian identity

Sant’Agnese in Agone, the church in the center of Piazza Navona, is more beautiful than usual these days because it is hosting a special exhibit of three El Greco paintings. The largest and most impressive of these is the “Baptism of Christ,” a favorite theme of mine and something I think the Church would do well to reflect on more deeply–especially in these days of deep division and various lobbies jockeying for influence.

At his baptism, the identity of Jesus is revealed by the Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” As John the Baptist well knew, Jesus had no need of baptism; the event was for our benefit. The Lord’s baptism reveals what happens in our baptism: we become the children of God by adoption; we come to share in the Sonship of Jesus. The Father’s words come to apply to us. We become the beloved sons and daughters of God.

The reason I think this event is so important is because, for Christians, our status as God’s sons and daughters must become and remain our most fundamental identity. When some other form of identity becomes primary–our national identity, our identification with a particular political party or ideology, even our natural family–we go badly astray. This, it seems to me, is the most serious problem with contemporary LGBT ideology. The problem is certainly not with the people themselves, nor even so much with any particular sexual desires per se–living our sexuality with integrity has always been challenging, in different ways, for all Christians. The problem is when those sexual desires become ideology and ideology becomes identity, when one particular aspect of one’s personal make-up–one’s sexuality–becomes the dominant characteristic in one’s self-definition, the one ring to rule them all.

For Christians nothing can trump our identity as adopted sons and daughters. Evidence that this has happened comes when there’s a conflict between the demands of discipleship and the demands of our ideology. If we instinctively go on the offensive against the Church, we’ve probably let some other form of identity come before the one we received in baptism.

Ultimately, recognizing oneself as the beloved child of God the Father brings the kind of peace and fulfillment that our secondary identities–as a Republican, a European, LGBT, whatever–can never offer. These other identities always leave us insecure, able to give only partial or superficial answers to the question “Who am I?” No matter what letters or symbols one adds to the acronym, it will never be enough.

For Christians, the definitive answer to the question “Who am I?”–the answer that overwhelms all others–is the one we hear in the Lord’s baptism, which echoes in our own.

“You are my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”