Initiation rites are notoriously surreal. Many fraternities, civic clubs and religious institutions conduct ceremonies of induction that can give you the willies and make you second-guess your decision to join. That’s true even in the church, because its “initiation rite” —baptism—is so out of sync with normal life. You see people who seemed perfectly sane before, and now they’re stepping into a pool or a river or a big bathtub at church, and they are allowing someone to dunk their fully-clothed body underwater while they say something religious, and then they come up with their previously groomed hair all wet and matted down, and they give the person who baptized them a big hug, and everybody in the church cheers wildly. How weird is that?

Trust me, if you’re feeling a tug in your soul to get baptized, it’s normal to wrestle with the weirdness factor. But I think that your apprehension will give way to anticipation as you learn from the Bible what baptism is all about. It was to answer questions like Why? How? and When? that I wrote this article, titled Baptism Questions and Answers.