Baptism Against Selfishness in the Shower

An Unlikely Lesson in Pastoral Theology

Baptism is a cure for compulsive carnal self-stimulation.

Not something I thought I’d ever hear in church, but now I have.

Here’s the story.

Two Sundays ago I was invited to preach at bilingual African-majority church named Voice of Christ in Iowa City that I had the privilege of helping establish. The pastor of the church, Armel Fandohan, has been a truest friend, and I’m owe him a debt of fraternal love I can never repay. When Voice of Christ was finally able to launch from Resurrection Assembly’s building into their own, we had a replica of the wooden cross in our sanctuary made for theirs to symbolize our partnership in the gospel.

Asante fertility god replica, South Ghana

In good Pentecostal fashion, Pastor Armel suggested I preach on whatever the Spirit was leading. In prayer, I felt prompted to talk about one of my favorite topics: Water Baptism.

Note: When I’m given free rein to preach on anything, I always pray. And if in doubt, I preach on a pillar of the faith: The love of God, the love of neighbor, Jesus, the coming kingdom, or, as in this case, baptism. Even if I’ve misheard the Lord’s direction, I can proceed with confidence that it’s entirely unlikely that God will be upset with one of those topics.

As I routinely do with my students when I talk about the ordinances of the church, I noted early in my sermon the apostle Paul’s pastoral theology of baptism. In Galatians 3:23, Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and there is male and female. What is often missed, especially by historically non-sacramental church traditions, is that Paul appeals specifically to baptism in this respect. He doesn’t say, “as many of you as are Christian, there is neither…” He actually says, “As many of you as are baptized, there is neither Jew nor Greek…”

In other words, Paul doesn’t appeal to their status as Christians generally, rather he appeals to their baptisms. In class, I suggest to students they should use baptism similarly in their future pastoral ministry. And, true to my own advice, that’s what I did: I told the congregation that they should count themselves equals in the body of Christ, not because of their Christianity in a general sense (however true that might be) but specifically because they are baptized. And I suggested that those who weren’t baptized should be, if indeed they call upon the Lord. We Christians want everyone to be our equals in Christ.

I prayed for the congregation, and took my seat.

Pastor Armel then took the pulpit—once again in good Pentecostal fashion—to restate what had just been preached in brief, just to make sure no one had missed it. And to do so, he told a testimony of a man he once knew in church. He told us that this man would compulsively relieve himself carnally in the shower. He added that so frequent was the compulsion that this man would as a result fail to pleasure his wife at night. And he was hiding other addictive behaviors from his wife, including abusing tobacco and alcohol.

Artist unknown

Note: I include the bit about the man failing to please his wife because it reminds me of Paul’s pastoral advice in 1 Corinthians 7, where he advises married couples not to abstain from sexual intercourse except by mutual consent. It’s significant that the concern with the gentleman in question was not simply that he was manually releasing himself, but that he was robbing his wife while he did. Perhaps this is a more constructive way of talking about the problem in Christian contexts.

The story concluded: The man got baptized, and in so doing miraculously overcame his compulsive and addictive behaviors.

Again, not a testimony I ever expected to hear from the pulpit. But a welcome and compelling case study in pastoral theology nonetheless.

Here are the pastoral lessons I’d like to offer:

1. Pastoring is always multilayered: Not only did this story testify to the importance of baptism and the reality of the miraculous, but it also communicated that church is a place where one can come to be honest about and find deliverance from addiction. Addiction is not a matter of shame. On the contrary, the story was told as if this man’s experience would resonate with others sitting in the sanctuary. They too could look forward to their sense of shame being transformed into a story of liberation and relational restoration. They could equally look forward to their own story encouraging others to find freedom too.

2. Pentecostals always stumble into sacramental theology. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of miracles taking place through the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It definitely won’t be the last. Maybe Pentecostals (and all our Evangelical brethren with us) need to start embracing sacramental theology since we’re already (at least in some ways) sacramental in function.

3. I can’t imagine hearing this story in an American-majority church. And that’s the blessing of cross-cultural ministry. We Americans have so much to learn from Christians across the globe. That’s not to say that I would ever tell a story like this in my own church, but it does cause me to consider what taboos I harbor that I’ve wrongly identified with Christianity itself.

In sum: This was a most unexpected testimony, one that gave me a lot to think about. But it was all the more an unexpected gift to see my beloved friend and co-worker in the gospel do the thing I’m so eager to teach others to do, which is to make baptism a matter of lifelong pastoral import.