Formatting Errors

Sunday evening, I was rebaptized by Ben Burton — congregation leader of Beit HaDerekh, a local Messianic congregation — at Golf Course Road Church of Christ’s baptismal pool in Midland, Texas. At the beginning of the ceremony, Burton explains the meaning of the ritual in its traditional Christian expression and as an ancient Jewish custom.

In Christianity, baptism is the beginning of the process of becoming a disciple of the Messiah Yeshua.1 Burton described this rite as the dividing line between loyal fans of Yeshua (like the five thousand souls2 Yeshua miraculously fed) and devoted disciples of Yeshua who followed Him from town to town listening to His teachings, ministering to His physical needs, and obeying His edicts.3 It’s the difference between wanting to be like Christ and taking the necessary steps to become like Him.

I chose to be rebaptized because I am entering a new phase of life and I feel the time is right to commit myself to that change. One year ago, I moved out to the rural suburb of my West Texas hometown to escape a bad situation. Since moving to the location I currently refer to as “the Batcave”, my financial situation has improved, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to travel outside of town, I’ve almost completed my first novel, and my life has grown much more peaceful. However, my health isn’t as good as it has been in previous years, I’ve grown more mentally and emotionally unstable, I rarely leave the Batcave when I’m not leaving town, my social life has suffered, I rarely read anything anymore, I barely keep up with scriptural studies, and I never draw or create any true works of art like I used to when I was younger. I won’t seriously repeat the tired, cliche Dickens quote from A Tale of Two Cities — “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” — because it hasn’t been either the best or the worst of times for me. In the past year here at the Batcave, it’s been the “meh” of times.

Then my estranged sister, Bayoubat, moved back to Louisiana to escape stressful situations of her own.
We made amends and I wished her well before she left, but it may be some time before I get to see her again.

Then Bayoubat found lumps in her breasts soon after arriving in Louisiana.

Then, almost a month ago, my aunt passed away at age 75.

For my family, these have truly been the worst of times.


Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish civil “New Year” festival, fell on Thursday, October 3rd. As more chaotic times loom ahead with the trio of hurricanes battering the Southeast and a divisive national election coming up next month, I feel the time has come for me to focus more of my attention on building a more positive, healthy, sustainable, social, and spiritual lifestyle, to let go of all the negativity of the past, and to emphasize the God-given light in the face of seemingly overwhelming darkness.

This rebaptism wasn’t just my way of ushering in the year 5785 Anno Mundi with a symbolic “new beginning” in my life; it was my way of rededicating myself to Adonai with a public declaration of my faith.

A gulf of difference exists between knowing you are rededicating yourself to the Lord’s service and walking that path day by day. When Ben Burton illustrated how baptism serves as the threshold between an ordinary, secular life and actually living as Yeshua would live in the present day, though, the idea that I was truly giving my life over to Adonai and living as a would-be tzadik — the Hebrew term for a truly righteous soul, a pious person striving to embody Adonai’s divine justice and mercy here in the earthly realm — hit my mind with the force of a bunker-buster.

“If I do this,” I thought, “if I undergo baptism, then I am committing myself to a purely spiritual lifestyle. I am signaling to all Otherworldly powers that I am relinquishing my old identity, and that I intend to mirror the life of Yeshua with my own lifestyle.”

With that sobering thought echoing through the caverns of my mind, I stepped into the baptismal pool to be buried and reborn in the waters of New Life.


To reiterate what I said before: “…there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”4 I can declare that I’m living for the Lord until my voice tires and get baptized again and again until I drown, but until I take decisive action toward that goal and start changing the way I’ve been living, all I’ve done by baptism is had a really fancy bath with my clothes still on.

Once Rosh Hashanah is over, the faithful dive headlong into the Days of Awe, the ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah5 and Yom Kippur or the “Day of Atonement”, the most solemn of the High Holy Days.6 During this time, the faithful are to reflect on their lives, pray, study sacred writ, give generously to charity and perform good deeds for others, show true penitence and repentance of prior misdeeds and seek reconciliation with those they have wronged. These ten days are a purgative for the spirit in preparation for Yom Kippur, when the penitent shall fast for twenty-four hours as Adonai judges the depths of our souls. Those deemed worthy are judged “righteous” and have their names transcribed in the Book of Life; those wicked and unworthy are recorded in the Book of the Dead.

For someone starting his life over, this is the perfect time to “renew the mind”7 and purge himself of the pains of the past while preparing his soul to live as a righteous man. I liken this process to reformatting a hard drive and reinstalling an operating system from a “clean” state, a necessary process in any tech support agent’s list of computer maintenance and repair tasks.

Unfortunately, the human brain is not like a standard SATA drive. You can’t simply move specific terrible memories, bad habits, or psychological disorders to a specialized partition and format only that section of the brain. We’re still figuring out how something like amnesia works; we really can’t wipe out key parts of the brain or even the whole brain with any accuracy or specificity, like we see in science fiction films like the Men in Black or The X-Files.

If you want to change yourself, you have to format your mental hard drive on a day by day basis, examining every thought you think, every habit you perform without thinking, every careless word you say, and every action you choose to do, then carefully prune out the thoughts, habits, words, and deeds that bind you to your former life.8 You must do this every day, without fail, lest you backslide into old bad habits again.9

Sometimes, though, you stumble upon a habit that’s extremely difficult to break or an emotional response that you have trouble letting go of easily. These issues stand in the landscape of your mind like powerful enemy strongholds… and it’s a little difficult to hunt down the mental dynamite needed to level them. For Moses the Lawgiver, it was his anger. For King David and his son Solomon, it was lust twice over. The preacher Paul of Tarsus may have referred to such recurring personality problems as his “thorn in the flesh”,10 though he accredited it to keeping him mentally and emotionally grounded. Sometimes, you have more than one glaring personality flaw or psychological problem that constantly presents itself, like clinical depression, intrusive thoughts, bipolar disorder, or a myriad of other issues.

Chronic personality problems like these are what has been keeping me from focusing on repentance and reformatting myself lately. It’s far too easy to get lost in the weeds when difficulties arise: a traffic jam prevents you from getting back to work on time, or a critical incoming parcel goes missing in the mail. Maybe your hair has grown a little too long and is driving you crazy by getting in your face, and you won’t have the money for a hair trimming for another week. Maybe you’re just really tired of those spam calls that never seem to stop, or the depression you’ve been suffering for twenty years now is producing some of the worst suicidal ideation you’ve ever experienced.

For me lately, it’s been frustration, anger, intrusive thoughts, and procrastination. It’s been extremely difficult trying to focus on what I need to change about myself when every external problem that arises lately causes my hair-trigger anger to flare up like a supernova. “Losing my religion” is a very apt descriptor of the problem; in the moment, my emotional state gets so heated that all other concerns — including, sadly, spiritual concerns — seem to drop away like cut anchor cables as I fly into the stratosphere like a fury-powered rocket. At other times, I struggle against hate-filled, angry, self-loathing, or anti-religious depressive and intrusive thoughts strong enough that they often knock me off my mental course or ruin my day completely. Sometimes, they’re so difficult to deal with that they drain me of all energy, and I end up going to sleep far earlier than intended.

I’ve taken to calling these “formatting errors”: old issues in the brain that rear their heads now and again to distract me when I’m trying to work on improving myself. All I can really do about them is push past them as best I can, focus on bigger issues, and prepare my mental hard drive for greater operations in the coming days, in spite of these repeating formatting errors.

  1. Better known as Christ Jesus to us Gentiles.[]
  2. See Matthew 14:13-21 CJB.[]
  3. Unfortunately, in the two thousand years since Yeshua ended His earthly ministry and returned to the Heavenly realms from whence He came, this aspect of baptism appears to have been all but forgotten by anyone outside religious congregational/organizational leadership and lay ministers involved in the day-to-day operations of programs like youth ministries, homeless outreach workers, and the like. It isn’t that this aspect of baptism isn’t taught in congregations; it is, and quite frequently. The problem is that the hoi polloi — myself included — tend to get lost in the scramble of everyday life and we sometimes forget our greater duties to our higher spiritual calling while trying to deal with more temporal affairs.[]
  4. The original Matrix film will forever be one of my favorite movies.[]
  5. Rosh Hashanah is also known as Yom Teruah or “the Day of Trumpets,” the day when the advent of Adonai’s kingdom is announced with the blast of the shofar or ram’s horn trumpet.[]
  6. The “High Holy Days” are another name for the Days of Awe. []
  7. See Romans 12:2 CJB.[]
  8. It’s really much less like formatting a hard drive and more like rooting around through your operating system’s running processes for potential malware or for applications that shouldn’t be running at that time.[]
  9. Alcoholics Anonymous and other similar addiction programs advise devising a “fearless moral inventory” to aid in this process. I’m currently in the process of devising such a personal inventory myself.[]
  10. This presumes, of course, that Paul wasn’t referring to some physical malady. My theory is that he was referring to the residual traumatic thoughts and memories leftover from his life as a murderer of the followers of Yeshua before becoming one himself.[]

Dunebat

Sole specimen: Desmodus desertus. Judeo-Christian anchorite/scribe/scribbler. Lover of nerds, Goths, creatives, & outcasts.

2 Comments:

  1. Congrats on the baptism. I’m proud of you for hanging in there and doing your best. I suck at keeping in touch (with absolutely everyone) bc life has been overwhelming for me the last several years , the memory is bad, and i just dont have the spoons. BUT I think of you regularly, and I am always sending my love and positive vibes your way. 🖤

    Just remember (pls don’t forget,) be kind to yourself while you’re on this healing journey.

    • It’s awesome to hear from you, Nay! I’m terrible at keeping in touch, too. You’re always on my mind, though! Gold Dragon and I were just reminiscing about you the other day! We both miss you and the old gang (Eric and Christian included) tremendously!

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