Perhaps the simplicity of God’s design and direction is even an apologetic for the truth of the faith. It is, actually, the simplest way to live. The simplest way to think. The simplest way to be. It is when we begin to tinker with this design and direction that we find complexity after complexity added to life.

I remember the day many years ago when I was introduced to the universal remote.
Maybe you remember the days when, sitting down to watch a movie, you took your shoes off, kicked back, took a deep breath, ready to relax and then you’re suddenly barraged with remote after remote. One for the TV. One for the DVD player. One for the speakers. One for… well, you couldn’t remember what that one was for, but you had it nearby just in case. And then you went through a complicated system of button-pushing, hoping to remember all the codes and orders and settings and then, after 10 minutes, to finally start the movie.
And then the universal remote. One remote to rule them all. One thing that controlled everything else. It was like heaven opened and the beautiful light of simplicity shone through the darkness of complexity.
I’m sure there have been other moments like that for you, just as there have been for me. It’s the moment when you’re trying to sift through a myriad of issues or instructions or regulations and then you suddenly come upon a new way – a different way – that allows you to cut through all the bureaucracy and red tape and get straight to the point. And once again, it’s beautiful.
Beautifully simple.
In an increasingly complex world, we look for moments like that. We will even pay for moments like that. To find a simpler way. A straight way.
And if you can keep that feeling of beautiful simplicity in your mind for a moment, consider this:
The way of sin is infinitely more complicated than the way of righteousness. Here are just a few examples:

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We know that the sacraments have a teaching function. They exist to encourage and edify the body of the faithful. By maintaining a standard of the appropriate mode (and therefore appropriate symbolism) for baptizing, we are shepherding our people. We are teaching them about the Lord’s nature of interacting with His people and the way He saves and revives us.

The sacrament of baptism is perhaps the most widely debated topic in the Protestant church world. There is no shortage of fraternal disagreements on this topic, especially within the Reformed evangelical setting. However, debates around baptism often focus around who should be baptized. Is baptism reserved for believers alone? Or are the children of Christians to be baptized as well? Comparatively less ink is spilled debating about the mode of baptism, or how people are to be baptized. The nature of the debate over whether biblical baptism should be administered to families of believers can often distract from this all too important topic. This can lead to misunderstandings about why certain traditions hold the practices they do, or assumptions that one’s own practice is right, without prompting any further investigation into the matter. It has even led to some considering this issue of no consequence at all.
What do the scriptures teach about the mode of baptism? How are believers to be baptized? Unfortunately, there is no “gotcha” passage in the New Testament that points us to a quick resolution of this, but as we tread beyond the usual stomping ground of whether baptizo means to immerse (and only to immerse), we should find a deeper meaning for baptism. Just as what we do with the bread and wine matters for observing communion, what we do with the waters of baptism matters as well.
Signs and Wonders
The Westminster Confession of faith opens its 28th chapter by defining baptism as a sacrament, and listing its many benefits:

Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life: which sacrament is, by Christ’s own appointment, to be continued in his church until the end of the world.—WCF 28.1

So what is baptism all about? Well, it is a sign (or a symbol) of the Christian’s regeneration and the remission of their sins. Baptism displays, in symbolic visual form, the new birth that is experienced by the believer and wrought by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). For once we were dead in our tresspasses and sins, but God “made us alive, together with Christ–” (Eph. 2:5) God has given His church baptism to show us that in Christ we are made alive.
This baptism verifies the promises of the Gospel in scripture. God promised to revive, and so he showers us with the water of life through His Spirit. God promised to cleanse, and so he washes us of our sin & iniquity. It is the Gospel in picture, for the person being baptized and for all who witness the event and consider the sign. More than an empty ceremony, it gives testimony to the promise of redemption; it shows God as he holds out a righteousness that can be had by faith. In this way, baptism is similar to circumcision in that it preaches to those who receive it, although baptism does this more than circumcision ever could. Circumcision as a sign showed Christians in the Old Testament that they, by their sin, were fundamentally broken as creatures and needed their wickedness removed in order to stand in the light of a holy God. Baptism shows us more, as the washing with water pictures our Savior who was covered by our sin and cleansed as he rose again on the third day.
And yet, baptism does even more. It shows us, as Chad van Dixhoorn writes, not only redemption promised and redemption accomplished, but redemption applied.1 Baptism points us to something real, something that happened. This sign represents to us the way in which we were brought into the house of God, and the relationship between our spiritual baptism and our righteous standing with Christ before God. Paul says as much in Galatians: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal. 3:27) Just as Christians are joined to the visible church at their baptism, so they are ushered into Christ’s arms when they are resurrected through spiritual baptism.
Problems With Immersion
The question then becomes, what does this symbolism have to do with the mode of baptism? This particular moment is where many well-meaning Baptists ride down the hill as the cavalry coming to the rescue, declaring with every fiber of their being that immersion (or dipping) is the appropriate mode, and in fact, the only biblical mode. They are not without reason to have such confidence in immersion, as it conveys much through its symbolism. They derive their meaning from the language of being buried with Christ from places in scripture like Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12. The Baptist connects these passages with what he sees as the “burial” in water during an immersion baptism, or the “watery grave” as the prominent preacher Adrian Rogers called it, and there consider the matter to be ended.
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With the Christian faith pushed off the main stage, technical managerialism has played a dual role as both a kind of religion and, at the same time, a substitute for the metaphysical superstructure that the Christian hierarchy of being used to provide. The managerial system, whether in its governmental form or, as we find it in business, in non-profits or NGOs, becomes both religion and god at the same time—an all-encompassing system within which “we live and move and have our being.”

Mike Sabo’s “What is Christian Nationalism?” is a fair and comprehensive introduction to a vibrant and messy emerging discourse. Broadly speaking, what is coming to the fore in this and other related movements is a desire to resist the corrupt American regime in ways that are specifically Christian, so as to bring about a change in the core governing principles of our society and align them with the Christian faith. The goal is to foster a flourishing society under the divine sovereignty of God.
This most definitely means imposing Christian religious values onto society. It does not mean turning society into a theocracy—that is, one ruled by a priestly class. Christian nationalists do acknowledge, though, that all law is an expression of morality, and all morality is at its core religious. It is not a question of whether some religious faith, even in the desiccated form of ideology, will be imposed upon you: it is a matter of which one it will be. Currently we are governed by the cult of Human Progress.
This said, though I embrace the goals of the movement, like many others I am less than enthusiastic about the term “Christian Nationalism.” It evokes too much of late 19th- and early 20th-century nationalist movements. It is a set of terms that have already been embraced and then rejected by the regime. The idea of “nationalism” is itself a product of propaganda, an artificial construct imposed upon us so as to harness ever-larger degrees of technical management at ever-greater societal scale.
The implication of nationalism is that you give up your local attachments to the community of your birth—with its real, tangible, embedded relationships—to embrace the abstract construct of a “nation.” The regime’s powerbrokers, horrified by what nationalism unleashed in the first half of the 20th century, doubled down and argued that we needed to transcend not just the local bonds of community, but also the looser and more generalized affinities inspired by the nation. In becoming a truly global community, we would then transcend the divisions that nationalism spawned.
But quibbles like this are relatively small things. I raise the point only to note that “Christian Nationalism” embraces many who are willing to participate in this emerging discourse and movement, comfortable knowing that the terms, labels, ideas, means, and approaches will get worked out over time. Maybe the label sticks, maybe it doesn’t. If the label is all that stands in your way, don’t let it trip you up.
Broadly speaking, those of us involved in this project seek a society which is governed by Christian principles. What does this look like? For me, it does not mean seizing the reins of power within the current system. Why is this? In spite of the deeply Christian nature of American society at the time of the founding, I would argue along with the French sociologist, philosopher, and theologian Jacques Ellul that the American revolutionary mindset, even in its infant form, was produced by a system of values which was gaining ascent through the rise of the merchant class: technical managerialism.
Ellul argues in “Autopsy of Revolution” that the ingredient necessary to turn a revolt into a revolution is “the plan.” You need a group of people capable of turning a set of grievances into a coherent structure and set of institutions. This organizing capacity has always been the particular strength of bureaucratically minded managers. They have been adept at rational analysis, being able to look at complex situations, abstracting them, shaping them and organizing them into a rational system through which governing institutions, processes, and policies could be instituted. They told us themselves what they were doing. A group of men went into the backrooms and developed a rational plan for a new nation:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
They looked upon past ways of doing things as inferior and so set about to develop a better system. They desired to remove the inadequacies, corruptions, and variability inherent in the older system of nobility, which relied heavily on persons and embedded traditions. They wanted to replace this system with a more rational, a more perfect union.
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