Baptism, Identity and Human-Kindness

I'm reading through Brian McLaren's book 'Why did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed cross the road?' - and blogging as i go along. I'm finding it both thought provoking and a challenge to some of my pre-conceived, pre-taught ideas.

I've recently read the chapter on Baptism. McLaren states that baptism is a ritual that pre-dates christianity. Jewish pilgrims partook of ritualistic washing ( a form of baptism) before entering the temple. This was in order to be cleansed from the contamination that they had contracted due to their contact with 'unclean' gentiles (non-jews). This practice reinforced an identity that we are clean/legitimate and they are dirty/illegitimate. God loves 'us' and finds 'them' smelly, disgusting, dirty and unacceptable.
The Essenic communities also practiced a form of baptism to clean themselves of the pollution of the corrupted temple/religious establishment. Unfortunately,they simply mirrored themselves in opposition -  a 'us and 'them' mentality.

John the Baptist appeared on the scene with a new baptism. A baptism of repentance. Repentance meaning changing attitude; from hating the enemy to loving the enemy...defecting from violence (the brood of vipers) and identifying with peace (the dove).

In Luke 3: 11 - 14, repentance is seen as how we treat others. Not with hostility, not with resistance, but with kindness, generosity and justice.

Our baptism is a sign of our call to identifying with oppositional identities and by dying to them; identifying with something new - the Kingdom of God.

Passing through the water and the Spirit is to be joined once again to all mankind (and to all creation), to be ever marked with human kindness.

Baptism is symbolic of laying aside all hostilities and taking up a new identity in Christ, in which old divisions are replaced by a strong, profound solidarity of human-kindness, shared with everyone!

MacLaren is influenced in this regard to Pete Rollin's book 'Insurrection'. Rollin points to Paul's words where he declares that in Christ  there is neither jew nor greek (religious identity), slave nor free (socioeconomic identity), male nor female (sexual identity)...to Rollin it's not a question of embracing yet another identity but rather 'laying down the various identities that would otherwise define us'.
To follow Christ is to share his radical  divestment of identity.
Rollin concludes: "We can even say that in Christ there is neither Christian nor non-Christian...The scandalous nature of this radical vision is captured succinctly in the Gospel according to John, where the Christian is described as one who lives in the world (with all of its social, religious, and political divisions) while no longer being (not being held fast by them)...When this loss of identity is enacted in a liturgical setting, we may call it a suspension space, for in that location one symbolically lays one's identities at the door".

This subversive symbolism would see a laying aside of all our hostile identities -  taking up a new identity in Christ - in which old divisions are replaced by a new and profound solidarity of human-kindness.

I have a sneaking suspicion that both McLaren and Rollin are on the right track. It got me thinking of Paul's analogy of Christ being the 2nd Adam. Adam symbolises the first human, the father of humanity.
Christ has now brought us into a new humanity (which was what humanity was meant to be from the start until hostility and brokenness entered) - so Christ brings us back into the human-kindess - with all its diversity - in solidarity and harmony.

We are now reconciled to one another.
Note: reconciliation differs from inclusion. Inclusion says we can absorb the 'other' into 'us', while reconciliation means we want to be at peace with the other as the other !