13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.
16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
– Matthew 3:13-17 (NRSVUE)
As with many snippets extracted from sacred texts, the baptism of Jesus can be branded as ‘regime-friendly,’ as revealing the way, the truth, and the life of coercive power-structures. This is especially so when scripture is packaged as dictating divine decrees for a self-proclaimed ‘righteous’ worldview.
Wielding god-ordained sanctions, theo-political systems can readily distill human experience into oppositional binaries: insider/outsider, pure/defiled, law and order/wanton liberality. Such binaries tolerate no transgression. As 2025 ICE practices in the US brutally attest, us-not-them borders must be secured.
For wherever scripture and ritual are deployed as ideology-justifying strategies, power—divine and human—congeals into enforcement. Yet the baptism of Jesus churns with prophetic potencies disruptive to systems of control. It is Jesus’ call to a ‘let-it-be righteousness,’ awash in basileia (“kingdom/kindom”) imperatives, that upends despotic designs.
The “let it be” by which Jesus urges John to throw religious caution to the wind abounds in creative possibilities of love and justice. The semantic latitude of the Greek, together with Jesus’ readiness to defy expectations, opens repressively righteous orders to the waters and ways of the basileia.
Jesus’ baptism, then, functions as both an invitation to new ways of being and a reservoir of liberative praxis. Energized by Jesus’ let-it-be, justice-soaked righteousness, such basileic practices resist us/them tactics that name the neighbor as ‘other’ or enemy.
Before diving more fully into basileic liberations, however, it’s key to trace certain distillation processes of oppressive regimes. Such processes seek to strip the sacred and secular, along with everything else, of complexity, nuance, and mystery. Take as examples what could be called the 3 P’s of authoritarianism—propriety, purity, and piety. Compressed and homogenized, this triad demands unwavering fealty.
The ‘unwavering’ element, however, is rarely left to chance. It demands methods of surveillance and discipline. Peruse The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel, a declaration signed by over 17,000 evangelicals that decries social justice as promoting “dangerous ideas and corrupted moral values.” These ‘values’ potentially subvert biblical teaching (piety). Consider Texas Senate Bill 8 and House Bill 7 that essentially name private citizens deputies of the court to persecute women and reproductive healthcare providers (purity). In a parallel vein, review conservative pundits’ calls for retribution against individuals whose responses to the murder of Charlie Kirk are deemed inappropriate (propriety).
These snapshots of control speak less to a ‘love thy neighbor’ than a ‘judge thy neighbor’ ethos. It is this ethos, among other elements, fueling the white Christian nationalism currently manipulating levers of governance. A 3P’s ethos propelled by judgment stands counter to the justice imperatives at work in Jesus’ let-it-be righteousness. What’s more, neighbor-judgment, bordering on neighbor-hate, perpetuates the ongoing culture-warfare in the US.
The ‘culture war’ trope may feel dated or wearisome, as if the 1980s rhetorics of the Moral Majority and Heritage Foundation loop infernally. Like neon and fluorescents, however, it remains a vibrant, us/them motif for some. Just look at Project 2025.
In Project 2025’s world-crafting, “culture wars” (3, 187) exist between “Conservatives—the Americanists in this battle…” and “woke culture warriors” (19, 4). What is being fought over in this us/them, insider/outsider contest? The 3 P’s—propriety, purity, and piety. Or, as named by the text: “traditional American values,” along with “the soul of America, which is very much at stake” (204, 19).
Who are the foes in this battle? The “…totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening,’” along with its “radical gender, racial, and equity” agenda (1, 60). And what are their end goals? According to Project 2025, the cultish radicals seek to:
1. destroy the pillars of propriety, from mere competence to traditional values (204);
2. pollute the purity of family, marriage, and identity, not to mention America’s “precious heritage” (xiv); and
3. displace true piety and upright consciences with a social-justice gospel (489).
Project 2025’s culture war pits ‘true’ Americans against dangerous cultists, with the 3 P’s, the righteousness of conservatives, at risk. As propounded across its pages, liberal elites have untethered the “Republic…[from]…its original moorings” (xiv). According to this myth of origin, the Fall is comprehensive but not eternal. In this deistic worldview where God functions primarily as distant rights-giver, a Pelagianesque grace abounds. If “conservatives want to save the country,” they “need a bold and courageous plan. This book [Project 2025] is the first step in that plan” (2).
The salvation playbook, however, is beset by false prophets, like “[o]pen-borders” activists, and heretical doctrines, such as “environmental extremism” (11). Project 2025 contributor Kevin D. Roberts details just what these heresies entail. Consistent with the deism woven across the text, Roberts adds a theological flourish, distorting Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of discipleship to fit a Jesus-free, messianic mission.
In Roberts’ rendering, “[o]pen-borders activism” serves as “a classic example” of Bonhoeffer’s ‘cheap grace,’ “…promoting one’s own virtue without risking any personal inconvenience” (11). Because liberal elites are immune from the quotidian struggles of everyone else. And while Roberts refrains from expounding on ‘costly grace,’ he avows that Project 2025 “will arm the next conservative President” with strategies designed not only to “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty…” but also to “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely…” (3).
The Bonhoeffer that Roberts constructs, however, runs hollow. The Cost of Discipleship confesses a Christo-centric faith gifted by God alone. This faith acts through nonviolence, neighbor-love, forgiveness, and most importantly obedience to Christ the Mediator. Yet these confessional inconveniences do not distract Roberts.
He goes on to declare:
‘Cheap grace’ aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism…. [which] is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue. (11)
And there you have it: the waters of baptism drawn into the theo-political piety of Project 2025. Neither Roberts nor other contributors opine more fully on baptism. Yet I suggest that Roberts’ depiction of the Left’s pseudo-religion perpetuates the either/or, insider/outsider dynamic evident across the text. As another contested element in the battle for the American soul, baptism is either an ingenuine practice born of craven lust for power, or it’s a sacred rite/right of return to original beginnings that align with Project 2025 conservatism.
In the baptism of Jesus, however, there are no promises of return to a sacralized past, nor of a to-come politics unencumbered by the desires, bodies, and needs of others. To the contrary, the basileia imperatives infusing the waters of this and every baptism call for practices that heal and liberate. Such practices care little for oppressive propriety, purity, and piety. For in the Matthean depiction of Jesus’ baptism, healing and liberation arise out of the wildernesses and waters of a ‘let-it-be righteousness that sparks creative embodiments of love, justice, and transformation.
Concise and to the point, the baptism scene bursts with theological intensity. There are allusions to Isaiah 42:1 and Psalm 2:7, drawing on prophecy along with images of kingship and servanthood. A Trinitarian revelation and theophanic affirmation simultaneously conclude one act while ushering in the next, as we find a Spirit-led Jesus facing the wilderness temptations of “the devil” in Matthew 4. And at the heart of this confessional whirlwind stand the creation-imbued waters of baptism.
Jesus’ “let it be,” together with the Spirit movement and divine voice, beckon readers to the let-there-be’s of Genesis 1. From these Divine invitations emerged a resplendent creativity. “Let there be light.” And there is. “Let there be” waters, dry land, and vegetation and creatures of “every kind.” And there are.
Echoing these generative summonings, creative potency hums in Jesus’ words to John. Something other than the status quo just might be possible there in the wilderness, beyond the 3 P’s of oppressive regimes. This possibility grounds power not in control or winning, but in God’s promised basileia.
As described in the Gospel of Matthew, the basileia/kindom of heaven is not some distant place (4:17), but a way of being. Embodying the kindom, being the basileic, entails practices that include:
attending to the vulnerable and hurting (4:23-24; 5:3);
seeking the righteousness of God, not human constructs (5:10);
cherishing relationship with neighbors (5:21-26, 43-48); and,
forgoing vengeance or retribution (5:38-42).
Being the basileia, then, rejects us/them purities that extol the propriety (or necessity) of combat in pious service to the god of individual rights. What’s more, to embody the basileia is to practice a let-it-be righteousness shaped by the potencies of water, wilderness, and showing up.
As noted earlier, Jesus’ “let it be” reverberates with the generativity of that “spirit of God…hovering over the waters” in Genesis 1:2 (NIV). In each narrative, what could be framed as sterile command reveals itself to be an invitation to participate in divine possibilities. In Genesis, God repeatedly sees creation’s fecund response to the let-there-be calls. In Matthew, Jesus not only practices deep relationality by going to John to be baptized. He also sees and experiences transformed realities, wherein heaven and earth, water and sky, human and divine open to one another.
The creative possibilities attested to in both scenes highlight the potency of trust and love. Such trust and love do not seek to manage or enforce outcomes. Rather, they practice a let-it-be righteousness.
Righteousness, as portrayed across the New Testament, has less to do with rule-following or propriety than with a basileic way of being. Applied to humans, it speaks to the divine vision for existence—one of continuing transformation into the ways of justice and faithfulness.
These ways are not abstract dogma. Rather, they speak to encounters with the economic Trinity—encounters with the God who reveals Godself in the world. In other words, to live in righteousness is to endeavor to live in accord with God’s creative transformations.
A semantic element in the Matthean baptism scene further challenges static proprieties. The Greek term translated ‘let it be so’ bears multiple meanings, which include ‘forgive,’ ‘let go,’ and ‘lay aside.’ This elasticity of meaning imbues Jesus’ let-it-be with tools to resist the 3 P’s—through acts of forgiveness (of self and others) and release (of indoctrination and vengeance). Such resistance opens individuals, systems, and communities to trusting, loving relationships with God and one another.
Let-it-be righteousness, as openness to God, others, justice, love, and trust, disrupts the divides of purity as well. It is not incidental that wilderness encompasses the baptism of Jesus. It serves as the setting of both John’s ministry and the testing of Jesus. Beyond borders of management, halls of control, and purities of oppressive regimes, wilderness functions as a space of encounter, discovery, risk, and transformation.
What’s more, wilderness invites sojourners to the ways of apophasis, of unknowing. A basileic space of verdant barrenness, wilderness upends rigid categories of knowing and doing. To practice wilderness, as acts of healing, justice, and liberation, is to intentionally blur divides and question certitudes. To embody wilderness is to turn over the tables of convention by stirring up the waters of creation and baptism, unleashing possibilities of transformative love. It is to listen to and hear different perspectives. It is to dare resolutely to behold the imago dei in all, even the self-proclaimed ‘enemy,’ while striving to remain faithful to God’s invitation to basileic becoming.
Baptismal faithfulness, which is basileic faithfulness, is far from pious gesture or enforced fealty. Forget about ‘getting it right’ or adopting ‘warrior’ postures—be it of prayer or culture. Faithfulness to self, others, and creation involves showing up. John didn’t expect Jesus. And yet there he was, the Son of God, upending expectations, propriety, purity, and piety.
So, what is it to live a let-it-be righteousness? To be fully present. To put your body where your theology is. To risk encounters with the divine and human. To love and trust when theo-political playbooks exalt battlefield mentalities. To forgive. To honor the innate dignity of neighbors. To release rage and revenge. That is to dive into, to rise out of, and to walk in the baptismal waters of Jesus.
