baptizing our kids

our church baptises babies, and i never really understood why. i mean, when i was baptized, i was told that it was an outward expression of what had happened inside my heart when i accepted Jesus as my savior and Lord - a sign, showing that i was washed by his blood, and was raised into a new life with Him.. reborn... and that it is a sign like a wedding ring - to show the world that i am His and He is mine.

i've been doing research on this topic lately because i've been thinking about it ever since James was born, and again now that Josiah is here. tonight we had our pastor and his wife over for dinner to discuss it further, and to try and understand why our church believes this doctrine...

it is no question that baptism is closely linked with conversion, and that the two sort of "go together," which would make one think that a person should be converted and THEN baptised... but as i have thought more and more about it, i have come to think differently on this issue..

for some people, when you ask them how they came to know Christ, they can point to a specific date and time and method of conversion, and from that day forward, they have known Him. but for others, like myself, it was ongoing since birth. it seems as if i have ALWAYS known Him - or, should i say, been known BY Him...

when i got baptized when i was about 12 years old, i remember thinking, "of course! why didn't i do this a long time ago?" when it was described to me as a wedding ring, i remember thinking that it felt like i was already "married" to Jesus a long time ago, but hadn't been wearing the ring until now. it felt like my baptism was a late response to something that my heart had known since before i could really remember....

so my conclusion is that my baptism would have and could have been closely linked to my conversion either way - whether i got baptized at 12 (like i did), or whether i had been baptized as an infant. at least for me, being baptized as an infant would have made more sense... not that i would have been more "right," but it just would have made more sense... since my conversion was "ongoing" like it was... pretty much from birth!

when an adult is converted and then baptized soon afterward, they are still BABIES in the faith and don't FULLY understand what they are doing or the depth of what Christ has done for them. I mean, they might get it better than an infant would, but they still have a lot of growing up to do into that baptism or commitment to Christ.

in our church, babies are baptized so that the believing parents can say, "Lord, this is our way of saying that we acknowledge that this child is yours, and that it is your work alone that will bring him to a saving knowledge of You. Put your mark on him and claim him as your own. Our prayer is that he will 'grow up into this baptism,' and someday confirm that he believes as we have prayed he would believe - that You are his one and only savior and Lord."

when babies are baptized in our church, they also have a "confirmation" later in life - like around age 10 or 12 or whenever they want to confirm that they have made their faith their own, that they agree with the hope that their believing parents had for them, and they want to tell the world that Jesus is their savior and Lord.

For Seth, his baptism (like mine, it was in late childhood) was a very special time - a turning point in his faith.. it marked a time when he "bacame a man in the Lord" - very memorable, significant, faith confirming... and his hesitation about infant baptism (as was mine) was that we didn't want to take this special time away from our kids because we feel that it is a significant part of their faith and life as a Christian.

We decided that we will baptise our kids now, with the above mentioned prayer in mind, and that when they confirm it at their "confirmation" when they are older, we will make a REALLY big deal out of it, make it a really special time, so that they have the same memory of it as Seth does of his baptism. It will be one big party, that the whole family attends, and there will be people at church who will remember when they were baptized as babies, and it will be like one big answer to prayer for their lives!

i'm glad that we did our research, had lengthly converstions about it, talked to our friends and other parents about it, and had the pastor over for more discussion and understanding.

more to come....