Friday, January 13, 2012
So what's the big deal about my kid getting baptized
I shared in my last blog that I beleive children of believers are holy. so if they are not lost, and if they really do not have a major conversion experience, what is the big deal about baptism?
I think part of our angst and worry over our kid's getting baptized stems from an over emphasis on one aspect of baptism. We have strongly stressed the forgiveness of sins almost to the exclusion of everything else. Because we have often failed to realize that our children are holy because of our faith in Jesus, we stress over when they will be baptized and have their sins forgiven. Which leads to very young children being baptized because they know they do wrong things and they know Jesus died for our sins, and they know baptism is for forgiveness of sins... so they get baptized.
I do believe my kids sins were forgiven -- past and future sins -- when they were baptized. That forgiveness is now based on their relationship with Jesus and not their parent's relationship with Jesus. But there is much more to baptism that is virtually impossible for a young child to process.
I believe baptism is an act of faith. And of course the faith of children is greater than ours in so many ways. But the faith of a child is also innocent. Life is good and things always turn out good. Mature faith sees a hard world and says that I believe God works anyway.
But baptism is also where we are crucified with Christ. It is a death and resurrection. It is an act of self denial and a pledge to God that our life is now His. This is a difficult proposition for a little child to process, much less buy into. It is hard for we adults to live out this concept, but that is a different task than understanding the concept.
Baptism is where we recieve the Holy Spirit to help us in the process of moving from a life of slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness. There has to be some ability to process that.
The big deal about baptism is for a child growing up to move away from the spiritual walk of their parent's and set out on their own spiritual journey. It is more than knowing the facts. It is more than loving Jesus. It is more than wanting to always live for him. It is being able to process to some extent what that means in life.
And in a future post, I'll share more about how to -- and not to -- help your child know when to make the decision to be crucified with Christ.
I think part of our angst and worry over our kid's getting baptized stems from an over emphasis on one aspect of baptism. We have strongly stressed the forgiveness of sins almost to the exclusion of everything else. Because we have often failed to realize that our children are holy because of our faith in Jesus, we stress over when they will be baptized and have their sins forgiven. Which leads to very young children being baptized because they know they do wrong things and they know Jesus died for our sins, and they know baptism is for forgiveness of sins... so they get baptized.
I do believe my kids sins were forgiven -- past and future sins -- when they were baptized. That forgiveness is now based on their relationship with Jesus and not their parent's relationship with Jesus. But there is much more to baptism that is virtually impossible for a young child to process.
I believe baptism is an act of faith. And of course the faith of children is greater than ours in so many ways. But the faith of a child is also innocent. Life is good and things always turn out good. Mature faith sees a hard world and says that I believe God works anyway.
But baptism is also where we are crucified with Christ. It is a death and resurrection. It is an act of self denial and a pledge to God that our life is now His. This is a difficult proposition for a little child to process, much less buy into. It is hard for we adults to live out this concept, but that is a different task than understanding the concept.
Baptism is where we recieve the Holy Spirit to help us in the process of moving from a life of slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness. There has to be some ability to process that.
The big deal about baptism is for a child growing up to move away from the spiritual walk of their parent's and set out on their own spiritual journey. It is more than knowing the facts. It is more than loving Jesus. It is more than wanting to always live for him. It is being able to process to some extent what that means in life.
And in a future post, I'll share more about how to -- and not to -- help your child know when to make the decision to be crucified with Christ.
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Steve, I agree with you up to a point. I certainly do not believe that children, or adults for for that matter, should be pressured into baptism. It must be a considered and understood choice of faith.
The Bible nowhere gives or implies a certain age. Therefore, if a child does make a choice on their own to be baptized I certainly would not forbid them. I know of two instances which illustrate my reason for saying this. In one instance, two young men mentioned to their mother that they wanted to be baptized, about the same time two older brothers were. She told them that she did not want them to be baptized until they were at least 12 years old. One was about eleven the other about nine. The nine year old died with cancer in his forties without ever again showing any desire to be baptized into Christ. The 11 year old, now middle aged, has shown no further interest in salvation.
In the other instance, my two sons, only a little older at the time, responded to the invitation without even asking. The preacher asked my opinion to which I replied, "It is their decision, not mine." Both are now faithful Christians as the grow close to middle age. The younger came forward again in his early 20's stating that he believed that he responded only because his older brother did, and asking to be baptized for the remission of sins. This we did.
In my experience, those not forbidden to obey later corrected any problem they found with their baptism, but those forbidden by parent, elder, or preacher never obeyed.
There are two problems that I have found in the understanding of some younger children. One is sin. If they do not know what sin is, they may not be guilty of it, and this produces the second problem. It makes it hard to understand repentance. We need to do a lot of teaching on both.
Like it or not, the intelligence of our children is increasing. We will find them needing the teaching of faith, repentance,confession and baptism at a younger and younger age.
For the time being our congregation begins that teaching in 1st to 3rd grade class. They often ask what sin is, even before specific teaching on the subject begins. They also ask to have repentance defined as soon as the teacher mentions it. They already seem to understand why they were not baptized when they were babies and why we baptize only by immersion.
Of course this applies only to those who worship with us regularly. With other children we must begin from scratch as we do with their parents.
The Bible nowhere gives or implies a certain age. Therefore, if a child does make a choice on their own to be baptized I certainly would not forbid them. I know of two instances which illustrate my reason for saying this. In one instance, two young men mentioned to their mother that they wanted to be baptized, about the same time two older brothers were. She told them that she did not want them to be baptized until they were at least 12 years old. One was about eleven the other about nine. The nine year old died with cancer in his forties without ever again showing any desire to be baptized into Christ. The 11 year old, now middle aged, has shown no further interest in salvation.
In the other instance, my two sons, only a little older at the time, responded to the invitation without even asking. The preacher asked my opinion to which I replied, "It is their decision, not mine." Both are now faithful Christians as the grow close to middle age. The younger came forward again in his early 20's stating that he believed that he responded only because his older brother did, and asking to be baptized for the remission of sins. This we did.
In my experience, those not forbidden to obey later corrected any problem they found with their baptism, but those forbidden by parent, elder, or preacher never obeyed.
There are two problems that I have found in the understanding of some younger children. One is sin. If they do not know what sin is, they may not be guilty of it, and this produces the second problem. It makes it hard to understand repentance. We need to do a lot of teaching on both.
Like it or not, the intelligence of our children is increasing. We will find them needing the teaching of faith, repentance,confession and baptism at a younger and younger age.
For the time being our congregation begins that teaching in 1st to 3rd grade class. They often ask what sin is, even before specific teaching on the subject begins. They also ask to have repentance defined as soon as the teacher mentions it. They already seem to understand why they were not baptized when they were babies and why we baptize only by immersion.
Of course this applies only to those who worship with us regularly. With other children we must begin from scratch as we do with their parents.
# posted by 
: 4:46 PM PST
: 4:46 PM PST
Wes,Thanks for the comments and insights. I am going to talk some about the whole saying no question in a later blog. You are right about the intellectual capacity of our kids today. The question is about the maturity level to make lifetime commitments. And this really is a discussion about "our" kids and not the visiting families.
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