Dude, that ain't cool. Objections answered.

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It has been difficult to post recently as life and ministry have been very busy and margin continues to get swallowed up.  However, writing is a necessary output for my own spiritual formation, so I am taking some steps to build this into my schedule.  Thanks to all of you who have inquired as to the missing blog posts in your RSS feeds.  It does my heart good to know that both of you are reading this blog. Infant baptism has fallen by the wayside in much of evangelical Christianity.  So, when you post about this topic you get some good conversation via tweets and different formats where some great questions are asked. I wanted to answer these objections and questions in a post.
  1. What about those kids who get baptized and don't walk with God?  That's a very good question. I think that the first thing is to realize that God is on a different time frame than we are.  Just because someone has not yet responded to the gospel does not mean they won't.  The sacrament is not a guarantee to faith.  Infant baptism provides an opportunity for the people of God to walk along and trust him to save this child. This is about God not about us. Finally, the sacrament is also to show that the child of believing parents is a member of the covenantal community and that we can look forward in hope that they will publicly profess their faith. (This is edited, thanks to Laura who helped clarify some poor logic in the comments below.)
  2. I heard that infant baptism is believed to actually give salvation to the infant, is that true? This is true or false depending on your tradition.  The two major divisions are catholic and protestant.  The catholic understanding of the sacraments is very different than that of the protestant tradition. The catholic understanding of the sacraments is that they procure grace for you.  The protestant understanding is that the sacraments are a means to experiencing grace. This means that in the protestant tradition salvation is not procured by infant baptism.  It is an external promise that  will some day become an internal reality. It is a marking that the children of believing parents are members of the covenant community of faith. In baptist traditions children are not part of the community of the church but are viewed as outsiders until they "make profession of faith".  This is in stark contrast to what we see in the Scriptures where children have always been included in the community of faith. So, infant baptism does not secure salvation but inclusion in the community of faith with the promise of future salvation.
  3. Should I get re-baptized now that I have trusted Christ and am no longer a part of a tradition that does infant baptism? I would say, "By no means!" Why?  This is because the day you were baptized there was a promise made over you by God.  He has made good on this promise.  If you choose to re-baptize then you are saying that you do not care about the fact God has made good on his promise.  I would argue that you should praise God for his faithfulness and rejoice with those around you about how God saved you and did so in covenantal faithfulness to you.
I am sure there are more objections.  These are the one that seemed to come up the most.  Please post others in the comments so that we can dialogue about them.

You did what to your baby?

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I remember the day well.  It was a Friday night, November 2001, the night before Michigan was to play the evil Ohio State Buckeyes.  Ethan, our firstborn, was reclining in the stroller and I was chatting it up with other college missionaries. Then it slipped (well it did not actually slip, I was waiting for just right the time), we had baptized Ethan, AS AN INFANT!  It was pretty funny when almost everyone within about a 30 foot radius (maybe I said it a little louder than I anticipated) stopped talking and stared at me with a dumbfounded look. I think it might have been a world record for chins on the ground at one time. In the world of parachurch ministries the idea of infant is relatively foreign. It is akin to saying that you are going to sew a third arm to your baby.  Why? I think it's because the dispensational and baptist movement has become quite pervasive in many parts of American Christendom.  Presbyterianism, Methodism, Lutheranism, and other American denominations that practiced the historic sacrament of infant baptism moved toward liberalism and removed themselves from the public life of the church. Their conservative counterparts are small and as a result lost influence in the general Christian world. This has resulted in a loss of covenantal theology and the biblical doctrine of infant baptism. This is one of the great tragedies that the church has faced. This loss is tragic is because it means that there is a loss of vision for the emerging generations.  They have simply become a missionary object as opposed to valued members of the community who need to be discipled and cared for. Why did we baptise our kids?  We baptized them because they are members of the community of faith.  We baptized them because we believe that God is going to draw them to himself. We baptized them because we believe that this promise is visionary for their life.  We baptized them because we believe that the people of God are part of our family and that they have a responsibility to be a part of these kids lives.

Communion...now this is good...

My son and I were worshipping together on Sunday and being the first Sunday of the month we partook in Communion.  As the elements came to us, he smiled at me and we had the following conversation: Ethan: Do I get some of that? Me: No son.  We need to make sure that you truly follow Jesus by faith and that you believe that he is your Lord and that he has forgiven you. Ethan: I do Dad. Me: Well, you have to get up with Pastor Doug and tell everyone that you do. Ethan: By myself? Me: Yep. Ethan: I'm not ready for that Dad, but I can't wait! Amazing!  This ties the whole thing together for me.  We have confused the sacraments. For believing children communion is the place for the public proclamation of their faith.  For the new convert it's baptism. Can you imagine what that day will be like when he stands before the world and proclaims his faith in the risen Messiah and claims him as his own and then joins with the community through The Meal? Infant baptism, communion, all tied together.  This is the beautiful way.  This is the covnenantal way of our promise keeping and ever faithful God!