Infant Baptism

We traveled to IA this weekend for the baptism our little grand niece. I was raised in the Baptist church which does not believe in infant baptism because they believe that salvation needs to be a "personal decision". Interestingly, such churches also tend to believe that if the personal decision is "correctly done", the person is "once saved, always saved.."

The pastor today touched on the classic story of daddy holding the little child's hand as opposed to the little child holding daddy's hand. The story is somewhat instructive, but I believe the orders of magnitude to be off in the region of "ten to infinity". The God we worship is beyond material, so beyond our measurement. My faith, my "grasping for God's hand" is of little significance. Yes, he does allow me free will, so I can "get away", but otherwise my efforts at "holding on" are of little use.

The fundamentalists often point out that "infant baptism isn't in the bible". Partially true, but less true than for Sunday worship, Christmas and Easter celebration, or nearly anything else about our modern worship. There are a number of places that when a man believes, he and his household are baptized. Children aren't explicitly called out, but they are not excluded either. Is there a case where a woman is explicitly baptized? I don't recall, but I believe not. It would be in keeping with the time the Gospels were written to not bother to report on the baptism of women and children.

After raising two boys through confirmation, having been young once myself, and from everything I have seen in interacting with other families and children, the pragmatism of "suffer the little children unto me" is at least clear. Baptism begins a journey of faith that we pray lasts a lifetime. The "fathers' hand" through confirmation, communion, the word, church fellowship and prayer are always there as long as we don't "push away" in refusal, our hope is secure. We pray for ourselves, those we love, and especially fervently for our kids.

The bible says that the "road is narrow", and it is also quite clear that there are ditches on both sides ... legalism and works righteousness on one hand, loss of truth and meaning on the other. The stakes are very high, and the standard isn't our standard, our parent's standard, or the standard of an opinion poll. The best path seems to be "humble confidence in God". It isn't clear that any denomination has a corner on that, but it seems that finding a congregation is a critical part of walking that road.

Again, it wasn't declared to be easy, but the symbolism of the first step having been taken on our behalf before we were able to understand always wells up in my breast on seeing a new child of God welcomed to the father's hand.