An issue arose a while back when a single mom who just recently became a Christian at our church came to me and said that she wanted her 10-month-old daughter to be baptized. And she wanted me to do it.
At first, I was thrilled because she was getting it. She was understanding the joy of knowing the God that loved her. And she wanted her baby girl to know this same God. And she thought enough of me to ask me to do the baptism.
There was just one problem.
I don’t believe in infant baptism.
The Bible first talks about baptism right after Jesus is born.
It begins in Luke 3 with a man named John. John the Baptist.
John prepared the way for Jesus. He was kind of like the opening band.
He was a strange man possibly with dread locks, who lived in the wilderness, and ate insects.
The people of God had been delivered from slavery centuries ago. But now found themselves yet in slavery again. They longed to hear a new word from God, they hadn’t heard him in 460 years since he spoke to Malachi. He had been silent for all these years.
Until Now.
When He spoke to John. The word of God came to John and he walked through the streets repeating things other prophets had said years ago.
He started baptizing people who repented from their sins.
Because he was preparing the way.
It was almost time for Jesus to make his debut.
Everything was about to change.
There was about to be a new normal.
Like firemen warning and rescuing people from their homes during a flood John strolls the streets of the neighborhood telling people the time has come.
Some people think that if you’re Catholic you can’t be a Christian. This is just simply not true. There are two major sects in Christianity. Catholicism and Protestantism.
Within Protestants there are many what we call denominations or fellowships. Which basically means a group of people who have the same interpretation of scripture or doctrine (i.e. Baptist, Methodists, Lutherans, Pentecostals etc.)
Catholics baptize infants. This doesn’t make them bad. They just have a different doctrine than perhaps the tribe you belong to. Different interpretations of scripture.
So, I’m trying to explain this to this single mom could probably care less. She just wants her little girl to grow up knowing God.
And so, time came for me to tell her I couldn’t baptize her baby.
I actually don’t believe in it.
She obviously was confused.
She wanted to commit her baby to the ways of Jesus.
And so, I told her that’s exactly what we would do.
I told her we don’t baptize babies because baptism is when someone is immersed in water as a public declaration of being adopted into the family of God. But in order to be adopted into the family of God one must chose to do so.
A ten-month-old baby cannot make that kind of decision.
It is impossible for a baby to understand this concept.
We don’t believe splashing water on a baby’s head will save it.
Just as much as dunking you under water won’t save you.
There is no magic in the water. It’s symbolic. A public statement.
A public statement that follows the decision of being changed by Christ from the inside out.
When we went to the home of this mother there where 40+ people gathered in a living room to witness this little girl be dedicated.
A dedication isn’t a shortcut or a substitute for knowing Jesus or even magical covering. It’s a promise made by the child’s family to raise the child in the ways of God so that when the child is able to understand God loves them so much he let his own son die so that they could live- they can choose themselves to be baptized because of a personal decision they’ve made.
We dedicated this baby girl and the mother committed to raise her in the ways of God so that someday she can choose on her own to be baptized. Because she’s hid in her heart all that her mom had taught her.
When I explained all this to the single mom she totally understood everything. After she reiterated back to me what I had said to her. She looked deep in thought and then said,
“Well then, I’m the one that needs to be baptized, will you baptize me?”
I smiled and said “Yes, yes, I will.”
That summer she was baptized in front of all her friends in a pool in someones backyard.