Why We've Had Our Children Baptized as Infants

Infant baptism is one of those issues that can really throw people for a loop. Often, even Christians who practice it have very little idea of why they do so and other groups don't. Those who don't can look (with a jaw-hanging-open kind of look) at those of us who do and wonder, "Why in the world would they ever do such a thing?" Those of us who do can look at those who don't and think, "Let's just make sure baptism doesn't come up in the conversation."

So, this post is not at all an attempt to try to persuade our friends who "don't" that we're right. Rather, incase it does come up in the conversation next time we're with you, it's just an attempt to keep you from feeling the need to drop your jaw open and perhaps you might even think, "They may not be like us, but they're probably not heretics."

My little girl will be baptized on Sunday at the age of seven months, very close to the same age at which our son was baptized a few years ago. This will obviously have nothing to do with anything she has done nor with any decision she has made.

Of all the potential issues surrounding baptism, I think that is both why infant baptism has come to mean so much to me and also why many others are opposed to it.

In a super-generalized way, I think almost all* Christians' views of baptism either fall on one side of that issue or the other, so I'll see if I can briefly give a bit of background on each and address a few common misconceptions.

Before I go any further, it's essential to realize that folks on either side of this can find reasonable support for their beliefs in Scripture. Neither side has thrown the Bible out the window, but rather, both sides have developed their respective practices of baptism in an attempt to be consistent with what we have read there. For the purposes of trying to keep this post to a readable length, I won't attempt to try to go into a full biblical study here. If people's comments indicate that doing so would be helpful, I can attempt it in another post.

Those Who Don't

This may sound odd from someone who has had his children baptized as infants: I really think that those who don't practice infant baptism refrain from doing so for good reasons. Because in the New Testament, we often read of people being baptized after having repented of their sin and as a symbol of leaving their old life behind to be raised to a new life in Christ, to them, baptism is primarily a means of a person declaring publicly that they too have done so.

It's a very significant thing in a person's life to come to that point. They've come to the end of reliance upon themselves, have decided to replace that with reliance upon God and his mercy offered to us through Jesus, and an important part of that is making a public declaration of the decision they have made by doing what individuals in Scriptures did.

As followers of Jesus, this is seen as one of the primary ways that we begin our life of following him, by deciding to come and be "baptized with water for the forgiveness of sins." Although Jesus was sinless, even he submitted himself to this baptism, and therefore we can imitate him by doing so once we have repented and accepted his mercy.

Common Misconceptions from Those Who Don't (Practice Infant Baptism) About Those Who Do

1. Since baptism as described above is essentially connected to a person's experience of repentance, forgiveness, and conversion, it's easy to see why baptizing an infant wouldn't make much sense to them. When they see it done and still interpret baptism through this framework, it can be inferred that the act of baptizing a baby (or anyone too young to make a decision for themselves) is meant to be a substitute for that child's need to come to that point of repentance, forgiveness, and conversion. Some even interpret this as the parents' attempt to determine the child's eternal destiny. (In conversation, this can get confused with the doctrine of Predestination, but that's a whole separate, unrelated issue.)

This couldn't be further from the reality of the beliefs behind infant baptism. As I hope to support below, when our kids are baptized, it's done as a way of recognizing God's faithfulness to them, which- we hope, pray, and strive for- will one day bring them to a point of responding to God's goodness, cooperating with God's love for and work in them, as they repent of their sin, ask for God's forgiveness, and then seek to live new lives in Christ.

Yes, in some parts of church history, there have been groups that have adopted a set of beliefs about baptism such as, "a baptized baby who dies goes to heaven and an unbaptized baby goes to hell." But just because some have done so, let's not throw out the baby with the baptism water... This has never been the majority view among those who practice infant baptism.

2. Sometimes it's assumed that the practice of baptizing infants must be something that came out of the middle ages along with a slew of other misguided Christian-disguised practices (such as paying priests for forgiveness), and that adult/believer's baptism obviously goes all the way back to the New Testament. Yet the reality is that infant baptism has been practiced as far back as we can trace in church history, while believer's baptism didn't emerge until the Anabaptists in the 16th century.

It's somewhat ironic that as heavily as the theology of the Protestant Reformation has influenced most groups who do not practice baptize infants, many of the Reformation heroes (including Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli) were strongly among those who do.

3. It's often assumed that "those who don't" are willing to re-baptize people, while "those who do" are unwilling to do so. (This is another super-generalization to which there are plenty of exceptions.) Yet the assumption isn't very accurate. Even though the Anabaptists got their name because it meant they were the ones who re-baptized people, even they disagreed with the name, since any adults they baptized had come to believe that their baptism as infants really didn't mean anything. Therefore, their baptism as adults was the first "real" baptism. Assumably, then if one backslid, that baptism also didn't mean anything and they could come again for their first real deal.

Again, this reflects how the emphasis in baptism of "those who don't" is placed on the person being baptized and the process they have been through.The emphasis for "those who do" is not on the individual and their sincere repentance, but on God, and God's grace and faithfulness. Therefore, whether I backslide after being baptized or not has nothing to say about the validity of my baptism. The only reason "those who do" would ever need to be re-baptized would be if God didn't hold up his end of the covenant and needed to start all over. Hopefully you can see why we're not eager to encourage any means that might lead someone to think that had happened...

4. Both views of this highly value following Christ's example in being baptized, but they differ in what it is about Jesus' baptism that we are to imitate.

For those who don't, it really matters that we imitate Jesus' method of Baptism: that he was an adult when he was baptized, as well as how he was baptized ("he came up out of the water" indicates that he went under, rather than just getting some water on his forehead).

For those who do, Jesus' baptism is equally a model, but the focus is more on imitating Jesus' motive for baptism.  That's not to say that the method doesn't matter, but it can't be the primary focus. The occasion for Jesus' baptism was that John was calling Israel to repent when Jesus was an adult, and therefore he couldn't/wouldn't have had any reason nor opportunity to be baptized as a child. And yes, perhaps he did go all the way under the water, but does that always have to be the case? Even if I try to imitate him by finding a river for my baptism, any rivers within driving distance of where I live certainly don't have enough water in them to cover my 6' 7" frame- even regardless of whether I'm vertical or horizontal.

So, if not the method, what was Jesus' motive? It's safe to say that he wasn't trying to make a public declaration about a process of personal repentance that he had just been through. So what was it that motivated Jesus to go into the water that day? That requires a fuller explanation about...

Those Who Do

Not surprisingly, I also think there are good reasons for having children baptized as infants, and these reasons are fundamentally different from the reasons above. (And, not surprisingly, I'll take a bit more room to explain here.) Obviously when my little girl is baptized this coming Sunday it will not be because she's gone through a sincere process of repentance. It won't be a public declaration of any decisions she has made. She isn't leaving all seven previous months of her life behind and rising to a begin again just over halfway through her first year. She hasn't accepted God's mercy toward her.

So, if her baptism isn't about all of the things that baptism precisely is to so many people, what is it about?

In short, it's about God's grace.

In not-so-short: In the Old Testament, circumcision was the sign that someone was a part of the people with whom God had made a covenant. This covenant and practice began with Abraham, to whom God had made the promise, "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Those descendants of Abraham that came through his son, Isaac, and Isaac's son, Jacob (who was later given the name Israel) became the Jewish people. Christians believe that this promise God made to Abraham meant that every ethnic group would eventually be blessed through one person who would come from the Jewish people, Jesus, the Messiah/the Christ.

Even from the time of Abraham, God began working through Abraham and his descendants, always staying faithful to his side of the covenant even in the face of their unfaithfulness. Regardless of how often Abraham's descendants turned their backs on the God of their ancestor, trusting in other gods or other things for their welfare, regardless of how immoral those descendants became, completely ignoring the laws of God that they had been given, though at times it was as if God were keeping his marital vows to a persistent harlot (as depicted in the life of the prophet Hosea), regardless of anything that happened... God kept his end of the covenant.

That covenant and all that happened through the course of God's constant faithfulness to a wavering people came to fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus.

The moment during the +/- 2,000 years between Abraham and Jesus that came to mark the identity of their people more than any other was when, after being enslaved for 400 years in Egypt, they were led by God from captivity to freedom by passing through the Red Sea.

In Mark's gospel, there is no hint of a Christmas story. Rather, he begins by saying in the first verse, "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God..." Then, as quickly as verse 2, we see John the Baptist. As quickly as verse 9, Jesus is coming to be baptized. It's as if Mark is telling us that the moment that marks the coming of the Messiah, the fulfillment of God's centuries-old promise to Abraham, is when Jesus comes, along with "all the people of Jerusalem" to be baptized by John. Again, as with Moses and the Exodus, we see God's people [this time even God's Son!] passing through water. As Moses did, he too would lead them into freedom- this time from captivity to their sin.

After Jesus accomplished all that he came to do, his earliest followers quickly recognized that circumcision could no longer be the symbol of entrance into God's covenant people. It no longer had anything to do with genetic lineage or gender. The old covenant was fulfilled in Jesus. How would God's people now be identified? They would begin in the same place Mark says this act of God's work began: in the water, together with all the people following our Messiah from captivity to sin into the freedom of life in Christ.

In the years following Jesus' ascension, the old promise continued to be unveiled before the eyes of Jesus' earliest followers. People from outside the confined reaches of the old, circumcision-represented, covenant, came to be blessed by the Messiah who fulfilled it. And as they responded "they were baptized, both men and women" (Acts 8:12), Jews and Gentiles, often along with all the members of their households, which would almost certainly have included children (Acts 16:15, 16:33, 18:8, 1 Cor. 1:16).

When the Israelites passed through the water on their way out of Egypt, no one in the crowd thought it was anything of their own doing. None of them had caused the plagues nor the miracles, particularly for the sea to part for them. God, by his own action (i.e. grace), was liberating them.

When Jesus' first generation of followers passed through the water in baptism, they knew that they had not been liberated by their own doing. None of them had caused the old promises to be fulfilled in the Messiah, particularly for him to be raised from the dead. God, by his own action (i.e. grace), was liberating them.

Many Christians from that time on have had experiences similar to one I had several years ago. I was invited to preach in the church where my family attended when I was born and where I was baptized as an infant. As I stood in the pulpit that day, I looked down at the spot where I would have been baptized. I had no memory of it. I did not choose it for myself. In the +/- 30 years in between the day of my baptism and the day that I stood in that pulpit, I had often turned my back on the God of my parents and grandparents, trusted in other things to satisfy me, completely ignoring the kind of life in Christ that had been offered to me. But that morning, it hit me: Regardless of anything that happened... God kept his end of the covenant.

My baptism was in no way about anything that I had done. No repentance. No decision. It was completely about God's covenant of grace (i.e. his own action of bringing me from captivity to sin into real life in the Messiah), and about God's covenant people- my family and our church- who were promising to model God's ways for me and teach them to me.

There would come a point later in my life when I did repent. I made a decision. But even that was simply a response to how God had always been acting in my life (i.e. grace) in fidelity to the covenant that was part of my baptism as an infant.

My son's baptism was a day he will not remember, though it's one we will never forget, and we will do all we can to help him "know" that day as much as possible. My daughter's baptism will be the same. We will do what followers of Jesus have done as far back in Christian history as we know: We will go with everyone in our church, present our child as one entering into God's covenant people, all dedicate ourselves together to teaching her the ways of life in Jesus, and she will join with millions upon millions of God's people before her and go through the water. Then, when we stop afterward and reflect on it, we will be in awe that this precious little girl, completely dependent and incapable of doing anything for herself, will never, never, never be let down by God. Although it is sure that she will fail, this covenant will never have to be remade, because God will never be unfaithful to her.

The grace of the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the Father of Jesus, and of Peter, Stephen, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Asbury, Edwards... and of my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents, and of all of my household will never fail my little girl.

Her baptism on Sunday will be outward and visible sign to always remind us of this wondrous reality of God's grace.

* These over-generalizations don't represent all Christians. There are also some Christian groups, such as the Quakers, who do not practice water baptism at all. I also think they have good reasons, but no room for that in this post.

Last Thanksgiving was the Last with My Dad

[The last picture we have of my Dad was taken last Thanksgiving. I'll insert it here once we're back in town.] [This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.]

We spent Thanksgiving last year with my parents. It was almost six months after my Dad's terminal cancer diagnosis, and he was not doing well. He had been unable to rest for months, and he was both more tired and must have been in more pain that any of us were aware of or could imagine. After we were there with him on Thanksgiving, he was in the inpatient Hospice unit of our hospital by Sunday night, and he died on Thursday.

Obviously there are ways in which last Thanksgiving is a hard memory, but as I've been giving thanks this year, I was somewhat surprised that my memories of last year came with a real sense of gratitude:

I'm thankful that we were able to be there with him and my Mom and that it wasn't just the two of them.

I'm thankful that in the evening after our Thanksgiving meal, we were able to tell him that he had another grandchild on the way.

I'm thankful that our last picture and video of him were with our son at his side. They loved one another and brought each other a lot of joy.

I'm thankful that I was there to see how hard a time he was having, as it helped make me ready for him to go. I didn't have any desire to see him have to keep struggling so much.

And on  a lighter but still significant note, I'm thankful that the Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving, and that even if we're with my wife's family in Missouri, they'll let me watch it. It's something that's the same as I would have been doing with him.

In the bigger picture, now that he's been gone a year, I'm simply thankful that by God's grace, life has still turned out to be very good. I couldn't foresee that, because I couldn't imagine life without him. But it's true, and it's one of those things that I can't really explain. I'm okay with that, and really wasn't trying to write this to explain- just to give thanks.

"If You Were Going Somewhere By Yourself, I'd Want to Catch Up."

Recently I bought a bigger truck, solely for the purpose of being able to take my kids around with me when I'm doing work on our ranch. I love it when I get to take them. Sure, my productivity takes a dive, but I can still get some things done, and I love having my favorite people (my family) with me at my favorite place (our ranch). Several weeks ago, I had my three-year old son with me on one of these days and on our way out of town driving toward the ranch we had to stop at a tire shop and get a flat fixed. They got it done for us, and then I was buckling him back into his car seat, and we had a short conversation that I hope I never forget:

Me: "I sure love having you with me, bud." Him: "I love having you with me, too, Daddy. I wouldn't want to go anywhere without ya." ...[He thought for a minute as I continued buckling him in]... Him: "If you were going somewhere by yourself, I'd want to catch up."

Now that will make a Daddy's day. In fact, by now that conversation was about two months ago, so I guess I can say that it didn't just make my day, but made my quarter.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a great time with a group from our church on our Three Ways to Pray retreat, where we explored praying with other people's words, praying without words, and praying with our own words. Although I grew up most accustomed to praying with my own words, in recent years I've focused more on the other two ways of praying.

Praying with other people's words through practices like Fixed-Hour Prayer has brought a shape, rhythm, and depth to my prayer which I've longed for for a long time.

Praying without words seems to be one of the most needed practices in my own spiritual life, and probably is for many of us. It's in doing so that what we so often call "a personal relationship with God" actually, for me, becomes something that can actually be described with words like relationship or friendship.

But these comments from my little boy, and the immense joy that they brought to me knowing that they came from a very sincere place in his tender little heart, have reminded me of the power of talking to God in very personal words. For a lot of people, this is a very natural and easy way to pray, but not always for me- at least not at this point in my life.

I don't know if my words to God can have anywhere close to the same effect on him that my son's can have on me, but I would guess that it's similar. It certainly isn't by accident that the writers of Scripture, and particularly Jesus, so often choose to describe our relationship to God as one between a father and his children. So, if things between God and me are that similar to things between my son and me, I need to tell him how much I like being with him.

It doesn't require many words, but I've got to use some.

Sabbath's Good Slow Work in Us

In our family, we are Sabbath novices, but we've come to love the small tastes of it that we've experienced so far. We had been out of the rhythm of a weekly Sabbath for a while in the weeks right before and after our daughter's birth, but life is now getting a bit closer to having normalcy again, so we've enjoyed jumping back in to our experiments with Sabbath.

Last week, we had begun our Sabbath together as we normally do with supper and unplugging ourselves from email, text messages, etc. And since it was one of the two nights each week when we're allowed to water our grass in the local drought-time water restrictions, I went out into our yard after supper to get our sprinklers running. (Some of you from other parts of the country will have no concept of this. You always have green grass without working for it. The tradeoff is that while your yard could stand to be mown every 5 days or so, I've only mowed twice this whole year.)

As I went out to set up the sprinklers, my son wanted to tag along as he often does. So he played while I got things going. Then, after a bit my wife also came out with our baby girl and they rocked on our porch swing. It was a good, slow evening of pushing my son in his new swing set while knowing that there wasn't anything else that I needed to be accomplishing on that night.

Eventually I went over to sit with my wife and baby on the swing. (Thankfully, the yard is big enough for the sprinklers to be running and not getting us wet while we're doing these things.) As I walked over, I could see his eyes looking at the sprinklers, with an idea brewing in his two-year-old mind. I told him, "Bud, go ahead and run through them if you want to." He got close enough to get a little wet, but wasn't very sure what else to do.

I sat down on the swing next to my wife while he stood there getting a little wet. He asked me to come play in the sprinklers with him, and although I was in a good, slow Sabbath mode, it hadn't progressed far enough to let me lower my resistance to getting soaked in my clothes, and I declined the invitation.

About a minute later, my wife said, "Oh, why not?," handed me the baby and went to give our boy a lesson by example in how to get thoroghly soaked by your back yard sprinklers.

They were both laughing as hard as I've ever seen them, and it continued for a while. The longer it went on the sillier they got, with our son eventually losing himself in belly laughs while my wife carried him around encouraging him to shake hands with the leaves on our tree as the sprinkler continued to soak them. I enjoyed watching their fun as much as they enjoyed having it.

There are seven days each week, but we're finding that stuff this good is much more likely to happen during one of them when we're in the rhythm of practicing the Sabbath.

It's a 24-hour period when we set the boundaries around ourselves to entrust whatever hasn't been accomplished into God's hands. This reminds us that regardless of how hard we work during the other six days, our work is really only a very small piece of all of the good that God is working to accomplish in our world; his kingdom actually survives just fine even when we lay the striving aside for a day.

It's a 24-hour period when loving and enjoying each other are among the highest priorities on the things we have to do. All of the emails that need our responses, all of the blog posts there are to write, and the myriad of other things get laid aside once each week. And we're falling in love with it.

P.S.: If you're curious, or looking for a way to become Sabbath novices in your house too, Ruth Haley Barton's chapter on Sabbath in her book, Sacred Rhythms, was one of the main things that opened the door for us.

In Defense of Perfection

We recently bought a kit for a new backyard play set for our kids. Even months before my son's 3rd birthday, he was far too tall for the toddler play set we bought a couple of years ago from our neighbors, so we jumped at the chance to buy this bigger and better version when we found it at a very deep discount.

The first thing I learned in the process of putting the set together was that I have always drastically underestimated how much work they take to assemble. When I've seen them in stores, they've looked nice, but somehow my eyes never noticed how many screws, bolts, washers, and nuts they require. I knew I was in trouble when I opened the box and the directions said that even with 2-3 people, it would still take 12-14 hours to complete. I knew I was in double trouble when I realized the only person I had to help me was the same two-year-old for whom we bought the set, so any time he spent on the job would be more likely to increase the time remaining until the project's completion than it would be to help me finish.

Even if he didn't reduce the workload by much, I loved the time we spent outside together working on the play set. It was good for both of us. He wasn't stuck inside the house watching videos, and I loved having him with me, even though he asked on an average of every 3 minutes, "Is this how we build a playground, Dad?"

The second thing I learned in the process had to do with all of the mistakes I made in putting it together. There were close to a dozen times that I had pieces put together only to realize that I'd done it wrong and had to take the pieces apart and put them together again. A couple of times there had already been too much progress made before I realized my mistake and I had to improvise by putting some piece where it would be good enough, rather than where it was really supposed to go, or by drilling my own holes where the holes would have been if I had done things correctly.

In my younger days, I would have become pretty frustrated at those mistakes, but at this point in my life I've made enough of them to realize that the mistakes are part of the process of getting things right. I have a lot of ideas that have never gotten off of the ground because of the hesitancy brought on by the possibility of the mistakes that I would surely make along the way. And, the projects that have gotten off the ground have, as expected, been full of mistakes.

But here's the thing the play set taught me: which one of those types of projects ends up closer to perfection? Obviously, it's the type that gets done, mistakes included. This is because, even with the mistakes that have taken place, they can still end up perfectly serving their purpose.

This play set will always show the scars of the errors I made in its assembly. Holes are drilled in the wrong places, and some hardware doesn't match since I had to go out and get new pieces to make up for my mess-ups. But, in the end, the play set's purpose is that my kids and their friends will enjoy playing on it. Even with its misplaced holes and hardware, it can still fulfill that purpose to perfection.

Perhaps it's a very limited analogy, but this really helps me to make sense out of a God who knows our mistakes so well and who also says, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven in perfect." I've made plenty of mistakes in the process of my own "construction," but my sincere hope is that there's still a very real way in which I can end up perfectly accomplishing my purpose.

If, 5-7 years from now, this play set is well-used and still standing, and it hasn't caused any child's serious injury, its entire existence will have been a complete success. And if, 60-70 years from now, the people who knew me best can honestly look back at the years of my life and say that I loved God and I loved people, that I had a living, vital relationship with God and passed it on to others... that's the perfection I'm aiming for.

Completely Unhelpful Thoughts I've Shared With My Son

A few days ago, I was tucking my two year old son into bed, and he started begging me to lay on his floor as he fell asleep. I've done that at times in the past, particularly if he doesn't feel good, but we generally like for him to go to sleep by himself.

As I looked at his face and tried to think of the best response to, "But Daddy, I really need you to lay down on my floor for a little while," I thought that I had a moment of fatherhood brilliance.

The idea came to mind to use the moment to teach a profound spiritual truth to my toddler about God's presence with us. He has a book we read together at night that has a line where a person smiles and whispers, "God is here." So I thought to myself, "That's it! I'll teach him that God is in the room with him, and then it will let me off the hook about having to lay on his floor." The conversation went something like this.

Little D: But Daddy, I really need you to lay down on my floor for a while.

Me: Hey, Bud, you know that part in your book where someone smiles and whispers, "God is here"?

Little D: Yeah.

Me: Well, it's like that. I can't stay in your room right now, but God is here with you. So if you're laying here in your bed, you can look over there and imagine that God is laying on your floor while you fall asleep.

Little D:

Me: Does that help a little bit?

Little D, without any moment of hesitation: No.

He made it very clear that he wasn't willing to accept theology in exchange for my presence in the room (even though I still think my theology was good). As soon as he did so, I knew what I had done was a bit silly; two year olds need their dads to be there in front of their eyes and live out what God is like, much more than they need us to use words to try to explain to them that an invisible God is always near. There are things about this that are both troubling and relieving to me.

Why it troubles me: I feel like I'm pretty good at explaining theology to people, but living it out in front of the always-learning eyes of a pre-schooler is a different ballgame. I enjoy talking about theology, I've got a really good sermon in my file about God's presence with us, and talking about these things with people is even part of what I get paid to do. But those things didn't do my little boy one ounce of good the other night.

What he told me with his quick "No" was that he needs a daddy whose character is so much like that of Jesus that it will make the theology lessons come easier later on. He needs me to be the kind of person who, by seeing me every day, will help him when he gets older and starts to think for himself about what we mean when we say that God is here, or is loving, good, forgiving, trustworthy, or holy... that those things will be very naturally believable to him because of how he has seen them in the life of his Daddy right before his eyes.

That sounds good as a write it, but it's a very tall order when I'm crabby, just wanting people to go along with my own plans so that I can accomplish the things I want to, and certainly not feeling much like that kind of Daddy that he needs. There are plenty of times that I would prefer trying to explain sanctification to a two year old than give him living proof of it.

But here's why it relieves me: because that Daddy that he wants and needs, who shows him what God's character is like and passes it on to him, is not only who he needs but is also who I most want to be. If I work at answering the question, deep-down at my gut level, of what I want most in life... that's it. I want to be that kind of man for my family. So I'm relieved that I don't have to come up with a children's book that would effectively help my kids understand atonement theories or the widely different views on eschatology, but instead that my main task is to shape my life in a way that I will predictably become more and more who they need me to be.

It's still a rare night that I lay down on his floor while he falls asleep, but I'm glad he gave me the reminder that my theology degrees are really not helpful to him, unless he can see with his eyes what they mean as he watches me.

So I guess I'll give up on that idea of reading Wesley's sermons to him for bedtime stories...