Last week the assistant pastor preached on Baptism. I wasn't there as I had another commitment but I heard about it and I guess it was quite an interesting sermon.
This particular church does not believe in infant baptism but apparently they will baptise children if Pastor is convinced (read "likes") the child's answers show that he or she understands what he or she is getting into. Now I find that very interesting because in no other area of life is a child allowed to make major decisions. And if Christianity is at all true, being baptised as a believer is the most major decision one can make. Yet a child is judged competent to understand the importance of this decision. It's the same in the Catholic church where the age of accountability is considered to be seven. But given that children for the most part do not have any real freedom of choice, especially when it comes to religion, how can a pastor or a priest or any religious leader honestly believe that when a child tells them what they want to hear that that child really believes or understands what he or she is repeating? Take for example Catholicism. Catholics believe when the priest says the words over the bread and wine they actually become the physical body of Christ and are no longer bread and wine. So when can a child receive communion? When he or she says that this is no longer bread and wine but only appear to be so. What happens to those who hold out and insist that that the bread is still bread and the wine is still wine? I leave it to your imagination. Let's just say that I did not--and still don't--know of any Catholic children who did not eventually break down at one point and say what the priest and their parents wanted them to say. I said it myself at seven. Did I truly understand what I was saying? Did it matter? Maybe I did believe it at the time, maybe I didn't. The point is I wasn't offered the option of refusing. I had enough battles at seven that fighting over some words wasn't worth it.
So: they don't baptise infants because obviously infants can't make even that token effort. Never mind that the oldest historic churches practice infant baptism and have done so for centuries. When Paul baptised whole households as it says in Acts there must have been infants and very young children included. It does not say that he only baptised those of an age to understand. But this church, as many others in this particular tradition, does not care about historic Christian practice. It only cares about "sola scriptura" even though Christianity functioned for several centuries without a Bible as we know it. Furthermore, "sola scriptura"--scripture only--was something that could ONLY have come into practice in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries with the invention of the printing press and more or less universal literacy. The vast majority of people throughout human history were illiterate and even now illiteracy is a problem in the United States. The early church was not and could not have been "sola scriptura" and those who deliberately ignore that fact are teaching falsehood. So that is why I reject the doctrine of "sola scriptura."
But anyway the question came up, what happens to those infants and children who die before they are of an age to accept Jesus and get baptised? In previous centuries the Catholic church addressed this issue by saying they go to Limbo which is a place of happiness but without the presence of God. But now I hear that Limbo has been abolished so what happens to all those little souls I don't know. Perhaps they were all moved into Purgatory which is still on the books. The problem is for all the "sola scriptura" folks is that neither place is mentioned in the Bible. It is heaven or hell, saved or damned. And the position of this church--of evangelical churches in general--is that you must consciously accept Jesus as your savior or be damned. There is no other position, according to the Bible. Which the assistant pastor admitted. No exceptions. None whatsoever. So are all these children burning in hell? Tell that to parents who have lost a very young child. There are some preachers who will. Not this one. He weasled out of it by saying "we just don't know." But we DO know. The words of scripture--the words of Jesus are very clear. "He who believes in me and is baptised is saved; he who doesn't is is damned." So if you are not mentally competent, too bad for you. The default state of mankind is hell. And the ONLY way to get around it is to ask Jesus to save you. That leaves out a whole lot of folks but too bad for them. Evangelicals don't even have the concept of baptism by desire which states that IF a nonbeliever knew that he or she had to be baptised to be saved and certainly would have if he or she had had the opportunity but didn't have the opportunity then that was as good as being baptised. That's another one of those horrid doctrines of the Church of Rome which says on one hand that there is no salvation outside the Church but on the other hand has several loopholes.
But then we are getting into the issue of salvation by faith alone or salvation by faith and works. Which is what Paul's letter to the Galatians addresses. This church would definitely put itself on Martin Luther's "faith alone" side. Yet I found in interesting and ironic as I was leaving we were discussing the recent and hopefully not to be repeated heat wave and one woman, a dear sweet grandmotherly woman, the dearest you'd want to meet, said that she had told her granddaughter that as hot as it had been here, Hell was even hotter and if she wasn't good (didn't behave herself) that was where she was going to go. Wait a minute. In the first place that is a HORRIBLE thing to tell a child and the second was that it was not even true according to their doctrine. You cannot be saved by good behavior. Pastor has spent Sunday after Sunday stressing that point. Grace alone. Faith alone. So why is Hell being held over a child's head for behavior? Is it because as the cynics say that religion is simply a sophisticated method of behavior modification? That it doesn't really matter whether there is an ultimate reality behind the words we say on Sunday as long as we say the right thing?
This particular church does not believe in infant baptism but apparently they will baptise children if Pastor is convinced (read "likes") the child's answers show that he or she understands what he or she is getting into. Now I find that very interesting because in no other area of life is a child allowed to make major decisions. And if Christianity is at all true, being baptised as a believer is the most major decision one can make. Yet a child is judged competent to understand the importance of this decision. It's the same in the Catholic church where the age of accountability is considered to be seven. But given that children for the most part do not have any real freedom of choice, especially when it comes to religion, how can a pastor or a priest or any religious leader honestly believe that when a child tells them what they want to hear that that child really believes or understands what he or she is repeating? Take for example Catholicism. Catholics believe when the priest says the words over the bread and wine they actually become the physical body of Christ and are no longer bread and wine. So when can a child receive communion? When he or she says that this is no longer bread and wine but only appear to be so. What happens to those who hold out and insist that that the bread is still bread and the wine is still wine? I leave it to your imagination. Let's just say that I did not--and still don't--know of any Catholic children who did not eventually break down at one point and say what the priest and their parents wanted them to say. I said it myself at seven. Did I truly understand what I was saying? Did it matter? Maybe I did believe it at the time, maybe I didn't. The point is I wasn't offered the option of refusing. I had enough battles at seven that fighting over some words wasn't worth it.
So: they don't baptise infants because obviously infants can't make even that token effort. Never mind that the oldest historic churches practice infant baptism and have done so for centuries. When Paul baptised whole households as it says in Acts there must have been infants and very young children included. It does not say that he only baptised those of an age to understand. But this church, as many others in this particular tradition, does not care about historic Christian practice. It only cares about "sola scriptura" even though Christianity functioned for several centuries without a Bible as we know it. Furthermore, "sola scriptura"--scripture only--was something that could ONLY have come into practice in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries with the invention of the printing press and more or less universal literacy. The vast majority of people throughout human history were illiterate and even now illiteracy is a problem in the United States. The early church was not and could not have been "sola scriptura" and those who deliberately ignore that fact are teaching falsehood. So that is why I reject the doctrine of "sola scriptura."
But anyway the question came up, what happens to those infants and children who die before they are of an age to accept Jesus and get baptised? In previous centuries the Catholic church addressed this issue by saying they go to Limbo which is a place of happiness but without the presence of God. But now I hear that Limbo has been abolished so what happens to all those little souls I don't know. Perhaps they were all moved into Purgatory which is still on the books. The problem is for all the "sola scriptura" folks is that neither place is mentioned in the Bible. It is heaven or hell, saved or damned. And the position of this church--of evangelical churches in general--is that you must consciously accept Jesus as your savior or be damned. There is no other position, according to the Bible. Which the assistant pastor admitted. No exceptions. None whatsoever. So are all these children burning in hell? Tell that to parents who have lost a very young child. There are some preachers who will. Not this one. He weasled out of it by saying "we just don't know." But we DO know. The words of scripture--the words of Jesus are very clear. "He who believes in me and is baptised is saved; he who doesn't is is damned." So if you are not mentally competent, too bad for you. The default state of mankind is hell. And the ONLY way to get around it is to ask Jesus to save you. That leaves out a whole lot of folks but too bad for them. Evangelicals don't even have the concept of baptism by desire which states that IF a nonbeliever knew that he or she had to be baptised to be saved and certainly would have if he or she had had the opportunity but didn't have the opportunity then that was as good as being baptised. That's another one of those horrid doctrines of the Church of Rome which says on one hand that there is no salvation outside the Church but on the other hand has several loopholes.
But then we are getting into the issue of salvation by faith alone or salvation by faith and works. Which is what Paul's letter to the Galatians addresses. This church would definitely put itself on Martin Luther's "faith alone" side. Yet I found in interesting and ironic as I was leaving we were discussing the recent and hopefully not to be repeated heat wave and one woman, a dear sweet grandmotherly woman, the dearest you'd want to meet, said that she had told her granddaughter that as hot as it had been here, Hell was even hotter and if she wasn't good (didn't behave herself) that was where she was going to go. Wait a minute. In the first place that is a HORRIBLE thing to tell a child and the second was that it was not even true according to their doctrine. You cannot be saved by good behavior. Pastor has spent Sunday after Sunday stressing that point. Grace alone. Faith alone. So why is Hell being held over a child's head for behavior? Is it because as the cynics say that religion is simply a sophisticated method of behavior modification? That it doesn't really matter whether there is an ultimate reality behind the words we say on Sunday as long as we say the right thing?
