Time was when the baptizing of infants was a hot subject for enthusiastic Christians. It used to fill the letters columns of a church newspaper. People found it embarrassing to admit that, after a Sunday afternoon christening, parents were never again seen in a church building. It was worse than embarrassing, it was agonising, to be told that it was frivolous to foist a ceremony upon a child when it could not say ‘No’. And, most telling of all, it was painful to hear that declarations at a font about regeneration were no more meaningful than statements about tomorrow’s weather or the history of Stonehenge.
Mercifully we are spared such embarrassment today. Much more sobering issues claim our attention. Living responsibly in a secular society as against living by the standards of faltering traditional beliefs is a task that takes all the effort we can muster.
To put infant baptism into perspective we have to consider what view we take of parental responsibility. New-born babies are subject to choices beyond their understanding from the moment they leave the womb. Some choices are open to parents; others are not. A baby cannot choose which language it is going to speak. It cannot make a choice of nationality. It cannot decide what kind of education is appropriate for it. If parents decide to emigrate, a child will be subject to an overwhelming influence that the child is powerless to counter. Given such choices made for it, a baby must happily accept one thing after another that is thrust upon it, seemingly willy-nilly.
We have to respect parental choice. It concerns not only baptism, with its grand design for a child. We have to respect parents’ mode of continuing care, affection and forethought. To put baptism into perspective, if parents can say, ‘I’m regenerate. I hope my child will be regenerate but I shall have to wait and see what he or she decides’ then at least we know where we stand. But to describe it in that way makes apparent the hollowness of the statement. Regeneration is not something that is at a person’s disposal. It is something that happens to him or her. The grace of God is the deciding factor. We have to be careful how we use the word, but that grace is irresistible.
Talking about regeneration is better than talking about baptism. Do that and we see at once how being born again is something that is simply out of our hands and in the hands of our Creator and Redeemer. ‘Have you been baptized?’ is one question, easily asked and easily answered. A much more important question is: ‘Are you regenerate?’ Not so easy to ask; not so easy to answer. Few of us would care to make such a claim lightly, particularly in the presence of those who know us best. And those of us who are parents are aware that the loving care we bestow upon our offspring – and that is a 24/7 unrelenting discipline – is the best available manifestation of the grace of God in their lives.
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