TAK Article: Family Baptism and Culture
As you may have noticed from our last update I said that I wanted to write about how I came to the decision to agree with having our son, Jake, baptized as a baby. It’s an interesting come around for me, and I think it has a good point, so I’ve thought it a good thing to share.
From what I know back home…
When I think about baptism, as well as, the upbringing I’ve had in our church there are a lot of confusing things that can come out. This is a rather sad statement, but it is the truth.
For one, we often get quite defensive about how we do baptism. Arguments can start really quick about whether you need to be fully immersed in water, or if sprinkling will do, or if the Holy Spirit has to fall on you in a specific way as soon as you have been baptized, etc. For another, we are all made up of different backgrounds with different ideas of what baptism means. We usually have a few Bible verses to back up our own point of view too.
Well, to be honest, this is where I was before God started teaching me about other cultures and the idea that other people might do things different from how I’ve always done it (and that they weren’t sinners or heretics for it).
When I went to Idaho to take my Discipleship Training School I was in for an experience that I never saw coming. I had always figured that I was pretty smart and that I knew my Bible pretty well, but I certainly ran into people who could have put me I my place; furthermore, I saw they were a lot closer to God than I was. Gathering this, though I thought I was still more right than they were, I figured I should probably listen to them and perhaps learn something too.
Several weeks after getting there I heard a speaker say that not all cultures need to worship God the same way that we do back in Michigan, or even in the US. In fact, they may not need to do other things that we would find as absolutes either. This took my mind a while to accept, but after a couple of years of thinking about it I found myself agreeing with him.
When the gospel goes into a place it, the good news, remains the same; however, the way in which the people celebrate that change may be very different from how we would celebrate it.
The Gospel Doesn’t Change
When we talk about the gospel I would guess that John 3:16 would run through your head, right? If not, you would probably know at least part of John 3:16-17.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever should believe on Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (NIV)
There are a lot of things behind these two verses, but they are the gospel in a nutshell.
As we go to places that have never heard this good news before we don’t change it, likewise, when we go across the street to tell someone about Christ our message remains the same. God loves you; He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save you from death; you need to trust in His Son save you; He wants to live a life of relationship with you that has no end.
When we go to other nations and when we stay in our own countries it is in this message that God gives us that we have any hope whatsoever. Outside of it there is nothing worth living for and in it is everything, even relationship with God.
Now, when a nation receives this good news and applies it to how they live the next part starts happening – how then will they follow Christ?
Making Jesus the Lord of Your Culture
I was about four years old when I asked Jesus to come into my heart. As far as I can remember there wasn’t a lot of things that could really convict me at four years old, but the lady at Sunday School Mrs. Nita Clark, I believe, had told us about Jesus and said that we needed His forgiveness for our sins. So, laying an old sofa before falling asleep, I asked Jesus into my heart.
If I think about it a little bit there were a few areas that I had problems with: I would often steal cookies, sometimes I would tell a lie to get out of trouble, and I wouldn’t really do what my parents told me.
At the time, these were the areas of my culture that I had to work on. They are pretty universal too, in every culture people steal, tell lies, and disrespect their parents. I can remember all of my Sunday School teachers teaching from the Bible about these things.
Unique to my circumstance, perhaps, I also had outside chores like taking care of the chickens. The chickens needed to be watered, have their feeder cleaned, and checked for new eggs every day – in the winter this had to be done twice a day. If these were not done the eggs may become damaged, the chickens may not get grain to eat, or may die of thirst if it was too warm.
To me, that is what it meant to honor my parents. To another young person, what it may mean to honor their parents may look very different. How would you have needed to honor your parents as a child? The same is true as we go to different cultures and to different nations.
In John 14:15-17, Jesus promises to send us another helper.
“ If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” (KJV)
Through the Holy Spirit we can learn to discern what in our culture is honoring to God as we follow Jesus Christ. I had to listen to my parents to know how best to honor them as a child, and so, as we become children of God, we need to ask our Father how it is best for us to honor Him. This will change with our culture because each culture celebrates God in their own unique ways.
Family Baptism
Now, I hope I’ve described how it is that I have come to a deciding place about baptizing our child so young here in the Netherlands.
As followers of Christ we need to search out the scriptures for what is clearly right and wrong (the stealing, the lying, and the dishonoring of parents); when this is not clear we need to go to the Holy Spirit to see what is most honoring to God in our cultural context. As followers of Christ God gives us the grace to do this and we have the responsibility to do so too.
In Acts we find several places where baptism happens; the Ethiopian is baptized in a body of water (8:35-40); the Italian, Cornelius, and those with him who heard the gospel from Peter (10:44-47); Lydia, who sold purple, from Macedonia, and her whole household (16:6-15); later in the same place, the jailor who had kept Paul and Silas believed on Jesus Christ with his whole house and was baptized (16:26-34); in Corinth, Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue was baptized with his whole house (18:1-8); and finally, Paul mentions his baptism while reciting his testimony (22:12-16).
In all of these places we find people who believed on the Lord and were then baptized; sometimes entire households were baptized (fathers, mothers, and children) and it is here that I am unsure of what to think.
Even from my understanding as a child asking Jesus to come into your heart has been a very personal thing, though, it is also very American way of explaining God’s grace.
We tend to say that here, this point in my life, is where God’s grace starts.
If we look at how God reveals Himself to us, though, we see that God is working in us before we ever say yes to Him. Foremost in this case is that “God sent His only Son” well before I ever chose to accept Him into my heart. God is always the one who makes the first initiative towards us.
That is the heart that I see and choose to accept, along with my wife who was raised this way, in choosing to have our child baptized. To call it an infant baptism wouldn’t be correct, for he hasn’t done anything as an infant to be baptized, but rather we see God reaching out to him already through the family that he has been born into. As a family, we choose to have him baptized so that as he grows up he will always know that God has taken the initiative towards him first. We also choose to commit ourselves to showing him Jesus Christ through our words and our actions.
This baptism is given to him in expectation of all the wonderful ways in which God will continue calling Jake to Himself and His Son, Jesus Christ.
I have prayed about this decision very often and I feel that will be a good way to share about the love of God to our son. I don’t think that it is for everyone, nor would I have chosen it if I didn’t have my wife who has been raised in this context. Unless the Holy Spirit convicts us, we plan on continuing this practice as long as we are around other followers of Christ who choose to celebrate the gospel in this way.
If you have any questions or you would like to talk about this subject more, please, contact me!
In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom
The Abiding Kingdom 