Why I Share My Faith

Some people think I post too much about religion on Facebook - interesting posts from others, thoughtful articles, and quotations from the Bible and Jesus Calling among them.

I share my thoughts and the posts of others because my faith is important to me.

Social Media

Social media exists for sharing what you find important: birthdays, holiday celebrations, babies, anniversaries, vacations, family trips and reunions, favorite TV shows or movies, music, YouTube videos, news, weather, current events, science, politics, and religion, among other things.

We're all different, so we like and share and post different material. I don't ask you to agree with everything I post, and I don't expect to agree with everything you post.

I expect you to share who you are. That's why it's called social media. Hate Walmart? Love Costco? Think Elizabeth got voted off Dancing with the Stars way too early? Do you take a strong tech position on Microsoft vs. Google vs. Apple?

It's your opinion. It's part of who you are. It's something you're allowed to share on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, or whatever comes along next.

Like you, some things are very important to me. My website, my wife, and my faith top that list. Like it or not, I'm going to say some things about Macs and iPhones, whether you agree or not. If you're married, I hope you think your spouse is the best - I certainly feel that way about mine.

My Faith

At the top of my list is my faith. A decade ago my first marriage disintegrated, and I was lost. Depression. Anxiety attacks. Suicidal thoughts. (Thank God my therapist said suicide would be a horrible legacy for our four sons!) That's how painful it was. I just wanted the hurt to go away.

It took time, but it did get better. Our church worked through The Purpose Driven Life at the same time I was feeling so lost and abandoned and angry, and for the first time in my life, I began to really understand the good news: God had planned me in eternity, He knew my how screwed up I was, and He loved me anyhow. I desperately needed that lifeline. I had hit rock bottom - He became the Rock upon which I built my new life. God loved me, understood me, forgave me, and healed my wounded heart over time.

Within a year I realized that I had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and walked into the sunlight of acceptance, love, forgiveness, grace, and hope. Peace was taking up residence deep down inside me. Joy was entering my life. For the first time in my life - brought up in the church from infancy - I understood what a personal relationship with Almighty God was.

This is the most important thing in my life. God gave me a second chance at life. He gave me a new life (and, a bit later, a new wife). There are remnants of the old life and probably always will be, but they are insignificant compared to the Spirit's power to transform my life from the inside out by taking out the garbage.

Why I Share What I Do

If you think I post too much about religion and my faith, that's why. It's the most important thing to me. It is the air I breathe. It is my daily bread. It is the ground on which I stand. It is the essential truth that defines my life.

It doesn't threaten me when you post about your beliefs. I can respect you without agreeing on everything. Diversity is good. Honesty is important. I can respect you when we disagree and will try my best to do so. I hope you'll do the same, but if you'd rather not see my religious posting, send me a private message on Facebook. I'll do my best to make sure you no longer receive them.

Thoughts on Baptism

For centuries the church has debated the matter of baptism: Should infants be baptized, or should baptism be reserved for believers?

The New Testament is unclear on this subject. New believers were baptized, sometimes along with their entire household. Speculation is that this included children, perhaps even infants, although there is no concrete evidence one way or the other. However, it soon became the practice of the church to baptize the children of believers, justifying this with Paul's statement that the children of believers are holy (1 Cor. 7:14).

Our Children Are Part of the Church

Those who baptize infants tend to equate baptism with Old Testament circumcision, a sign that marked all male Jewish children as part of the covenant community on the eighth day after their birth. These groups view baptized children as part of the church long before they are able to understand the gospel and profess their own faith.

Infant baptism became a sacrament, and it was widely believed that the children of believers are saved through baptism. The major reformers - Martin Luther and John Calvin - broke with the Roman Catholic church in some areas, but they retained the sacrament of infant baptism. In all of these traditions, there is also a later ritual known as confirmation or profession of faith when a baptized child acknowledges his or her own personal faith.

Believe and Then Be Baptized

Even before the Protestant Reformation, there were dissenters who believed that the New Testament does not teach infant baptism, but instead that people should believe and then be baptized. They especially point to Acts 2:38, where St. Peter says, "Repent and be baptized", arguing that infants cannot repent and thus should not be baptized.

However, it's important to take this in context. Peter was addressing a crowd and giving an altar call on Pentecost, which is widely considered the birthday of the church. 3,000 people received the message and were baptized that day.

Then there's Matthew 28:19, where Jesus gives the Great Commission: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Here the implications is that Christ's disciples will be making disciples and then baptizing them.

Another verse supporting believer's baptism is Mark 16:16, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Again, there is the sequence of faith first, followed by baptism.

In the story of Philip and the eunuch (Acts 8), Philip shared the gospel, the eunuch expressed his faith, and then he was baptized. This is the pattern that repeats itself time after time in the New Testament: believe and then be baptized.

Two Meanings for Baptism

Both sides in the baptism debate see the sacrament as the mark of membership in the church, but each side sees baptism as something different.

For those who baptize infants, this is God's mark on their lives as well as a mark of membership in a covenant community. It has nothing to do with the child's faith; the child is the recipient of the sacrament. (In most traditions, one or both parents must be members of the church.)

Infant baptism is not a promise of salvation, it simply marks the child as a member of the covenant community - just as circumcision did in the Old Testament. It is usually accompanied by promises that the parents will raise the child in the faith, and there is generally an expectation that when the child reaches a certain age, he or she will accept the gift of salvation and become a confessing member of the church.

Believer's baptism is a profession of faith, a public acceptance of the gift of salvation, just as it is in the Book of Acts and the New Testament Epistles. They believe and are then baptized, and the sacrament marks them as God's children.

In these traditions, infants are dedicated, an acknowledgement that the children of believers are holy, and at this time the parents promise to raise their children in the faith.

Holy Children?

1 Corinthians 7:14 states: "For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

What does it mean to be sanctified or holy?

The Geek word translated sanctified is ἡγίασται. It is defined as to make holy, consecrate, sanctify. It is closely related to ἅγιος, which means sacred or holy. At the end of the verse, the children of a believing parent are called ἅγια, holy.

The word holy means something set apart, something separated from the everyday. It is almost always used for something set apart for religious purposes, dedicated to deity, reserved for God. Thus we have the holy Bible, the holy catholic (universal) church, and the Holy Spirit.

The children of believers are holy, set apart from the everyday, dedicated for religious purposes. They are special in God's sight, and most Christians believe that should they die in infancy, God will receive them into his eternal kingdom. What holy doesn't imply is that they are necessarily saved - we all know people who were baptized and now live unholy lives, having turned their backs on God.

The children of believers are holy, set apart from the sinful world and brought up in Christian homes. They are taught the gospel, and they are expected to embrace faith, but we cannot presume that they will be saved. Holiness is an outgrowth of faith, but not everything that is holy has faith. Items, such as the Ark of the Covenant, can be considered holy, and I don't believe that Paul was teaching in 1 Cor. 7:14 that the unbelieving spouse of a Christian or the young child of a Christian is in the state of salvation because of their believing spouse or parent.

Baptism Replaces Circumcision

Abraham believed and was circumcized, along with his entire household. He was instructed to cicumcise all males born into his household on the eight day. This marked them as holy, set apart as God's people.

By analogy, it is argued that believers and their children should be baptized. They are holy, set apart as God's people.

However, we have the same problem in both cases: Just because one is circumcised or baptized does not mean that they have faith - or ever will have faith. What was originally a mark of faith turns into a mark of membership in a community.

For those who believe that baptism replaces circumcision, infant baptism is a given. But it begs the question: Does baptism replace circumcision, or is it something different?

In Jesus' day, baptism was a sign of repentance, of turning from sin, of turning toward God. Those who were baptized by John had long ago received the sign of circumcision. Baptism was something different, a statement of faith. It is used this way throughout the New Testament.

I believe that while we can make all sorts of logical arguments for infant baptism, none of them are as compelling as the New Testamant model of believe and then be baptized. I believe that infant baptism has been misunderstood as a means of salvation, creating a dangerous complacency in traditions that maintain it.

A Suggestion

I grew up in an infant baptism tradition, and from my college days I have been debating the baptism issue, finally concluding that infant baptism and believer's baptism are different things.

Infant baptism is a sign that this child is a member of the church community, while believer's baptism is a sign that the person being baptized acknowledges faith in God. Although they are both called baptism and both use water, they signify different things. And that is the basis for my proposal.

Baptism symbolizes our death and new life in Christ and the washing away of sin. It is right and fitting that believers be immersed in the waters to mark their faith and their full status as members of the church.

Yet the children of believers are holy, and they deserve to be marked as members of the covenant community, just as circumcision marked Israel. My modest suggestion is that we stop calling this baptism. It does not acknowledge the child's faith, their death and resurrection in Christ, or repentance and the washing away of sin. It marks them as holy, set apart to grow in an environment of faith, children known and loved by God.

The children of believers should be marked as holy, and my suggestion is that they be dedicated and sprinkled with water - perhaps even water from a baptistry - as a symbol of their incorporation into the church community. The water would symbolize God's mark on their lives as well - and foreshadow the day when they will come to faith and receive a full baptism by immersion.

We could eliminate a lot of theological gymnastics used to justify infant baptism by recognizing that the two baptisms that church has fought over for centuries are two different things: one is a sign of membership in a religious community, the other a sign of faith.

My Story

I grew up in the church, was marked by baptism as an infant, professed a fledgling faith at age 16, and struggled to understand that faith for 30 years. Then I found myself in the pit of emptiness, hollow and angry, desperately in need of God's love. God did not let me down. In fact, he raised me up, and nothing has been the same since then.

As a testimony to that renewing faith, I was baptized by immersion. What a powerful experience!

I never denied my infant baptism. God had marked me, I had tried to walk in faith mostly by my own understanding and will, and now it was finally completely real to me. Baptism seemed an appropriate response to the new life God has given me.

Inclusive or Exclusive?

Is the church exclusively for believers, or should it include unbelievers as well?

I grew up in a protestant denomination in the United States, which is probably the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. We bear the name Protestant because people like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and a host of others saw corruption in the Roman Catholic church, spoke up about it (the protest), found it impossible to cleanse the Roman Catholic church of the corruption they saw, and in the end separated themselves from it.

Where there had been one church for most of Europe, there were now Lutherans and Calvinists and Anabaptists and Anglicans in addition to Roman Catholics. Each group claimed to be the True Church, sometimes to the point of maintaining that there was no salvation outside their branch of the tree. Wars were fought, people tortured and killed, entire nations would change their official religion, and some believers would leave their homelands to find a place where they could live their faith without persecution.

The American colonies became a magnet for the religiously disaffected.

One result of this messy situation was the decision by the Founding Fathers to include free exercise of religion in the Bill of Rights, since the colonies each had their own religious traditions. There would be no national church; every citizen would be free to worship as a Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, or whatever.

Ongoing Division

Another result of the Protestant Reformation was and remains the continuing division of the Church into more and more denominations. All you had to do was convince enough people that Denomination X was no longer true to its historical roots or that some new theology made it necessary to leave, and you've created Denomination Y.

This raises an important question: Do we define the True Church correctly?

Since the earliest centuries of the Christian church, it has been important to weed out false teachings (heresy), and many of the epistles and the early creeds were written to draw the line between correct and incorrect doctrine. After all, it is important that we embrace the truth and not allow false teachings.

At the same time, Jesus prayed that his followers would be united. With hundreds upon hundreds of Christian denominations, each justifying itself as "more true" than the others, that's one truth that seems to escape us. We are called to follow Christ, who is the Truth, to embrace him - and not follow those who lead us away from him.

What Is the Church?

Some believe that the church exists only for the elect (those who are "saved"), and thus the earthly church should only contain believing members. This was the position of the Radical Reformation: Only believers are truly members of the church, so infants should not be baptized. These reformers who held to the view that baptism is a sign of faith had already been baptized as infants, and when they were baptized as believers, they earned the label Anabaptist, which means baptized again.

Some believe that their denomination has an exclusive hold on salvation. If you have been baptized within their tradition, you're in. They treat the sacrament of baptism as something magical, as though a little water and the right words said by the right person automatically reconciles you to God. Their children grow up believing that they are saved, regardless of what their lives show - exactly the thing that frustrated those early Anabaptists.

Some believe that the church exists for the world, functioning as a lifeboat to save those drowning in sin or a lighthouse acting as a beacon for those caught in a storm.

The Church Is for the World

I used to believe that Christians have an obligation to belong to the most true church, which is usually defined theologically (to paraphrase a Canadian Reformed pastor I once spoke with). Infant or believer baptism? What is the nature of the eucharist? How do faith and works fit together? Should we only sing Psalms or can we sing other types of music? Can we have musical instruments in church? King James or a more modern Bible translation? How deeply does sin infect us? And let's not even get into the debates over the end times and styles of worship!

I now believe that Christians have an obligation to follow Jesus, find fellowship with other believers, and witness to God's love, grace, and mercy in their daily lives. If you love Jesus and want nothing more than to do his will, we are family regardless of your denominational label. We are family even if some of us have imperfect theology. We are family even if we can't agree on everything. We are family because we have the same Father in heaven.

Our Mission

The church isn't called to huddle together, hone its theology, purify itself, and turn its back on a world in sin. We are called to worship God, encourage each other in the faith, live lives pleasing to God, and shine our light in a dark world.

For many of us in the church, that means breaking the "exclusive church" mentality, as though the church is some sort of club that exists only for its members. That attitude is not conducive to evangelism - it paints unbelievers as outsiders.

We need to foster an inclusive mentality, as though the church exists to bring others to Christ. Those on the outside are not seen as damned sinners but as potential believers. Those of us who have experience God's love, grace, and mercy need to be ready to toss a lifeline to those lost in sin, pain, anger, frustration, lust, greed, pride, and selfishness so that they can find the freedom from the grip of sin that we've experienced.

We don't need to continue separating ourselves into more and smaller "true" churches with an exclusive hold on the gospel. We need to come together as disciples of Christ, recognizing that the true church is marked by love, joy, and peace.

We may never break down the denominational fences, but we're free to ignore them and recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. True church happens when two or more come together in Jesus' name.