Gut Check #5

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Why is it so hard to talk with your unsaved family members about Jesus?

 

Yes,  we all know the "prophet is not without honor except in his own country" passage, but does that excuse us?

Most of my extended family are not believers. I don't understand how this can be, but I also know that I've done next to nothing to share the Gospel with them, Where's that white sheep?except incidentally. Does my lack of initiative translate into a predestined trip to hell for them?

No one wants to think that—but then no one wants that axe hanging over his or her head, real though it be. I think that millions of us are hoping the whole issue would just go away, or we try to convince ourselves it will resolve itself without any need for us. Because nothing sticks out like a bigger sore thumb than a recalcitrant family member who won't bow the knee, right?

I don't know that my father was saved, though I did try to get through to him. As a young man he studied for the ministry, but he ended so badly that I have no assurance he was. Other family will debate that. Virtually no one is "in" on my mom's side of the family, from what I can tell, save for my mom and her sister (and her sister's husband). None would be considered born again believers, though like most Americans, a light veneer of Christian moralism covers them. I could be wrong, but shouldn't all of us be more certain with our family members?

Other posts in this series:

Suffer Little Children…

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Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
—Matthew 19:13-14 KJV

Earlier this week I posted a More Cowbell Award , handing out "The Award No One Wants to Win" to children's Christian education programs (including Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and Christian summer camps). That Stained Glass of Jesus Blessing Childrenparticular post generated more comments than any other More Cowbell Award I've given out. When it comes to educating the next generation of Christians, plenty of opinions exist.

I suspect even more opinions exist about the nature of children and salvation.

My son is nearing six years old. He's quite intelligent, loves God, enjoys church, spontaneously prays for others and for his own needs, and has a decent knowledge of the general truths of the Bible for his age. He continually surprises me with his questions about God, and surprises me even more with some of his answers. He'll always answer positively when asked if he believes in Jesus.

But is he saved?

For most of my adult life, I've leaned toward credobaptism. I was baptized as an infant in the Lutheran Church, but grew convinced of the need as an adult to show my own faithfulness toward God by being baptized as a confessing adult. (I kept this secret for many years from my parents. My brother felt the same as I did, got baptized, and told my folks, bringing lots of grief down on him and them.)

Later on, I worked in ministry to children and grew increasingly distressed about the issue of whether or not a child under ten understood the Gospel well enough to be justified. Probing kids for any information that might shed light on their eternal status yielded few results. Kids are such natural mimics that it's hard to discern whether they truly believe or are just mimicking what they know adults like to hear.

Kids don't make it any easier when it comes to the fruit of genuine Christian belief. Kids whose parents adamantly claim are rock-solid, baptized kiddie believers can be as rotten as those kids whose parents make no such claims. If a kid shares his milk and cookies with his friends and can rattle off a few memorized Bible verses are those actions proof of a genuine conversion?

For adults, the issue isn't always clear, but it's still far easier to discern. The dope fiend in gothic drag who comes to Christ and then goes on the mission field—that's an easy one. But truthfully, as long as I've worked with kids under ten, I'm not sure what an honest-to-goodness conversion looks like in a young child.  And I don't think I'm the only one.

This whole sticky wicket poses enormous theological problems. A quick scan of the great Christians poised in every possible corner on this issue makes a less diligent believer like me feel extraordinarily uneasy.

Our inability to come to any unified answer on the topic of the justification of children clearly shows in our split on credobaptism (baptizing confessing believers) and paedobaptism (baptizing children, though without a profession of their own personal faith in Christ.) While I don't believe in regenerative baptism—and most Protestant's don't if they truly hold to the truth that justification is by faith alone in Christ—it's still clear that Jesus put an extremely high mandate on baptism:

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
—John 3:5 ESV 

Obviously, one can go too far with this, though. I once had a friend whose boyfriend got mixed up in the Boston Church of Christ movement. That group believed in regenerative baptism. After he'd made a profession of faith, there was a delay in getting him baptized, and he basically locked himself up in his room until that day, afraid he'd be killed accidentally before he got baptized.

We read that and shake our heads, but if we extend the baptism beliefs of many Christians out to their logical ends, some relatively normal denominations pretty much believe the same thing—or else have to do a lot of intellectual shimmying to make their beliefs fit. I wrote a piece last year that talked about this issue after Steve Camp wrote a blistering predestination piece that pretty much came right out and said that the infant who dies in childbirth is predestined to hell. I don't know about you, but as a parent it's pretty hard to take to think that any child of mine that might have died in childbirth went straight to hell because God predestined him/her to die in childbirth. That seems a rather strict limit on God's mercy and any covenants He makes with believing parents.

Whether you're a credobaptist or paedobaptist, the questions remain:

  • What constitutes a genuine conversion in a child? And isn't it only by being converted that we are saved?
  • How do we know a child truly believes and isn't just repeating what he or she heard in Sunday School (or is mouthing what receives the most attention and adoration from Mommy and Daddy)?
  • Is there a covenantal aspect in the faith of believing Christian parents that ensures God's mercy and grace upon their children, whether baptized or not, believing or not?
  • For paedobaptists: If we're truly saved by faith alone, what good is baptizing an unbelieving child? And doesn't your baptizing of that child before a profession of faith only later lead to a false confidence in that child for his/her salvation? And what about the murky area of being "rebaptized" after a full confession of faith?
  • For credobaptists: How confident are you in credobaptism that you would risk letting your children die unbaptized?

It doesn't give me much comfort that so many good Christian sources are split on this. I noted earlier this week that Monergism.com highlighted the split, with solid theologians occupying both sides of the baptism argument. Ironically, most Arminians are credobaptists, so you would think the Calvinist monergists would be 100% in opposition, falling completely into the paedobaptist position. But even Jonathan Edwards was conflicted on this issue, baptizing infants but giving that baptism no efficacy for salvation. (What's the point then, Jonathan?)

Apart from the issue of baptism, Jonathan Edwards presents another unusual case that takes us back to our original question of the salvation of children: he states he was converted at four (or was it his wife—I can never remember). I talked to a member of my wife's family who told me last week that his kids were converted at that age. Honestly, I don't know how anyone can tell that for certain in a child that young, and if one can't (and happens to be a credobaptist), I'm not sure that baptizing them is a wise move.

In the end, this issue troubles me greatly. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's bothered by it, though.

You can't go to the great Christians on this issue because so many diverge on their opinions on baptism. Others fail to give any standards for judging if a child is saved or not. And like I said in my post from two days ago, what do we do when the pantheon of Christian greats can't answer the question?  I certainly don't want to trust the opinion of a man on this one, either, if salvation is truly on the line.

If we go to the Bible, we can find plenty of verses that go either way on baptism, so I dunno. And as to telling when a child is saved or not, well, the age of accountability doesn't exist in the pages of the Word, nor is there a truly solid "age-related" guide for discerning whether a child is genuinely espousing the faith or just trying to win "mommy points."

Other ideas have problems, too. If we are to receive the Kingdom as a child does, is this implying that children are already in and they can only fall out? So much for original sin. And if Jesus readily healed children in the course of His ministry, why would He do so if those kids would only grow up to either forget Him or reject Him? What's the point of healing people who are only destined for hell? And what of the perseverance of the saints if a child comes to Christ innocently in their young childhood, then completely rejects Him in adulthood? How many people can each of us name who did exactly that?

I get (wrongly) accused of being a blogging Christian know-it-all, but I'll be honest: this issue has me stumped. If there was ever a topic that I wish the Bible was more explicit on, it's this one.

Knowing the Person of Jesus Christ

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The Song of Solomon from "The Bible and Its Story," published 1909This weekend proved to me again that we must scrutinize our walk with Christ.

Note that phrase that we use so effortlessly: walk with Christ.

I’ve been away from the blogosphere for the last two weeks, so I’ve missed the latest hubbub on the Web. Without a doubt, some feelings have been hurt, someone called someone else a heretic, fighting words duked it out with other fighting words, and a brand new systematic theology was hatched.

That’s the problem with where our faith has taken us. In the midst of all the discussions, I wonder if we still remember that it’s not about systematic theologies, or clever apologetics, or myriad other things. It’s about Jesus Christ.

Have we lost the person of Jesus? Do we treat Him like a person or do we treat him like an aesthetic, a systematic theology, a mascot, or a code of living?

This verse continues to startle me:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
—John 17:3 ESV

We tend to think of eternal life as living on in heaven after we die. But Christ Himself says that eternal life is knowing Him.

The last part of that verse should intrigue us all. The whom you have sent gives us the why of Jesus’ coming in the flesh. We know that when He’s asked about showing the disciples the Father, Jesus tells them that seeing His own person is enough. See Jesus = See the Father.

The expectation that we are called to know Christ sets a high standard, one that calls for intimacy like that found in Song of Solomon. The disciples knew Jesus before the coming of the Holy Spirit, but afterwards they knew Him even more intimately. And so it is with us. The expectation that we have that deep intimacy can’t be avoided.

This brings up a sticky subject: Do we truly know Christ or merely know about Him? I suspect that many Christians equate the two, but I can’t agree with them. Something altogether different occurs in the life of some Christians versus others and that key distinction comes down to knowing.

That knowing goes even beyond faith. I know some Christians who have tons of faith, but when pressed their explanation of how they know Christ is lacking. I read a book like A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy (a book everyone must read) and I see in those pages a tangible knowing that transcends the experience of most Christians I know, myself included.

To use the lover illustrations from Song of Solomon, it is quite one thing to receive a letter from the Beloved (think the Bible here) or to glimpse Him from afar (when we minister in His name or when we reach out to Him briefly in worship), but that face-to-face meeting is wholly different. Some would be satisfied with that, but the bedchamber calls and there we are to experience another level of intimacy, the pinnacle of knowing.

All too often we get sidetracked by arguments, performing, and rules so that we never achieve that face-to-face meeting so essential to knowing, much less ever make it to the bedchamber. Our knowledge is like that of fans of an unapproachable celebrity; we collect all the trinkets, chair the meetings, write letters, and on and one, but we don’t know that celebrity at all. That celebrity probably doesn’t know us, either.

But if eternal life is knowing Jesus Christ, we must have a face set toward the bedchamber or else we’ll miss it.

How many of us do? How many of us truly know the Person of Jesus Christ? Not about Him, but Him as a real Person?

Our answer makes all the difference.