Where I Am

In my last post, I explained my current situation. This is the part I've really been thinking about all day.

I've been listening to some lessons my pastor has been giving regarding baptism. That having been said, I've been thinking on doctrine and theology that covers ever aspect of Christianity. As Pastor James states, you can not separate your interpretation of God's word from your view on baptism. It is integral. I would go further to say that you can not separate your view on all of life from your view on baptism. Now all that being said, here is how I view this situation based on my view of baptism, and what I feel are fallacies of the view of baptism that partially has us in this quandary.

I believe in paedobaptism. I believe baptism is a sign of the covenant similar to circumcision for Israel. I believe we are to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and they should never know a time when they were not part of the church. They should be raised as Christians. We can not view the heart and are not able to determine one's election. I believe that there are several moments in life where we have divine revelation in our growth. I can personally point to several defining moments that without any one of them would have led me down a different path.

I grew up as a Southern Baptist. Not the reformed kind. I believed that baptism was done after a public profession of faith (which in hindsight means going down to the front of the church, telling a pastor who then asks a question where you respond in affirmation... doesn't seem very public to me now). I believed that people who have a profession of faith and backslide can rededicate their lives. Those that fall off the wagon can get saved for the first time again, and get baptized on the right side of salvation. This can happen any number of times. This is often coupled with the pat answer of well they weren't really saved. I'm not sure on the origins of this doctrinal statement, but I believe it is very dangerous. I believe this specifically creates an incompetence in situations where discipline should be administered.

Now back to my friend. We grew up in the same church, so he was raised as a typical Southern Baptist. He went to a Southern Baptist school and studied to be a Southern Baptist minister of some sort. He later worked in some way for the SBC and/or its local affiliates. He could spell Baptist forward and backward. He claims to have studied Christianity, but I doubt he could tell us much of anything outside of the Southern Baptist thoughts he has always had.

My issue with this is that under the SBC sect of the church, he is either backsliding or was never saved. The typical SB church holds to baptism as merely an act of obedience, and there is no value in it (thus allow and sometimes require multiple baptisms... watch what happens when a Presbyterian joins a Baptist church). I would hold that baptism brings you under the jurisdiction of the church. It is in fact a profession that you belong to God (as my children do). There are other aspects to baptism, but this is my main point, so I will not follow those rabbit trails.

I fear the SBC will never do anything about my friend. He should in fact be called under the discipline of the church if he is unwilling to repent. He should be banned from the table and cutoff. But then that brings up another point.

I also believe that we should approach the Lord's table weekly. We now have a church that doesn't understand the table. We've made it into something that happens a couple of times a year, and we miss one of those anyway, so what difference does it make if we don't participate. Well, that is the very point. Cutting the sinner off from the table and turning them over to their own sins has no meaning if the table has no meaning. They are simply doing what they were already doing. There is no call to repentance. The table is the call. We are all called to repentance every time we partake. We are reminded of our own sin and wretchedness weekly. This holds us close to the Lord... or drives us away. Being driven away is something we don't want, but it in fact happens. There are those who are not elect. They will be driven away. They may be in the covenant, but they will be pruned. We will all be pruned, but some will be lopped off. Some will remain smaller to grow again. I believe those are the redefining moments. When he has pruned us back. Not lopping us off, but lopping off the part that was holding us back.

I must say that I do not know how to call my friend to repentance in the SBC. I fear this is someone who will be lopped off. And it is due to the impotence of the denomination.