What would you do?

[Robert Pate]

A close family member has invited you to attend an infant baptism and social at their Lutheran church. You don't believe in infant baptisms and feel that it is in opposition to the Gospel and justification by faith. What would you do?

1. Don't go and possibly offend them?

2. Go and act like everything is just fine and that you approve. Be a hypocrite.

3. Go and tell them why you think infant baptism is wrong and possibly offend them.

4. Go so that you can discuss this with them at a later date.

 

[patrick jane]

A close family member has invited you to attend an infant baptism and social at their Lutheran church. You don't believe in infant baptisms and feel that it is in opposition to the Gospel and justification by faith. What would you do?

1. Don't go and possibly offend them?

2. Go and act like everything is just fine and that you approve. Be a hypocrite.

3. Go and tell them why you think infant baptism is wrong and possibly offend them.

4. Go so that you can discuss this with them at a later date.

4 or 1 or discuss it with them before the baptism

 

[Epoisses]

4 discuss later

 

[patrick jane]

A close family member has invited you to attend an infant baptism and social at their Lutheran church. You don't believe in infant baptisms and feel that it is in opposition to the Gospel and justification by faith. What would you do?

1. Don't go and possibly offend them?

2. Go and act like everything is just fine and that you approve. Be a hypocrite.

3. Go and tell them why you think infant baptism is wrong and possibly offend them.

4. Go so that you can discuss this with them at a later date.

Robert, do you see any harm in infant baptism?

 

[annabenedetti]

A close family member has invited you to attend an infant baptism and social at their Lutheran church. You don't believe in infant baptisms and feel that it is in opposition to the Gospel and justification by faith. What would you do?

1. Don't go and possibly offend them?

2. Go and act like everything is just fine and that you approve. Be a hypocrite.

3. Go and tell them why you think infant baptism is wrong and possibly offend them.

4. Go so that you can discuss this with them at a later date.

You could do 1. if you make your excuse gracefully, but I don't recommend it as a first choice, only if you can't carry off 2. or 4.

2. and 4. are the same action, it's your interior disposition which is different in each.

3. is two actions, the first is going, the second is intentionally ruining their happy day.

So I'd say definitely not 3. Please don't do 3., you could do a great deal of long-term damage. Not knowing your family, maybe that kind of thing would roll off their back, but maybe not.

Do the first option if you can do it well, and you don't think you can carry off 2. or 4. without feeling like a hypocrite or ending up saying something anyway, so the order would be 2., 4., 1.

The best option isn't on the list, and I say this with a certain amount of life experience in situations like this.

Go and be happy with them, and be at peace. If they're a close family member, they already know what you believe. If they don't, it would seem they're not really that close. Your family bond is precious, let love guide you in loving practice, and wait patiently for the right time, the right setting, and especially the right reason for sharing your beliefs. Ruining someone's happy day isn't the right time, the right setting, or the right reason for telling them what they likely already know you believe anyway.

 

[theophilus]

A close family member has invited you to attend an infant baptism and social at their Lutheran church. You don't believe in infant baptisms and feel that it is in opposition to the Gospel and justification by faith. What would you do?

1. Don't go and possibly offend them?

2. Go and act like everything is just fine and that you approve. Be a hypocrite.

3. Go and tell them why you think infant baptism is wrong and possibly offend them.

4. Go so that you can discuss this with them at a later date.

Go knowing that, for the parents and the church, this is them committing this child to the Lord; that they are going to raise this child in the fear and training of the Lord and that when this child is old enough he or she, if raised in this manner, will receive the gospel and be baptized into the body of Christ.

That would be the loving thing to do without feeling like a hypocrite.

1 Cor. 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

For your own sake consider it a "dry" baptism.

"To baptize believers’ babies, in the belief that this accords with God’s revealed will, has been the historic practice of most churches. However, the worldwide baptist community, which includes distinguished Reformed thinkers, disputes it.

This links up with the baptist insistence that membership of local congregations is only for those who have publicly professed personal faith: an emphasis often buttressed by the claim that Christ instituted baptism primarily for a public profession of faith, and that such a profession is part of the definition of baptism, so that infant baptism is not really baptism at all. (Therefore baptist churches usually rebaptize as believers persons baptized in infancy who have come to faith; from the baptist standpoint they are still unbaptized.) Reformed theology negates the view that believer-baptism is the only baptism and rejects baptist denials of a place for believers’ children in the body of Christ by virtue of their parentage, and thus from birth. These differences about the visible church form the background for all discussions of infant baptism as such.

The case for baptizing believers’ infants (a practice that the New Testament neither illustrates nor prescribes nor forbids) rests on the claim that the transition from the “old” to the “new” form of God’s covenant that was brought about by the coming of Christ did not affect the principle of family solidarity in the covenant community (i.e., the church, as it is now called). Infants were therefore to be baptized, as Jewish male infants had previously been circumcised, not to confer on them covenant status, but to attest the covenant status that by God’s sovereign appointment their parentage had already given them."~J.I.Packer, Concise Theology
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/packer/baptism.html

 

[Nameless.In.Grace]

What would you do?

4 or 1 or discuss it with them before the baptism

4 and discuss it only if they seem to desire to hear another perspective.

1,000,000 deaf words that fall on deaf ears are nothing more that 1,000,000 wasted words.

:Sigh: God knows this idea better than anyone. :frustration for knowledge that I do this too (am deaf to God until His Devine 2X4 is delivered):

Truly, God's patience exceeds that of Job's. [emoji846]

Thank God for Devine 2X4's. [emoji12][emoji85]


Sent from my iPad using TOL ~Jesus is the Theology and the Counselor is the Commentary

 

[Ktoyou]

If they held it at my house it would be alright. My attendant would depend on how awake I was. No one close to me would believe I thought it was more than a ritual.

 

[jamie]

If able, I would go out of respect for my family member, but I would offer no comments of approval or disapproval.

In this country we have freedom of religion.

 

[Bradley D]

I would attend. Even though I believe in the ceremony being as communion where one needs to be aware of the spiritual significance. I would hope the infant later would learn that.

 

[keypurr]

A close family member has invited you to attend an infant baptism and social at their Lutheran church. You don't believe in infant baptisms and feel that it is in opposition to the Gospel and justification by faith. What would you do?

1. Don't go and possibly offend them?

2. Go and act like everything is just fine and that you approve. Be a hypocrite.

3. Go and tell them why you think infant baptism is wrong and possibly offend them.

4. Go so that you can discuss this with them at a later date.

Why not just go without comment?
Respect their right to choose their faith.
They are not asking you to join the church.

Sent from my SM-T330NU using TheologyOnline mobile app

 

[Lazy afternoon]

Lutheran baptism of a child is a serious error, because they say the child is baptised into the Kingdom of God.

This may help the child to be lost forever and it is no better than the RCC mass.

Participation in such is to give ones blessing to it.

LA

 

[beameup]

Where I live presently, it is 85% Catholic and this is woven into the culture, so much so, that non-Catholics do some "Catholic things". Here they might call it "dedication".
So, I'd pick #3 for sure.

 

[Robert Pate]

Thank you for all of your comments and advice.

I decided to go in order to keep the peace.

After the minister poured water on the infants head she said that... "The child has now entered into eternal life and is now a part of the body of Christ". I almost flipped out, but kept my cool. I think that she thinks that she has the power to impart eternal life.

 

[Robert Pate]

Some years ago I went to visit my wife's uncle to witness to him about Christ.

No sooner had I sat down and he said to me, "Bob you don't have to worry about me being saved, I have been confirmed by the Lutheran church". I could not get him to profess faith in Christ. Later on he died believing that he was saved because of his confirmation.

 

[Ben Masada]

Some years ago I went to visit my wife's uncle to witness to him about Christ.

No sooner had I sat down and he said to me, "Bob you don't have to worry about me being saved, I have been confirmed by the Lutheran church". I could not get him to profess faith in Christ. Later on he died believing that he was saved because of his confirmation.

And how do you think you will be saved, by paying homage to the dead? You know very well that Jesus died and, according to his own gospel which was the Tanach, once dead, no one will ever return from the grave. (II Samuel 12:23; Isaiah 26:14; Job 7:9; etc) Evidence of the fact is that you can't provide me with an eyewitness for the resurrection of Jesus. Why? Because Paul was the one who fabricated the idea that Jesus had resurrected. (II Timothy 2:8)

 

[Robert Pate]

And how do you think you will be saved, by paying homage to the dead? You know very well that Jesus died and, according to his own gospel which was the Tanach, once dead, no one will ever return from the grave. (II Samuel 12:23; Isaiah 26:14; Job 7:9; etc) Evidence of the fact is that you can't provide me with an eyewitness for the resurrection of Jesus. Why? Because Paul was the one who fabricated the idea that Jesus had resurrected. (II Timothy 2:8)

You are in serious trouble my unbelieving Jewish friend.
The New Testament is an undisputable account of the Christ event. Do you really believe that it is possible for the writers of the New Testament to make all of that up? You are desperate to believe a lie. The account of the resurrection of Christ can be found in the 20th chapter of John. Of course you won't read it, because you prefer to remain in darkness.

 

[beloved57]

And how do you think you will be saved, by paying homage to the dead? You know very well that Jesus died and, according to his own gospel which was the Tanach, once dead, no one will ever return from the grave. (II Samuel 12:23; Isaiah 26:14; Job 7:9; etc) Evidence of the fact is that you can't provide me with an eyewitness for the resurrection of Jesus. Why? Because Paul was the one who fabricated the idea that Jesus had resurrected. (II Timothy 2:8)

Do you know of anyone paying homage to a golden calf ? I do, in the OT.

 

[kiwimacahau]

Thank you for all of your comments and advice.

I decided to go in order to keep the peace.

After the minister poured water on the infants head she said that... "The child has now entered into eternal life and is now a part of the body of Christ". I almost flipped out, but kept my cool. I think that she thinks that she has the power to impart eternal life.

She would be correct.

 

[Robert Pate]

She would be correct.

No one is baptized into eternal life.

All that baptism does is get one wet. If the child that was baptized does not make a personal profession of faith in Christ later on in his life he will go to hell.