Recently, I received a newsletter from another campus ministry. It contained the testimony of a student, a testimony that I and most of my campus ministry colleagues have heard many times. The student shared that she had grown up in a Christian home and faithfully attended a local church. She had been baptized when she was eight years old. Upon entering college, she became actively involved in the campus ministry, where she soon realized that her understanding of what it meant to follow Jesus was very shallow. She had prayed the prayer of salvation and been baptized and considered herself saved. However, her experience with her campus ministry and the teaching she was receiving from the Word, made her realize how little that eight-year-old girl understood about following Jesus. So, she decided to be baptized again because she concluded her first baptism was done in ignorance, without a true understanding of what baptism meant.

I and my fellow campus ministers have re-baptized countless students who were baptized as children who later decided upon reflection they had little to no understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. Their reason for saying the prayer and being baptized was to be saved. They knew they didn’t want to go to Hell and neither did their parents want that fate for them. For this reason, so many kids are encouraged to pray prayers for salvation and are baptized, much to the delight of parents and pastors. But the kids themselves, upon maturing, reveal the shortsightedness of this practice. They confess they really didn’t understand the implications of their decisions, and then many who really do want to follow Jesus decide they need to be baptized again.

I have to admit I cringe when I hear of someone’s child or grandchild of elementary or middle school age is baptized. Parents and grandparents are so excited because the child is now saved! Let’s think about that for a moment. Was the eight-year-old child condemned to Hell before this took place? Is this what we believe about our God—that he would condemn a child to Hell if he or she dies before praying a prayer, before being baptized? It seems so, given the emphasis placed on it in the church and home.

I know what I am saying will be deeply offensive to some, but the reality is that the vast majority of elementary and middle school-age children are too young to comprehend what it means to surrender their lives to Jesus and start following him. They may love Jesus, which is obviously a good thing, but they are very likely not ready to make an informed decision to repent (that is, to change their actions) and follow him. So why encourage them to pray for salvation and be baptized as an act of choice to surrender their lives to the lordship of Jesus? Is it because we think they might go to Hell if they die? Or is it a point of pride that we can say our child is now a Christian?

Personally, I trust that our God is fair and just, as well as exceedingly loving, patient, and kind (Psalm 86:15; II Peter 3:9). From my reading of the Scriptures, no child is in danger of going to Hell; thus, I encourage all of you who are parents of younger children, to focus more on showing them how to follow Jesus by the model of your own lives rather than encouraging them in a decision they do not have the full capacity to make, even if they say they do. Students have told me that they insisted they wanted to accept Jesus when they were much younger, that they wanted to be baptized, but years later realized they didn’t understand the implications or that they were doing it for the wrong reasons. 

I think there is a very good reason why we only clearly see adults and not children (as opposed to implied) being baptized in the New Testament. Obviously, Jesus loved children (Matthew:19:13-14) but he never called a child to follow him as his disciple. And that is what baptism signifies—voluntarily putting to death one’s own life in order to be raised into a new life of following Jesus. 

Based on my decades of working with college students, I think it is wise not to encourage or push children into making what are meant to be life-altering decisions before they are mature enough to understand their implications. In the meantime, we can be assured they are held in the Father’s loving hands, who waits patiently for them to mature and reach the point of making decisions for which they fully comprehend the consequences.

© Jim Musser 2021 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.