Sacraments

yaledo

I have been baptized, i've had communion, and I've been confirmed.
Nobody ever asked my opinion about these, in fact by the time my confirmation came round, I was starting to realise that maybe I didn't want to be confirmed just yet, but nobody ever told me that it was an option. I really felt pressurized* into it (I'm sure they had my best interests at heart) by my teachers, a priest, and my family.
As I saw it, my only option was to stand/kneel up there with the bishop, and lie to him in front of my sponsors. I didn't think of it as a particularly bad thing to have to do at the time.
10 years later, I wonder if the Catholic Church in Ireland still have this practice of pressurizing* children into swearing an oath that they cannot understand.

*perhaps 'pressurized' is the wrong term, but certainly, I felt that if I didn't go up there and lie to the bishop in front of my parents, that I would be letting them down. Again, I know that my parents/teachers felt that they were acting in my best interest.

When I was about 16, I met a french boy whose parents were of different christian denominations, he had just decided that he would be baptized as a Catholic, his father's religion. It was only then that I realised that baptism could be a real positive experience in a persons life, and I was filled with envy - I had previously regarded it in the same class as cutting the umbilical cord - just something that happens to children when they are born.

neuro-praxis

Different Christian churches have different viewpoints on it. The Prebyterian church baptises babies, whilst the Baptist church allows them to wait until they feel ready to be baptised later in life.

I was baptised in the Catholic church as a baby, but when I became a Christian later on, I wanted to be re-baptised, this time with my consent. I talked to my Presbyterian minister and I've now changed my mind. Here's why.

Baptism, unlike confirmation communion etc. (all man-made rituals), is not about what WE have done, or what WE believe, it's about what God has done. It's the new testament circumcision. A baptised child is a child of the new covenant. It doesn't mean that he or she is a Christian, it means that he or she is marked as a child that will be raised in a Christian environment.

In the Prebyterian church, baptism is more about the community than the child. When a child is baptised with us, we all stand and make a commitment to love this child and to be a family for it and provide a place where they can learn to love God. For these reasons, I love the idea of baptism at birth.

However, the Baptist viewpoint has strong arguments for it too. Biblically, most of the people baptised were adult, new Christians. However, there is one case where a man becomes a Christian, and then immediately has his whole family baptised. their beliefs were not considered, but it marked them out as a family who had the potential to know Christ.

But none of these rituals are really necessary...the bible says that salvation comes through faith alone...not through things we do like communion and confirmation. These are small matters of religion, not large matters of faith.

If you have come to faith, Yaledo, and would like to be re-baptised, a baptist church will do it for you no problem.