Evan's Baptism

Last Sunday (July 9) Evan got baptised. I went out to White Rock in the morning and went to mass with Brian, Erin, Evan and Brian's parents. After mass more family arrived and Evan was baptised along with 2 other babies. As you can see Evan was wearing a cute little white satin outfit. He looked adorable in it.
I don't think that I've ever been to a baby baptism before. The churches that I usually attend don't do infant baptism. They dedicate babies and then baptise people when they are older and have had a chance to choose whether they want to be baptised or not. When I was in bible college I wrote a paper on baptism. I had to compare infant baptism and adult baptism. Before writing the paper I agreed with my church that it should wait until the person is old enough to make a personal decision to follow God and to be baptised as a public declaration of their faith and as an act of obedience to God. But after researching and writing my paper I am not so sure. The arguments for both sides of the debate were excellent. I wish that I had my paper here now to look at again but it is in Alberta in storage. I think that now I would almost lean towards infant baptism. The book that I recently read, Can You Hear Me?, also helped me to think a little more this way. It did not talk about baptism but it did talk about children and their relationship with God. The author believes that when children are born they are able to communicate with God but that we often lose this ability as we get older. This is due to things that we experience, other people, what we are taught... Most children are not taught and encouraged to continue listening to God and expecting him to speak to them. Probably most christian parents would not think this but I don't think that we as adults always expect to hear from God and if we have trouble why would we think that kids could get it? I'm having trouble really explaining what I mean and I don't think that this is coming out quite right but hopefully some of you will understand. So, back to baptism. How are we to know when a child has made a decision to follow Christ? Do they have to be old enough to speak and tell you verbally? How do we decided when they are old enough to make such a decision. Plenty of children may choose to follow Christ at a young age only to leave that path later in life. So how do we know? Is it not maybe better to believe that they are born knowing God, hearing God, following God and to have the faith that they will continue. To encourage and teach them to continue following God. So, if that's the case shouldn't we then baptise as infants? It almost seems like a lack of faith not to. I don't know. I really could argue both sides even now. Good thing I don't have any kids of my own to decide what I should do. I may write more on this later as I have to go feed Brig now and can't figure out how to save this as a draft.

Evan, after everyone has left. I think he was glad to have some time on his own without people picking him up all the time.