To my brother, 12volt

[imroc]

Dear 12volt,

This open letter is my personal explanation to you but to be shared with others. I would like to thank you for joining us fellow Christians here at Catholic Answers. I picked up on a statement made by you that you came here from another catholic forum. While you engage in topics, as a protestant Christian at catholic forums, you will find yourself among dozens of different personalities and approaches. You must understand that the people here at Catholic Answers are here because of the deep devotion to Christ through our faith in the Church. Many of which are converted persons!

Second I would like to apologize for leading you to believe that I made a blanket statement claiming that you are not Christian. I am assuming that you pieced this together form a statement of mine claiming that preventing children from baptism is “anti-Christian”. If I am wrong, please feel free to let me know which comment did lead to you believe this. Regardless, I did not aim to consider you anti-Christian. I simply wanted to let you know that the act of prevention is anti-Christian.

I want to let you know what my fellow friends and I tried to explain to you. When all of us, including you, make simple one-liners and quick verse quotes, the substance of the comments does not reveal itself and sometimes unintentional comments can disrupt the true topic and anger one another. The one other act of debate that is often found in online topics is “jumping”. The original topic that I refer to in the letter is baptism. Within this topic one can see comments and remarks from both sides that stem from other topics. This nature is two-fold. First, jumping occurs when the specific argument within a topic becomes somewhat “locked”. The other fold is the nature of the true Christian faith. What does this mean? I shall show you. I claim no special gift in writing, so bear with me .

 

[imroc]

The nature of the Church and all of its beliefs, doctrine, teachings, etc is deeper than just covering topic by topic. We attempt to cover the teaching of baptism as supported by scripture, but within the belief systems of catholic and Baptist faiths. I will not try and discuss the Baptist view in this letter, even though I was raised and baptized as such. Rather, I would like to share with you my discoveries and in turn the Church’s position on this topic.

If we refer to John 1:1 we would easily note that the Word was at the beginning, with God and is God. That word, of course is Jesus. In the beginning God created man and women and bound them as one and commanded such. So far, in this letter the Trinity of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit exists and the Unity of man and women exists. From this we go through generations and arrive at Noah. Because of the evil that set into man’s heart, God was sorrowful (Gen 6-9).

Because Noah found favor with God, he and his family were spared as the flood cleansed the earth of evil, a prefigured baptism (1 Pet 3:20-21). Go, here, establishes a covenant with a family as well as establishing a holy family. Through the following generations God establishes not just a holy family, but also a “Holy Tribe” (Abraham - Gen 15, 17, 22), a “Holy Nation” (Moses - Ex 24/Deut 29) and a “Holy Kingdom” (David 2 Sam 7). Just as in the day of marriage of Adam and Eve, God had meant for these unions to be a true union and one in being, just as the Holy Trinity is. But those unions are not meant just for the lowly human family, tribe or nation, but for them to be one in order to be one with Him. It’s obvious that if persons cannot be one with each other, they cannot be one in God, for the Trinity is not a splintered entity. Imagine the perfection of the oneness in heaven in God! Wow! (Honestly, I can barely imagine it and even at that, it is such an immense thought that my mind could only imagine it for a split second before it becomes overloaded) Later, after God is born of a young, graceful virgin, He establishes a Holy church (Mark 14). This Church is the Bride of Christ. Symbolic? Absolutely not. God has never meant for his people to be symbolic in being. Just as you do not look at your family members as symbols surrounding you, you should not discount your family of Christ in the Bride as little symbols. Just from this small example of Gods want for us to commit to him as one with Him, we should stop and think about how serious God is about marriage and family. How can anybody imagine marriage to be separable? (We should seriously think about how responsibility we are about to enter into BEFORE we engage in marriage under oath to God…this oath is “sacramentum” or more currently known as “sacrament”!). Just as Catholics are taught, the family is the cell of the community. Without strong families bound by oath, the community will crumble and fall. Look at today’s society now that family divorce is acceptable, even in the Christian

churches, especially without serious reason for divorce! Is this a way to be prepared before entering into God? While on the topic of serious reflection as family, tribe and nation, we are also told that nobody partakes in the communion of God without first examining himself and making reconciliation with our brother and thus with God. Then and only than can we drink of the Cup. Discernment of the Body! Symbolic? Not one bit of it is symbolic, for God is not a symbol.

 

[imroc]

What makes up a kingdom? Well, we start with the above statement that families do. Well, what makes up a family? Mother and Father? Sure, if they do not have children. Even though the size of families is in serious decline, children also make up the family unit. So, it’s safe to say that mothers, fathers and their children also make up families as well, correct? Do we begin to develop our children’s thoughts and actions when we deem them old enough or do we begin at their birth? Would one not consider a child a part of the family and deny them of the family rituals such as giving them their family name, visit them and physically and emotionally bring them into our family through our heart, soul and body? I think not. God had set his loving family covenant with our Jewish brothers and accepted the circumcision of infants as an outward sign of covenantal profession. God knows and loves the family from the beginning. He has prepared us through the generations with serious sacramental displays of devotion to Him and in Him. All loving and acceptable and pleasing. Modernists would puke at the idea of sacrificing a lamb to God and animal rights activists would go nuts if they heard a person was slaughtering an innocent lamb because that very same person had committed the sin, himself! So, in heart, I can truly understand why after several 100’s of years after Christ established the Holy Church, made up of families in Christ as the Church is the Bride, thus one with and in Him, that certain people would gasp at the “horror” of sacraments. Has God somehow changed over the generations? Surely not! Are the Levitical laws completely abandoned or are they fulfilled and thus perfected by the one and only Perfecter? The prophecy in Ezekiel 36 shows a people being sprinkled with water and healed with the Holy Spirit. The New Testament is loaded with baptism. Whole households were noted as being baptized and St. Peter exclaims, “Repent and be baptized…EVERY one of you…for the forgiveness of sins…the promise is made to you and your children…” Sure one can say that he meant for the promise to “hold out” until these children became of age. But does it say that? Honestly? Is there any scripture that says to hold the children back? Anybody can de-construct scripture to make it fit into their belief system. But which is the harder, to put all the verses together and NOT find one exclusion of children, but to find in ALL of scripture that children are a part of the kingdom, nation, tribe and thus family? Especially considering that Christ rebuked them who held back the children from Him! The typical comment of a person who denies infant baptism is something along the lines of, “well, that verse does not talk about baptism.” And to be honest, I agree to an extent. But! Christ is man and God and He is also Body and Spirit. We repeatedly read in scripture that we are a member of the Body , the Body of Christ to be more specific. As I have already covered, the Church is the Body of Christ through his Bride and is one in being with Him. So, if Christ is the Body and baptism is the means of entrance to this body (as well as other things not to be discussed here), is it not safe to say that the above scripture IS in context? A lot of people outside and even inside the Church consider sacraments to be separate little ceremonies or rituals that detract from the worship of God. I would like to say that they are not separate of one another but are very much inter-related and one in being to prepare us for honest and clean participation in the Body of Christ. Looking over this letter, a Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and a few protestant Church members would recognize other sacraments that go hand-in-hand with the topic of this letter, the sacrament of baptism. I would like to mention a couple: Baptism (of course), penance/reconciliation and matrimony.

 

[imroc]

I want to tell you that I am not trying to condemn you for withholding children from Christ. Condemnation is not issued by me. However, love and sorrow does come from me and as a fellow Christian, I humbly beg of you to seriously consider the statements of this letter. We read in 2 Tim 3:16 all scripture is profitable. At the time of this writing, the scripture was what is now known as the Old Testament. In Heb 10 we read that the old is but a foreshadowing of the new. Jesus, in Matthew, makes it very clear that he did not come to abolish the old, but to fulfill it. Does fulfill mean abolish? Surely not, since in the very statement he says not. Rather, if you were to seriously study the sacraments and understand their root from the Old Testament, you would recognize that the Apostles are not a loose group of guys going out and telling everybody to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior and accept Him into their hearts. Not at all. They are a tight group of followers of Christ who, for the the most part, were Jews who came from an extremely ritual and liturgical faith and profess, in abundance, how the old laws are perfected by Christ and how they are a part of the New Covenant. All of this is wrapped up in the organized Church of Christ, found all over scripture.

I thank you for your time and may God bless you and your family.

Love, your brother,

John