Saturday, March 11 2023 How can the baptism of a child be considered valid?

PJ54

Well-known member

Saturday, March 11 2023​

Whoever loves God must also love his brother.—1 John 4:21.

After a person gets baptized, we must continue to love and respect him. (1 John 4:20) What does this involve? For one thing, we give him the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. For example, we would not impute bad or selfish motives to him. Instead, we would show honor for our brother, considering him to be superior to us. (Rom. 12:10; Phil. 2:3) Actually, we should show mercy and kindness to all people. If we want to be among those who can rightly call Jehovah their Father forever, we must apply God’s Word in our lives. For instance, Jesus taught that we should show mercy and kindness to all people, even our enemies. (Luke 6:32-36) We may find that at times this is difficult for us to do. If so, we must learn to think and act like Jesus. When we do our best to obey Jehovah and imitate Jesus, we show our heavenly Father that we want to be part of his family forever. w21.08 6 ¶14-15
Examining the Scriptures Daily—2023

How can the baptism of a child be considered valid?

In secular law a person is not able to sign a contract unless he is of age, in most areas 18. Jesus was baptized when he was 30, the age that was then recognized as being an adult. Today many underage youths are baptized because of peer pressure or trying to make their parents happy, even parent pressure: ‘Hey little Johnny, your 14 and little Billy just got baptized and he is 10, what is the matter with you?’ Even though elders do their best in trying to find out a child’s heart and knowledge by meeting with the youth prior to baptism, in reality how can a person truly be bound to Jehovah and the Organization by a decision made (a contract signed in essence) when they were 10 years old?
Those are valid points. The Watchtower has always pointed out how unscriptural and unreasonable the Catholic practice of infant baptism is; yet Jehovah's Witnesses practice something similar in pushing their pre-teen children into baptism. Of course, children mature at different rates, but generally it seems that baptizing children should be the exception rather than commonplace, such as it has become.

As for whether any pre-mature baptism is valid in God's eyes is ultimately for Jehovah himself to determine. However, baptism is essentially a vow to God. The verse comes to mind at Ecclesiastes that warns us against taking our vows to God lightly—even if the one vowing did so rashly or mistakenly.

Ecclesiastes 5:4-6 reads: "Whenever you vow a vow to God, do not hesitate to pay it, for there is no delight in the stupid ones. What you vow, pay. Better is it that you vow not than that you vow and do not pay. Do not allow your mouth to cause your flesh to sin, neither say before the angel that it was a mistake. Why should the true God become indignant on account of your voice and have to wreck the work of your hands?"
Posted 26th December 2011 by Unknown
 

BARNABY THE DOG.

Well-known member
Child baptism can never be justified. Membership of an organisation, religious or secular requires an accountable contract of understanding and agreement. It is not a mark of birthright such as circumscision but of an outcome and acceptance of reasoned insight that is desirous as a necessity of faith to the person concerned. It cannot be assumed of another any more than we can assume to know what another is thinking. Without the necessary spiritual accoutrements of informed understanding, baptism and its meaning is given to and assumed by another for what can only be nefarious reasons of their own desiring. In the case of religion, these reasons can only be for commercial gain as faith has no value to anyone else other that the one that owns and cultivates it for his own sake. Therefore baptism becomes a commercial enterprise in the hands of the perpetrator of infant baptism, a numerical selling point, a false lure that there is something to be gained, a lie and a vacuous assumption of no value. A mark of deceit and nefarious intent of the perpetrator upon the child. Those who practice it sell what is holy and unique for gain. Watchtower are not satisfied with selling infant baptism; they sell the place of worship too.
 

evw

Well-known member
in reality how can a person truly be bound to Jehovah and the Organization by a decision made (a contract signed in essence) when they were 10 years old?
1 Cor. 7 v14 says through Paul:: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in relation to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in relation to the brother; otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy."

A child is a child until it reaches the legal age of adulthood and until then its parents remain responsible for its actions, in this case baptism. So, could it not be that Jehovah holds the parents responsible if the child goes "wrong"?
 
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