{"id":717,"date":"2010-06-25T21:44:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T04:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/?p=717"},"modified":"2024-08-25T20:22:33","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T02:22:33","slug":"how-did-we-get-here-no-infant-baptism-and-no-child-dedication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/how-did-we-get-here-no-infant-baptism-and-no-child-dedication","title":{"rendered":"How did we get here? – No infant baptism and no child dedication . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose its my turn to write some stuff down . . . Nate appreciates your responses to his notes, keep them coming. Please note that this post is not intended to judge anyone else, the following is just the reasoning behind why we have done what we have in our family.<\/p>\n

So . . . how did two fairly involved Lutheran kiddos who were themselves infant baptised and confirmed grow up, get married, and have two kids neither of which have been baptised or dedicated? We had already come up against the discussion of whether infant baptism is biblical or appropriate prior to Hannah’s birth (this would be the subject of a post that will probably come in the future but not necessary to this post). At the time we would normally have baptised her, we were attending a church that 1) would probably not have done it, and 2) would probably not have been supportive or understanding of her baptism through sunday school and such as they would be trying to encourage the children to be believer’s baptised as they grew and matured. So we mostly didn’t do it because of church culture, though it could have been easy to do so at home or have Nate’s dad perform it. Its important to note that if we had been attending a church that practiced infant baptism then, we probably would have done it. We decided we were comfortable with our own baptisms but we would prefer letting the kids mature and ask to be baptised when they were ready.<\/p>\n

Since then, every so often (and as we did some church shopping) the discussion would come up again. Why not baptise? or Why not dedicate? As things in life so often happen, when the discussion would come up, it would get dropped because the timing was bad or no family members would be able to come, or we just didn’t put some thought into it.<\/p>\n

Now, we arrive on present day in the Moehring household and we have determined that we really like the church we are attending and see no reason not to become members and be as involved as God leads us. They practice believer’s baptism but also do infant dedications. Recently the call went out for anyone interested in dedications and we found ourselves having the same discussion as before. As I look back on it, I feel a bit ashamed because between the time we decided not to do infant baptism to now, we never really looked into the biblical support of a dedication ceremony. If we had done that first, we could have avoided some feelings of guilt of not providing something special for our children, or feelings of sadness for not following the family tradition, or whatever. I finally did some digging and this is what I came up with:<\/p>\n

There is no biblical precedent for what people usually perform as an infant dedication. Yes, there was a Jewish custom to dedicate only the firstborn male, which was more like a thithe of your children to the temple. While I don’t think there is anything wrong with child dedication and I don’t disagree with the reasoning behind standing proud in front of your congregation which should be full of people you are counting on to help you raise your children in the faith, asking for help, and pledging to do your best, I’ve discovered that it really isn’t necessary or something God (or our children) needs us to do.<\/p>\n

According to this verse our children are already “dedicated” due to our faith, \u201cFor the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy\u201d (1 Cor. 7:14).<\/p>\n

I know someday I will have to stand before God and be accountable for the work that I did in the time I had with these beautiful lives he has entrusted to me. Whether we are right or wrong for not baptising or not dedicating will be a question we’ll have to ask God sometime during eternity. In the end, their salvation will be their own choice and all we can (and probably ever could do) is pray that their names will be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose its my turn to write some stuff down . . . Nate appreciates your responses to his notes, keep them coming. Please note that this post is not intended to judge anyone else, the following is just the reasoning behind why we have done what we have in our family. So . ….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-kids","wpcat-9-id","wpcat-7-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p504YJ-bz","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":834,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2010\/10\/baptism-testimony","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":0},"title":"Baptism Testimony","author":"Nate","date":"October 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Some of you may know that on July 4th I was rebaptized.\u00a0\u00a0 I've been waiting for the Lord to tell me when was the right time to make this public\u00a0in a\u00a0blog post.\u00a0 I haven't been keeping it a secret, but I haven't blogged about it yet because for\u00a0some people\u00a0the idea\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Testimony"","block_context":{"text":"Testimony","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/faith\/testimony"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/0e7482782_1529620321_baptism-web-new.jpg?fit=770%2C433&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/0e7482782_1529620321_baptism-web-new.jpg?fit=770%2C433&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/0e7482782_1529620321_baptism-web-new.jpg?fit=770%2C433&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/0e7482782_1529620321_baptism-web-new.jpg?fit=770%2C433&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":23165,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/baptism-4","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":1},"title":"Baptism!","author":"Becca","date":"July 16, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Best day for a pastor: baptism day! Angels are having a party for Braedyn today. All photos here","rel":"","context":"In "Becca"","block_context":{"text":"Becca","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/becca-2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/braedyn-nate-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/braedyn-nate-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/braedyn-nate-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/braedyn-nate-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/braedyn-nate-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":20712,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/lake-baptism-2","url_meta":{"origin":717,"position":2},"title":"Lake Baptism","author":"Becca","date":"April 28, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Our lake baptism video is up. 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