During our road trip down from seeing my parents, one of my girls started asking questions about baptism as we were talking about baptism. It went something like this:
Kid: “Hey daddy, do we need to baptize Dixie?” (the family dog).
Jay: “God only tells us to baptize humans, so we only baptize humans.” (Matthew 28)
Liz: “Besides, what do you need to go to heaven?”
Kid, answering Liz: “Uhh…believe that Jesus died for your sins?”
Liz: “Right. And so can dogs believe that?”
Kid: “No…..” (mental processing break) “…but wait, little babies don’t know much of anything…”
Liz then handed it off to me. Sometimes questions with seemingly simple beginnings can really get us to start digging into our belief. While this question came innocently out of the mouth of a very curious kid who confided in us that she just really wanted Dixie to be in heaven with us, it stems from and brings up bigger questions about baptism.
The first point that this brings up about baptism is that as Lutherans, we believe that babies have faith. Ever put a baby in a stranger’s arms? That baby might display a *lack* of faith by crying. Faith is essentially related to trust, and that baby has proven that she either trusts or doesn’t trust, even in infancy. We recognize that the baby’s intellect hasn’t been completely formed, but trust and intellect aren’t the same thing. Trust can be informed by intellect, but trust isn’t the same as intellect. Explaining this to my girls, I told them that we knew that they could trust because we knew they trusted us when we had them in our arms, and that God was using that trusting ability that He created in them so that they could receive His love.
The second point is about baptism is that baptism isn’t just about a magic ritual. God is at work in a baptism and makes the baptism happen, but baptism is always meant to be a part of something bigger. Baptism is supposed to be about a life of discipleship, a life of being taught, and a life in the Church. Again, explaining this to my girls, I asked them if it would be a good idea if we stopped telling them Bible stories and praying with them. One of them literally laughed at that idea (as she should, it’s ridiculous). Baptism is a great gift, but when Jesus talks about it, He tells His disciples that it is a means to the ends of “making disciples”. It can withstand dormant periods in our lives, but it’s still always about our ongoing lives of discipleship.
Lastly, this has vexed someone about the status of some pet. First, God created your pet. He therefore loves your pet with His perfect love, meaning that He loves your pet better than you love your pet, because your love is still the love of a sinner. Second, God in His perfect love set us humans up to be the pinnacle of His creation, His image bearers. We receive the grace of God directly in things like Baptism, but creation receives God’s grace *through* our reception of His grace – all of creation is renewed and restored in the Resurrection because of God’s love shown to US humans in Christ’s death and resurrection. Therefore, the best thing that you can do for your pet is to believe in Christ’s atoning work for you.
My hope for you is that you take some time this week with one of those surface level questions and then allow yourself to go deeper with them by searching the Scriptures and good Christian thought. And if you can’t find a good question, I can always loan you a seven, five, or three year old to get the process started.