Taking The Child's Faith Seriously
Richard C. Detweiler
What do you say when a child
between ages 6 and 10 asks you as a parent or teacher, "Can I become a
Christian?" If you say
"yes," you have doubts as to whether he or she is old enough to
understand the implications of being a Christian. You don't like to mislead a child into thinking he has a valid
experience with Jesus Christ if he doesn't.
If you say "no," you
feel guilty that you may be hindering the child's response to God, throwing
cold water on a conviction the Holy Spirit may be sparking in a boy or girls'
mind and heart.
If you say, "Wait until
you're older and understand better," neither you nor your child or pupil
is satisfied.
We need to treat this question
seriously because it is one step in a child's pilgrimage of coming to know
Christ in saving faith and discipleship.
When one of our children was about four years old, he suddenly asked one
day at the dinner table, "Daddy, am I a people?" As a child experiences life in the midst of
the people of God, he needs to know where he stands in relation to that people,
for they are the identity by which he measures his own faith-relationship to
God.
The Holy Spirit works in
children's lives according to their stages of mental, emotional, and spiritual
growth. It may help us as parents,
teachers, and pastors to think of our children's relation to God in three
developmental stages which I suggest along with approximate ages: innocence (infancy to 5), awareness (6-11),
and awakening (12-18).
Child development analyses have
been made by various educational specialists, psychologists, and sociologists
(e.g., Fowler, Kohlberg, Piaget, Erikson), but most teachers, parents, and
pastors find it difficult to translate these theories into functional concepts. Furthermore, the concepts have not been set
in the context of youth-adult conversion and the believers' church. The following is a simplified approach to
relate to children in guiding them to become "wise unto salvation through
faith which is Christ Jesus."
1.
THE AGE OF
INNOCENCE
The Bible describes persons that
cannot tell between their right and their left hand, meaning children who are
not yet capable of discerning right from wrong morally (e.g., Jonah 4:11).
Jesus said, "Truly, I say
unto you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 18:3, RSV).
He also said, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them;
for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 19:14).
These sayings do not mean children
are sinless. Rather, they are not
accountable before God, and are considered part of the kingdom community. They are not saved in the sense of being reborn (Jn. 3:3) and delivered from the
control of sin through conversion to Christ.
They are safe in their
innocence under the atonement of Christ.
Infant baptism is practiced for
two reasons: for baptismal regeneration
and to bring into a covenant relationship.
Some believe a child is born in sin and baptism is the way God's grace
and forgiveness are administered to remove original sin even before the child
has acted sinfully. This is called
baptismal regeneration. A child is
considered spiritually lost otherwise.
Others baptize infants because
they believe it is the way to receive a child into the Christian community in
order to receive God's grace as he is nurtured in the fold of God's
people. This is called being brought
into a covenant relationship. For God
has established a special relation with His people. Children baptized into the Christian community are in a position
to share in God's grace as the covenant community participates in God's
blessings. As circumcision symbolized
the child belonging to the community of faith and being in line to inherit
God's promises, so baptism today symbolizes placing a person within the
community of Christ. When a child is
baptized as an infant, he is expected to confirm his baptism later by his own
personal confession of faith, an act commonly known as conformation.
In the Anabaptist-Mennonite understanding,
shared by some other evangelical groups, believer's baptism is practiced upon
the confession of faith of a youth or adult as a public sign of receiving
Christ as Savior and Lord through repentance and faith and the declared
intention to follow Him.
We have been satisfied that a
young child is spiritually safe under the atoning sacrifice of Christ and that
baptism should be reserved for the time one personally confesses Christ and
voluntarily unites with the body of believers.
But the question remaining unclear concerns the age at which a child can
become a believer in the sense of regeneration and conversion of life and
assume responsible church membership.
Some would say repentance, faith,
conversion, and baptism can and should take place as soon as a child knows he
can do wrong and feels guilty. In fact,
until he has received a new nature, they would say, there isn't much gained in
teaching a child the Bible, even though he is 5 or 6 years, because he has and
unregenerate mind and heart that cannot receive the things of God. With this approach most congregations could
easily bring all their young children to a decision for Christ in a few weeks,
regardless of age, but the "conversion" would be of a basically
different nature than that described by the New Testament, especially in Jesus'
terms of taking up the cross to be a valid disciple.
If the response of young children
is not considered a valid conversion, how shall we view it? A child may dimly recognize a new level of
relationship to God but not yet be at the developmental stage of a later
awakening. Between the ages of 6 and 10
or 11 comes what may be called the age of awareness,
beyond the younger innocence but different from the new awakening that dawns in
adolescent years.
2. THE
AGE OF AWARENESS
At this age (6-11) the question
comes in the child's mind, if not expressed in words, "Can I be a
Christian?" To respond to this
question, we may keep in mind three "A's": acceptance, assurance, and anticipation.
First, accept the child's experience with Jesus Christ as real, because it
is. It is real to the child on his
level and needs to be accepted as such, not depreciated or ignored.
Second, assure the child that Jesus is ready to forgive him and that he can
ask Jesus to enter his life. He needs
that assurance or else he feels he is in "no-man's land" if we say he
has to "wait" until later.
Third, encourage the child to anticipate that Jesus will speak to him
again and to expect that meeting to come.
It is right that the child consider himself a Christian. But what about baptism? We need to assure the child that his
forgiveness does not depend on baptism.
Jesus has come into his life now in a different way than when he was a
baby or before he went to school. But
he should look forward to (not "wait") Jesus speaking to him in a new
way when he is still older, and he will know then that it is time for baptism.
We have tended to make two wrong
approaches when a child between ages 6 and 11 desires to confess Christ. Either we reject such an experience because
it's the experience of a child who doesn't "understand" sufficiently
(leaving him spiritually stranded) or we regard the child's experience as being
of the same nature as a youth or adult conversion thereby potentially unfitting
him for understanding his later meeting of Christ on a conversion level. Accept and assure the child of the reality
of his experience of forgiveness by Jesus, but prepare him to anticipate the
next call he will hear from Jesus later as the time to respond in following Him
by public baptism and becoming a responsible member of the church.
Basically the difference between
the early religious experience of a child and his later experience after 11 or
12 is that the younger children become aware that they do acts of wrong that
are sins and need the forgiveness of God, while older youth and adults realize
that not only do they commit acts of sin, but that they need forgiveness for
who they are in their alienation from God.
This person realizes that response to God calls for the choice between
self and Christ as Lord.
3. THE AGE OF AWAKENING
Spiritual awakening to accountability before God
goes on through adolescent years from about 12 (puberty) to 17 or 18. Life is then most ripe for conversion to Christ. As spiritual awakening begins to dawn around
11 or 12 years, a youth can experience a valid conversion. When Israel sinned in refusing to enter
Canaan, everyone over 19 was held responsible.
Although that cannot be regarded a finally accountable age in a
legalistic sense, yet when a youth reaches the upper end of teenage of 17 or 18
or 19, he or she becomes a man or woman fully awakened and accountable for what
his or her response is to Jesus Christ.
By 16, a youth not responding to
Jesus Christ is moving into a twilight zone of relationship with God. By the upper end of teenage, a youth not
having made the "Great Confession" is lost. If that approach troubles youth, it rightly should, and parents,
teachers, and pastors need not be apologetic about loving confrontation. Once a person has been awakened to Christ by
the gracious calling of the Holy Spirit, he can never again sleep in innocence
nor rest in prolonged awareness of his need beyond adolescent years.
This article has not addressed
fully the nature of conversion question which is basic to how we view a
faith-response to Christ. We do well to
consider that becoming a partaker of the grace of God means not only receiving
His forgiveness, but turning from the enthroned self and independent life to
following Christ in oneness with His body.
To develop this concept of conversion to Christ as Lord may guide us in
relating to the spiritual experience of children and save us from the exclusive
internalizing of relationship of God which may become more psychological then
New Testament in understanding.
