Thoughts on Age of Accountability and the Deceit of Infant Baptism and Child Evangelism

It is hard to think of an easier way to get people to wrongly think they are in God’s grace than to impose rituals upon children which provide an incorrect reference point regarding what it is to become a Christian.

There is no actual record in the Bible of infants being baptized. There are many unwarranted conclusions reached by those who claim that such a practice is derived from the Bible. It is notable that the founders of Protestantism, who claimed to operate only by the Bible, retained the unscriptural infant baptism practiced by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Men like Martin Luther and John Calvin, whom many regard as heroes of the faith for allegedly breaking from unscriptural tradition, failed to break from many of the unscriptural practices and doctrines of the Catholic Church.

Many modern evangelicals who think that they have distanced themselves from the ritualism and unwarranted claims of God’s grace involved in infant baptism have an equivalent practice which is no more based upon the Bible and is no less misleading- manipulating children (and others) into saying a sinner’s prayer to allegedly receive Jesus and enter into His grace. This is also an unscriptural practice which doesn’t do what it is claimed to do while also providing a deceitful reference point regarding entrance into authentic Christianity- as well as disorientation concerning the nature thereof.

Child evangelism overall is not derived from the Bible. The deceit involved in both infant baptism and child evangelism is basically the same. Both of these practices provide placebos regarding Christian experience in children which easily carry over into the mindset they have after becoming adults.

Reading from Luke 18:15-16: “And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

Do passages like this warrant baptizing children? No. Do they warrant leading children in a prayer to accept Jesus so they can allegedly get saved? No. This passage is actually teaching that children are innocent (I mean, relative to those with adult level understanding in God’s eyes). Children do not need to repent and be born again and navigate the narrow way to eternal life in Christ like those with adequate understanding and capability are required to. Children should absolutely be taught and trained to prepare them to do so. Yet to give them experiences which they are said to be their actual repentance and new birth in Christ is horribly misleading.

The Jews in Jesus’ time typically understood adulthood before God and the age of accountability to be at thirteen. There is no Biblical evidence that Jesus disputed this nor any Bible principle which indicates that He would have.

I think it’s obvious that there are rare exceptions in either direction. Some might remain rather child-like and innocent in the sense that little children are innocent well into their teens (and I don’t mean people who are mentally retarded or people who have suffered serious brain trauma which are another topic). Some who have not yet become teenagers, perhaps through being taught and trained especially well or perhaps due to complicity with very bad training, might become adult-like in a moral sense before they are teenagers.

It is also evident that choices which children make can do much to prepare them to walk in the narrow way of Christ or prepare them to live in sin (when they mature to become accountable). However, unwarranted baptisms and human induced sinner’s prayers (which children are both frequent victims of) are vast sources of deceit.