Baptism and Child-Rearing

In the rite and ceremony of Holy Baptism we encounter one of the most important tenets for parents to learn and practice – namely, to let go in love that child whom, paradoxically, the parents also hold in love.

I do not, of course, refer to an emotional or physical abandonment of the child, for neither of those acts involves love. Rather, I refer to a true love – a Christian love that nurtures the child. I do not have in mind a nurture that aims to produce a clone or an extension of the parent’s self, nor even a correction of the parent’s self. I have in mind a nurture that aims to raise and release the child’s self.

This Christian aim is not predicated on a sentimental confidence in the goodness and potential of the child’s self, nor on a libertarian solipsism of individualistic autonomy. It is predicated on the being and acting of the triune God: the Father, the creator; the Son, the lord of history; and the Spirit, the indwelling presence of the divine.

This aim consists in a loving nurture that, from conception and through all the moments of the parent-child relationship, seeks to commend the child to the power of God, who creates and sustains human existence. Such nurture recognizes and trusts that Christ, the lamb who was slain, is worthy to be lord of history, both cosmic and personal. It humbly attends to and gains sustenance from the divine loving presence of the Spirit, who dwells within and binds us truly to God and others.

Hence, with this nurturing aim in heart and mind, and under the tender mercies of our triune God, we confess and rejoice that our child is yet not ours (as no person is actually ours).

To be sure, parents are charged with solemn and sacred duties. However, lording over or possessing the child is not one of the duties, not one of the privileges of that relationship, and not even part of the nature of the parental role.

Rather, the chief – the first and last – of the solemn and sacred duties entrusted to parents consists in this, to give the child over to the power of God, the lordship of Christ, and the indwelling of the Spirit.

Giving the child to God is not to be understood principally or even largely in terms of treating the child in a Christian manner – for example, Bible reading and praying at home, sharing God’s holy love with the child, worship and Christian education at home and church, love-shaped discipline. Although these should well be a part of Christian child-rearing, they constitute but the forms of giving a child to God, not the essence. Indeed, unless the parents know and practice the essence of Christian child-rearing, the perverse fact is that even these forms can become unchristian acts of aiming to possess and dominate the child, thus contradicting faith in God.

The fundamental and principal giving of the child to the Lord consists in the inward movement of the parents in mind and heart to let go of the child.

This constitutes the essence of true and humble Christian love of parents for a child. This movement of love occurs not once, but continuously, inwardly in heart and mind, from the moment of conception through the moment of death, either or the parent or the child. Only thus can the outward forms and gestures of Christian child-rearing be what they ought to be, solemn and sacred duties entrusted to those stewards whom we call parents.

Here Holy Baptism – among its other meanings – bears great significance for child-rearing. It signifies our giving up of the child, our release of the child, not that the child may belong to no one, but that he or she may belong to God. We must no longer clutch the child to our breast. We must no longer cling to our notions of what the child needs and what the child must be. We must no longer claim the child by asserting the primacy or even the necessity of our love for the child.

For in Holy Baptism we let the child go. We give the child to God, who is the true parent – creator, savior, and sustainer. We cannot be those things for the child, and so we must not attempt them. When we do, we usurp the being and acting of God, thus contradicting our faith.

Only in the inward faithful movement of truly Christian love for a child – which we signify by the outward presentation of the child for the rite and ceremony of Holy Baptism – do we surrender our own selves and our child’s self to the sovereign and loving triune God.

The child, once ours (as we thought), is born again, now God’s (as the child ought). Thus, the sacrament of Holy Baptism, strangely enough, sets us right in child-rearing.