De-Baptism

In his BreakPoint commentary, Chuck Colson noted “a bizarre trend” in Great Britain: (Quoting Time magazine) “More than 100,000 former Christians have downloaded ‘certificates of de-baptism’ in a bid to publicly renounce the faith.” He calls these documents as “apostasy certificate”. The National Secular Society (NSS) spearheaded this “de-baptism” campaign. They intend to “mock the practice of baptizing infants too young to consent.” (Some Protestant churches baptize infants. Here in Makati Gospel Church, we don’t do infant baptism. We only dedicate children. Biblically, we believe baptism is for adults. But we still need to be concerned with this atheistic trend.) Colson wonders, “Now, there have always been people who have walked away from their faith. But what’s behind this public display?” The reason, he thinks, lies in a statement from the NSS website: “Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had.” That is a scary thought! Colson warned, “In this postmodern, therapeutic culture, I can understand how ‘liberating’ it might feel not to believe in personal sin or evil. And that should terrify us. Where does most of the evil in our world come from, if not from people who believe they’re incapable of evil?…I don’t mean to be too harsh, but that attitude is a total denial of everything that human history and human culture teaches. … In my opinion, a person who can do that is a candidate not for ‘de-baptism,’ but for a padded cell.” (Source: BreakPoint, June 4, 2009)

Just looking at 9/11 and the corruption in our government should be enough to convince us that evil does exist. Why do people want to deny sin? Basically it is pride. Denying sin leads to denying our need for a savior. No sin, no cross. It does not really bring comfort. Denying one’s tooth cavity will not keep the person from suffering a toothache later. He needs to deal with it, not deny it. So it is also with sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross not just to display God’s love for us but also to deal with our sin issue with God. That’s the Good News we proclaim. There can be no good news without the bad news. The bad news is that we are sinners. The good news is that Christ died for our sins. People need to hear this. I pray that we would always share the Gospel. It’s our only hope.

Brethren, “go and make disciples” (Matt 28:19a, NIV).