infant baptism and salvation

The topic of infant baptism and salvation is a very hard one to comment on as it is not something specifically addressed in the Bible. It’s easy to form an opinion on it, and I’d like to think my opinion is correct, but I can’t know for sure. I do not support infant baptism as one has to make a profession of faith to be baptized. It is not done in the Bible and I believe it’s something done to be religious and has become like a rule for some denominations and Catholics. I think that Jesus was trying to take us away from “religion” and bring us to Him. Following rules is not what will bring us salvation, our salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ. I do not necessarily think that infants are sinful as babies, but I do know that they are not perfect as only Jesus Christ is. With that said, I believe in my heart that babies do automatically go to heaven if they die because they did not have a chance to reject Christ, and I think they need to have that opportunity before they could condemn themselves. Rejecting Jesus could happen in early years if a child choses to believe something that is not what is the truth, such as evolution. I think that God knows the hearts of every person, and the reason some babies are called home as babies is because that might have been their only chance to get to go to heaven. Appendix Issue 7 in “Across the Spectrum” gives a few ideas as to what some people believe happens to babies after they die, none of them are exactly what I feel. The closest view would be in the final paragraph, where “perhaps babies who die are somehow allowed to mature in the afterlife, at which point they, like the rest of us, decide for themselves whether they want to submit to Christ.”[1] I’ve heard stories of people briefly seeing heaven and finding out about relatives they didn’t know about and it was confirmed later by family members, especially children, so I can see how children who died as babies can grow in heaven, but I can’t imagine that any would ever choose to leave.

[1] Boyd, Gregory. Eddy, Paul. Across The Spectrum: Understanding issues in Evangelical Theology, Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, MI. 2009
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