by Steve Carroll

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: April 16, 2009

Most Christian traditions support the idea that people can choose whether or not to trust Jesus as Lord and Saviour and accept the free gift of salvation. The first thing that I must address in this post is the common misunderstanding of the word christen, which many wrongly assume forces them into the Christian faith tradition and disables their choice. We should be understanding the word christen as: to administer baptism. It is important to note that baptism doesn't force a child to hold onto the Christian religion any more than taking someone to MacDonald's forces them to order a hamburger.

Most christening occurs when a child is still an infant, so most of the process is more for the parents of the child than the child herself. Depending on the Christian denomination, one of several things may happen: the parents may feel more secure about their child's eternal fate, they may believe that their future will be successful parents, blessed by God, and thus put into effect a self-fulfilling prophesy that will indeed cause them to be good parents and help them to bring up their child in a loving home. In certain traditions, parents believe that the child is released from the guilt of Original Sin, they gain admission into the church, and they are now a child of God and parents are able to guide them in the way they should go.

Infants are not able to choose the culture they are born into, so why should they be able to decide what culture of faith to be born into? Christening a child offers them the opportunity to take part in a culture and tradition that has been active for hundreds of years. Many of the opposing articles make a quick assumption that when a child is born into any kind of culture, they are unable to appreciate another or even change their culture if their milieu changes. This assumption is obviously wrong, as it focuses mostly on most likely fundamentalist narrowminded parents who will isolate their children so they will not see any part of the world. Most parents wil gain a greater security by having their children christened as infants because they will trust that their child's life is in God's hands and allow them to be more independent, trusting that they will go on their own way but will turn back to God's promise of salvation for those who love God. Because of its benefits for the parents, which will trickle down to the child, christening should be the choice of the child's parents, rather than the child herself.

Learn more about this author, Steve Carroll.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.