Editorial: Why Johnny Couldn’t Be Baptized
Pearl was close to 70 when I was her pastor. It would be hard for you to imagine just how primitive Pearl’s life was, especially given the harsh Dakota climate we lived in. Her house was a leaky little shack, far out in the hills. I don’t know what she lived on—probably some small Social Security, or rent for her single field of farmland. I suspect she got most of her food from her garden, a few chickens, and livestock. I don’t remember her ever complaining, though—she was a cheerful person. And very, very convinced of the truth of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Pearl raised her 12-year-old mentally handicapped grandson, Johnny, whose mom had dumped him on her elderly mother so she could pursue her own life. Johnny could feed himself and use the bathroom, but it was hard to know how much of anything else he understood. He sat in the cradle roll Sabbath School, where he would try to sing, and take the items handed to him like any toddler would. He seemed to enjoy it.
Once, after we’d had a baptism of some children in church, Pearl said to me, “Johnny would like to be baptized. But of course, he can’t be, because he could never understand the lessons.” I told her I would baptize Johnny—that I believed God understood Johnny’s limitations—but she would have none of it. She was sure that to be baptized, you had to know things and be able to explain things. I suspect, though I never asked her directly, that she believed Johnny wouldn’t be saved because he couldn’t understand doctrines and be baptized.
There’s a lesson here, but it isn’t an easy one. Because Pearl was right: church as we usually do it is about knowing things and explaining things. A pastor’s education is mostly becoming knowledgeable about God. Worship is the pastor standing up and explaining things about God.
But is that all there is to faith? Can the blessings of baptism, for example, come to someone who can’t understand the doctrines? Is there room in church for Johnny?
We’ve probably made it all too complicated. I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with a God who wouldn’t save Johnny—whether or not Johnny was ever baptized.
Thank you for reading and supporting Adventist Today.
Loren Seibold
Adventist Today Executive Editor
8 June 2024
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