I'm starting this post with the very real knowledge that there is so much more to say than one post will allow as it relates to my what I think about baptism. I've had multiple conversations in the last week that have prompted me to think about, refine, and clarify what it is that I (and our church) believes and practices. I'm not even sure I'll get into that in this post.
In fact, one of the troubles with baptism generally is that your average Christian really is under-informed regarding what it actually means and the significance involved. I'd like to say that it's just people in my own tradition, but I think the problem is more widespread. People from the reformed background tend to adopt the "we've always done it this way" mentality, baptizing their kids when they're born, giving it little more thought than the nominal catholic who wants to have a christening. They have no knowledge of what they actually believe about the sacrament, what it signifies, what it represents, the promises of baptism, etc. Thus, they have no defense when a well-meaning (but also under-informed) brother or sister tells them that real baptism consists only of immersion of a professing believer. After all, "it's obvious".
Except it's not obvious, as any honest pastor/theologian will confirm. It requires at least as much, if not more, explanation and understanding than our other sacrament, Communion or The Lord's Supper. Most churches take the sacrament of communion seriously enough to "fence the table" every time that the church celebrates it. This means that we explain exactly what it means, what we're doing when we take it, and how to take it incorrectly, so that we don't "heap judgment on ourselves". We take the meaning of communion seriously enough that we don't claim that "it's obvious".
So, we must know what we believe. There are reasons that some churches believe that the sign of the new covenant can and should be freely given to children of believing/professing parents (maybe my next post). There are reasons that other churches believe that the sign of the new covenant should NOT be given to those children, until they can profess for themselves faith in Christ. But in either case, let's understand what we're doing when we're celebrating the sacrament.
Conviction on an issue is not the same as biblical clarity on an issue. All pastors/believers should be convicted about what they believe the Bible says. Honest ones will be able to admit when it's possible to disagree and still be a Christian. We don't all have to practice the same thing, but we should be willing to admit that the "other side" is at least plausible.
(The issue with not knowing or understanding, incidentally, is that there are a lot of people who aren't living in the promises of their baptism because they think that their baptism was about something that they did. But one thing we should all agree on, whether we were baptized as a child or as an adult, is that the action is never in our corner–it's always in Christ's...)