Expert: Griff Ruby - 6/29/2006

Question
How would you answer a fundamentalist type who asks if you've been "born-again" or "being saved" or if there was a moment that you've "asked Jesus into your heart"? I know that we believe that our infant baptism is when most of us are born again, but it seems like the fundamentalists have a point- there should be a point in our adulthood somewhere when we do make a conscious decision to follow Christ. My own answer, which I didn't think of until an hour after the question, was that I think that "being saved" is a gradual process that one experiences, with ups and downs, throughout their life, but if there was a single moment when I made a "decision" to accept Jesus, it was the first time that I obeyed Him when no one else was looking. I don't know if that's a sufficient answer though. What do you think?

Answer
When an adult converts to the Faith, he gets baptized (using water).  Water baptism is to a person's "decision for Christ" what marriage (i. e. the wedding) is to engagement.  In the Bible, the whole Church was getting started, requiring the transferring of all who truly loved and served God from the Jewish Covenant over to the Christian Covenant.  To become Jews, they would get circumcised (the boys, anyway, the girls just were raised as Jews or simply converted, marrying in the Jewish Faith), and now to become Christians they got baptised.  (There was also the water baptism of John the Baptist, but those so baptised remained Jews and had to be rebaptised into Christ once the Church had started.)
The baptism of children is not explicitly mentioned but implied in the baptism of a person's whole household, which presumably would have included any children and infants therein.  Sometimes in certain parts of the world, or else in royal families, the children are betrothed while still small children or even infants, the idea being that they will grow up and marry the one they are betrothed to.  Baptism of a baby is kind of like that.  And just as betrothed children can decide to marry their betrothed or else break it off and marry another (which latter is a scandal), baptised children can either decide to live in Christ or not (which latter is a disaster for the person so deciding).
One common and practical time for the growing child to make such a specific "decision for Christ" would be at the point of Confirmation.  By this time a person should have an idea what Jesus is all about, what He accomplished for us on the Cross, and what that means for our own existence now and forever. In all justice, recieving the Sacrament of Confirmation should be at the initiative and choice of the child recieving it, not merely of the parents (though there is no hard fast rule on this point).
That is not the specific purpose of Confirmation of course, just a practical time to make a specific committment to Christ.
The answer you came up with is also of genuine merit, as our walk with Christ only begins with baptism and/or such a decision at confirmation or at any other point, or even, as you say, the point at which one realizes that moral choices face one and whether they will make one kind of choice that neglects Christ or the other kind of choice that honors His Divine Will for our own lives.
Such a point is only a beginning, we are indeed meant to build on that start with growth in Christ, unlike in Protestant churches where such a "decision for Christ" is regarded as a kind of be all end all and nothing further is required.  With that false system of belief, once you do that you are done, set, all ready for Heaven, with nothing further to do and no risk of losing it no matter what you do, so such a moment becomes the end of the Christian experience instead of the beginning.  That Protestant churches even exist at all is on the basis of "Since you are already saved there is nothing you are required to do, but if you have any gratitude you might want to come to church and learn a little more about this Savior who saved you, and how to help others get saved."
The real "born-again" experience comes when one is born again into the Heavenly realm.  A far more salient question is "If you died tonight would you go to Heaven?"  If you have unconfessed mortal sins on your soul (or else are not baptised through your own fault) then you can know you won't and that you had better do what is needed (baptism if you haven't done that yet, confession if you are baptized already).  There is no rebaptism, one only gets one shot at that.
The Protestant notion of "once saved, always saved" is actually a corruption of the real concept that "once baptised, always baptised."  Baptism cannot be repeated, but Grace can be cooperated with, grown in, or else rejected, as we choose, and with justifiable consequences for each case.
Hope this helps, God bless!