Baptizing children at younger and younger ages has contributed to “unregenerate church members”

I grew up in an independent fundamental Baptist church. When I was 5 years old I told my mother that I wanted to be saved and she explained the Gospel to me and I asked Him to save me. My mother told me that’s what happened but I have no recollection of the event, but I trusted my mother’s word. When I was 12, I was baptized as that was the minimum age in our church. I was in every service and actively involved until I left for college. Over the next 10 plus years, my life was far from that of a Christian but when I was confronted, I would tell people that “I was saved when I was 5, I was baptized when I was 12, and that I was backslidden.” That, and a tremendous amount of Bible knowledge was enough to silence most people who confronted me. Whenever I got in trouble, I would ask God to forgive me, go to church for awhile, and then go back to the sinful life in which I was happy and comfortable.

Finally, a friend told me that if I was really a Christian, I shouldn’t be happy with my sinful life and that God would be chastening me.

It was then that God opened my eyes to my true spiritual condition and I repented and trusted Christ and gave up trusting my mother’s memory and my false profession. A few years later I actually preached my own baptismal service.