Family Lessons 115: Certificate of Baptism

In a pile of papers I was sorting, I found a certificate of baptism. It was my mother’s and must have been included in the box which arrived at my house after her death in autumn ’22. The event took place at High Street Congregational Chapel, Lancaster. Certifying the event certainly made it more interesting for descendants and family historians, but what purpose the certificate was orginally intended to serve, I cannot say.

Much good it did her. In her twenties, my Mother had flirted with the gospel, getting (re-)baptised in an evangelical church, but she drifted away. She became a self-professed pagan, a worshipper of some mother goddess, a dealer of tarot cards and a lover of all things connected to ancient lore and New Age mumbo-jumbo. Much as I loved her, she showed no interest in the gospel. She was critical of churches and considered church members to be a mass of hypocrites, but seemed to soften somewhat when I became a pastor. Perhaps she was proud of me, despite her natural instincts. The last time I saw her, and before the cancer claimed her body, I gave her a card from the members and regulars of Martin Top. She read all the signatures and messages carefully, remarking that she would have joined ‘a church like that’ had one been available. A church which, presumably, cared for people it barely knew and still loved people who rejected its message. Ironically, very few churches are truly like that, but the Lord Jesus Himself, for whom she had no time, most certainly is.

I saw no evidence of grace other than a softening of her disdain for the Church. Quite what she murmured to the Great God hitherto rejected in those last few weeks of unconsciousness, I dare not speculate. What I can say, categorically, is that her certificate of baptism was utterly worthless. It is less valuable than toilet paper to the one who enters eternity, ready to appear before the righteous Judge. Only Jesus can save from guilt and hell, not some mother goddess, not a pile of crystals and certainly not a baptism, certified or otherwise.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6, New King James Version