Impact: This is exactly how I am feeling right now! I don’t feel I was ready [for baptism at age 8] and I don’t feel that my children are at all either. I have had a real hard time with baptizing at the age of 8 for some time now. But the family pressure is so thick, I couldn’t handle the explanation as to why we wouldn’t, and of course the pressure in primary.
Name: Meradith
Date: 30 Jul 2014
Impact Topic: Under-Informed Covenant Making
MEAT AFTER MILK 
Perhaps your discomfort has more to so with the fact that we only do one baptism in a lifetime now. In revelation given to Joseph Smith, the Lord did in fact make it a “law” to baptize children at eight. see DAnd C 68:25-26. However, baptism was not a “one time event”. There were baptisms for healing (Joseph Smith was rebaptized, I believe, in 1842 or 1843 for this very reason. Certainly it was practiced anciently as the children of Israel were cleansed after each illness.), baptisms unto Christ and into a church. My point is baptism was a repeated ordinance. I don’t think that at eight you have to know everything, just enough to know how to return on the path if you stray…the first principles. (Not “first” because we get them done first on our checklist and never have to do them again, but “first” as in we must constantly return to them before moving on in a process.). I am typing fast so I hope this makes sense. My desire would be that we accept many baptisms over a lifetime rather than change the age at which we start. But since we don’t practice that today, I guess my point is mute.
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