Baptizing Little Believers?

I'm interested in some feedback from other Mafia members, and all other Reformed Baptists on this one.

I want to talk about baptizing children upon their profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

As a Calvinistic Baptist myself, I'll lay my cards on the table right at the outset on this one: I say just baptize them. I know that's a controversial position to hold. I know, for instance, that it's rumored that Spurgeon did not baptize his own twin sons until they were 19, even though neither one of them had ever confessed anything other than faith in Christ. (And whatever that guy did has to be right...right?)

I know the concern from the other position is over protecting the regenerate church membership. It's about doing what we can to ensure that we're not baptizing the unregenerate. I get that, and I appreciate the concern.

But here are my random thoughts on the matter:

1. It's not the baptism of children that necessarily produces unregenerate church members: it's a faulty and/or false gospel that is centered on emotional response and the free will of fallen man. If we repent of preaching that sort of "gospel" and return to preaching the apostolic content of the Gospel of Christ, then the response that we will get will be far less likely to be emotion-driven in the first place.

2. Scripture only ever gives us one hurdle to clear prior to baptism, and there's some manuscript evidence, apparently, that even this one hurdle may not be original with Luke. In Acts 8, when the eunuch asked why he couldn't be baptized, Philip replied that he could if only he believed. The eunuch said he did, and Philip baptized him. He didn't catechize him first, or make him fill out a seeker's workbook, or wait months for fruit to appear. But again, consistent with #1 above, Philip knew he had preached the genuine Gospel to him.

3. If anyone had a right to be gun-shy about baptizing new converts, it was Philip. He had just previously been involved with the whole sad incident involving Simon Magus and his false conversion/false baptism. But getting burned by Simon didn't cause him to hesitate to pull the trigger once faith in Christ was confessed.

4. We are tempted to demand that children have adult-like faith, but Scripture tells us we adults need to become childlike or we shall in no wise see the kingdom of heaven!

5. By not baptizing children who confess Christ consistent with their ability to understand, and by demanding to see some fruit first, we generally make it more difficult for them to be baptized than we do for adult converts.

6. Again, baptizing kids is not the problem: Manipulating kids into being baptized, with things like Vacation Bible School peer pressure and Fire Engine Baptistries, and with a lobotomized "Gospel" of the spiritual ABC's is the problem. You want to stop baptizing the unregenerate, then start preaching the true gospel and start relying on God to call those whom He will, completely apart from your parlor tricks and machinations to make it happen.

7. We should baptize on confession of faith, which confession is consistent with ability to understand, and is not blatantly contradicted by anything. This is true for both adults and children. Now, each of us sins, and thereby we are all habitual contradictors of our confessed faith; but we shouldn't withhold baptism from professing believers unless there is some obvious, glaring defect. Like, "I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I also believe Mohammed is the Son of God." Or, like the guy who confesses on Sunday morning to believe but the whole town's heard what hell he raised on Saturday night...you might want to wait and see some repentance in a case like that. But those are major, obvious contradictions. If you have a third or fourth grader who has listened to your consistent, expository presentation of the Gospel and subsequently confesses to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that forgiveness is through His Name, I'm not sure what the great wisdom is in waiting around for something more.

None of this is in stone for me, as in, I'm looking for interaction on this. I'm truly interested in your thoughts.