What are the benefits of Baptizing your child?

[Jash Comstock]

This question is directed to my fellow paedo's. What are the benefits of baptizing your child? I see and believe the reasoning. I understand that baptism brings your child into the New Covenant community of the church, but what are the practical benefits? I consulted the Westminster Larger Catechism on the subject, but I am not sure I completely understand. Could anyone help shed some light on this for me?

 

[Contra_Mundum]

It is a matter, principally, of identity. I would define the benefits as being similar to those which are realized in a similar fashion in the secular world, when a child is acknowledged as a citizen of the USA, and grows up in possession of that identity.

Can such a person end up rejecting or forfeiting the privileges that were his in a formal sense according to what was said of him prior to his having any say in the matter?
Can he turn a criminal and traitor? Or can he simply resign his citizenship, if his heart is not in it?
What if he refuses to live like a true citizen; or lives like one where it advantages him personally, while he rejects the basis and context that make his comforts possible?

I believe it is much to the advantage to our children to know that God has formally (outwardly) acknowledged them as his, for the sake of their fathers. They are in the best position in the world for hearing and acknowledging a truth that (we pray) they will never relinquish, as long as they live. They should come to know that God has made a very clear claim on their lives from the earliest possible moment, and that claim implies privileges and duties; and a fearful threat as bad or worse than the children of the ungodly know, if they should spurn the closely offered mercy of God in Christ. They should interpret God's providence toward them as a token of the love that loved them first, though they did not deserve it in the least.

I do not think that an American-born child should be considered a non-citizen, until he or she is old enough to go to school, or drive, or vote, or enlist, or own real estate, etc. Old enough to "decide for him/her-self," in other words. Likewise, I don't think God intends our little ones to first know themselves as spiritual enemies of God (and of their parents, and other Christians); and only after this self-awareness, to "willfully" transition into a verbally-realized condition that the church (as an agency of official sanctioning) finally approves and acknowledges. Their parents' constant diet of law-and-gospel should quickly become their own diet, to be their lifelong sustenance.