Judge late, not early

I am pleased to present for your consideration:

The baptism of Lydia 

One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, (Acts 16:14-15) 

The baptism of the Philippian jailer 

And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. (Acts 29-33) 

The baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch 

And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. (Acts 8:34:38) 

The (likely) excommunication of Simon the Magician

But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic… Simon believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles[b] performed, he was amazed… when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money,  saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”  But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. (Acts 8) 

A common thread
What I see here is this: at the start of the Christian era, people were baptized quickly upon a simple profession. And if a mistake was made, as in the case of Simon the Magician, there was no weeping and gnashing of teeth, as if the process needed to be improved, rather there was corrective action taken and the church moved on. Regrettable perhaps, but easy enough to fix.

I know it was very early in church history (but after the apostolic era) that we made it more difficult, and sometimes much more difficult, for people to join and to be baptized. Today, under the noble sounding task of keeping the church pure, we require people to prove what we can’t actually discern,  (although we pretend to be pretty good at it) that they are truly converted and it is therefore okay to baptize them. We don't want to make a mistake. But scripture doesn't warn us about making a mistake (a mistake that we truly cannot avoid), it warns us about not fixing the mistake once, after baptism, it becomes apparent.

We act as if we have committed a grave error if we baptize the wrong person. (News flash: we have and we will.) So we have classes and catechisms and sometimes grueling interviews with the church leaders because we want to be sure. Scripture never commands us to be sure. This is not an aspect of church purity that is prescribed or commanded. If it were, the apostasy of Simon the Magician would have been the perfect teachable moment. We could have been told: Look guys, don't be too accommodating, see what happens if you don't thoroughly examine  prospective members?

Honestly, I don’t know if these seemingly obvious practices of extensive teaching and interviewing are right or wrong, ¹ or if they are effective. ² But I do know where these practices did not come from: they did not come from the bible. The bible does not tell us to keep the church pure by keeping people out who want to come in, it tells to the best of our limited ability to throw them out later if they bear no fruit. There is only one form of judgment prescribed for the church vis-à-vis claimants. It is not a judgment of those seeking to enter the church or indeed desiring to be baptized (beyond “believing” and understanding in the most basic manner). No, it is judgment of those who desire to remain in the church. It is a judgement that says: we admitted you and baptized you because you acknowledged Christ as your savior. Have you since demonstrated that you also accept him as your Lord?

I think we are actually more discerning at precisely the wrong end of a church member’s timeline. None of the baptisms presented above, with all indications of being routine, would happen in many churches today.

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¹ But I suspect in many cases they are wrong. Some early church documents indicate that those seeking baptism underwent years of instruction. There is no way to justify such a practice from scripture.

² No way to prove it, but I'd give dollars to donuts that "false-positive" rate is not highly correlated with the degree of examination.