‘Faith’ is considered a dirty word in our culture today — certainly where it relates to ‘religious faith’. Hostility to Christianity and other ‘faiths’ is growing. Meanwhile ‘reason’ and ‘evidence’ are held up as the tools of enlightened humanity.
Visit the classroom where a 14-year-old child is given a hard time by classmates and teacher alike for confessing belief in Christianity: ‘No one believes in that any more!’ Visit parliament, where the Christian might be informed that ‘those speaking from faith have no part to play in the making of government policy’. Witness the Christian sharing the gospel with a friend: ‘I wish I had your faith’. We are all familiar with situations like these.
As a result we can find ourselves on the back foot as Christians: clinging onto what we believe, sometimes in spite of ourselves; feeling ill equipped to persuade others of those beliefs. Those who are weak in faith may eventually give up the Christian faith altogether. Teenagers are in particular danger here. And those of us who keep believing may find that we’ve been pushed into a Christian ghetto. We are allowed to believe what we like on Sunday mornings, as long as we don’t do anything about it from Monday to Saturday.
