Thursday, February 14, 2019

FAITH AND POLITICS: A LETTER TO A SKEPTIC





I appreciate your willingness to dialogue with a person of faith. However, there are numerous points that you have made that are worthy of addressing:

“In my opinion, faith is, and should be, a deeply personal thing for each individual.”

My belief in Jesus is deeply personal. However, it is also a faith and commitment that permeates all areas of life, even the political arena. However, it seems that you pit logic and reason against the Christian faith and therefore think it taboo to anything outside of ourselves.

However, this Jew didn’t become a Christian merely because of a series of pleasant feelings. Instead, I became convinced about Jesus, based largely upon logic and reason.

I find it amusing that skeptics think that it is inappropriate for us to bring our faith into the public arena, while the “faith” of others is totally acceptable. Yes, their agenda is not based solely on logic and reason. Instead, logic and reason are servants of our values and proclivities (religion). Values cannot be determined in a laboratory or test-tube or by science or mathematics. Nevertheless, these undergird all of our “reasoning.”

Interestingly, when Christians fail to bring our faith into the public, instead arguing that faith and politics must be kept separate, we are also castigated for this. As a result, atheists often criticize the Church for not taking an active stand against segregation and Hitler (National Socialism), and they are correct.

Consequently, we have just as much a right and even a duty to a seat in public discourse as anyone else.

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