First off, let me say that I've got a bunch more "Preacher, I've got a question" questions to get to over the summer. However, while I'm in D.C., I wanted to share some thoughts that God's putting in my head while I'm here.
Today, I got the honor of listening to the Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, speak. He wasn't really speaking to my class, but we got to sit in and listen and ask a few questions. His wife is a former student at the seminary here at Wesley, and he was speaking with the Board of Governors for the school. It was mostly about national security and all that stuff. It was very interesting, and I wondered how he sleeps at night knowing all that he knows.
One of our students in the DMin program here for military chaplains ask about him and his personal faith. His response was terribly disappointing. He couldn't be in a more safe environment. There were no press there besides a photographer for the school. It was seminary board members, seminary professors and ministers who are doctoral students. He basically said that faith was personal and that you just don't speak about those issues.
Who in the world taught him that? I'm deeply troubled by this answer that I've heard time and time again. I do believe it was taught a generation ago, but I'm just not sure what Bible those who taught it were reading. Would the Apostle Paul say faith is 'personal?' Would Peter say it was 'personal?' Would Jesus say it was 'personal' and 'private?' Moreover, would Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa say that faith is something you don't talk about? I wasn't looking for the man to preach a sermon. I was looking for something at least like, "My wife attend such and such church and my faith has been a source of strength in the most difficult hours of this job."
Friends, if you want a personal and private faith, then you do not want the faith of the Bible. You want some kind of bland American-ized faith that is not the faith to which Jesus called His disciples, not the faith which Paul used to start the countless churches and not the faith that has changed the world many times over. Faith in Jesus is radical. It comes out in our actions, in the way we treat people, in the way we serve and in the way we talk. Some of us might have jobs that require us to speak a little more political about issues of faith while on the job (and we desperately need Christians in those sectors!), but we shouldn't ever be ashamed to claim the name. We should never be afraid to claim who we are in Christ. The Church will never change the lives of those who desperately need our message of hope and grace if our faith is personal and private. The World needs a Church whose faith is relational and public.
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