Permission to go public

We Lutherans tend to be pretty quiet when it comes to expressing our faith. We usually aren’t quiet about most other things, as can be witnessed by walking into almost any fellowship hall on any given Sunday after worship. But we do tend to be very quiet about our faith.

Many reasons have been given as to why we are so quiet about this particular aspect of our lives, including the fact that we tend to see our faith as a private possession. I do agree that what a person believes has a private aspect. But I would also argue that the Christian faith inherently has a public aspect. My study of Scripture through the years has convinced me that the Christian church was meant to be a very public entity, and the Christian faith has always been meant to be expressed in some very public ways.

The Bible — our guidebook of faith — is a collection of books that tells the stories of God’s public relationship with the people of Israel, and how that relationship extends to all who believe through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.