Brad Alles

What makes witnessing so difficult in today’s Post-Modern age is the fact that because of this dichotomy, or two-story truth, religion is respected but irrelevant. It’s just your own personal belief; it’s not anything that we can use in the public arena, since there are no universal truths for all people. Regarding issues like abortion, embryonic stem cells, and homosexuality, the lower level of reason in the two-story truth has much to say. That’s the area of science and objective facts. But not so for the upper story of faith—that’s just subjective preferences and feelings. Historian of religion Martin Marty says this is “the first time in history where Christianity has been boxed into the private sphere and has largely stopped speaking to the public sphere.”

If Christians surrender to this temptation to stop speaking, keeping “the Christian truth” to oneself in the private areas of our lives or in our churches, what good is our religion? Furthermore, this separating of private and public lives is unique to the West, and the greatest barrier to the power of the Word for our culture. “Keep your religion to yourself” is based on the idea that your position on a public issue is not an objective truth but a subjective bias. How do we witness effectively in these days when confronted with this mindset?  The next blogs will explain that.