Bible Text: Acts 4:20 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. Acts 4:20

If you want to keep your job, better keep your mouth shut when it comes to talking about your faith! Though it may not be verbalized in that fashion, that’s the message that is coming through loud and clear with increasing volume in the workplace. Profanity is tolerated, coarseness and vulgarity are commonplace, sexual innuendos are overlooked provided they are not directed against a fellow worker, but please don’t bring God into the workplace.

When an employee of the giant software corporation Microsoft signed some of her inter-company e-mail with “bless you!” –not even “God bless you!” or the roaring, “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless you!” she was told that if she continued this practice, she would be terminated. I’ve wondered what the response might have been had she written, “May Bill Gates bless you today!”

Is there a growing hostility against the expression of your faith in public? Without question there is–in growing segments of the secular world, almost as though there is a conspiracy against any outward expression of your faith. I’m not talking about wearing a T-shirt with the message, “Jesus saves!” on the back, or putting tracts in the company mailboxes, or walking up and down the street on your lunch hour with a sandwich board. I’m talking about things as innocuous as wearing a cross as religious jewelry or an ichthus or fish on the lapel of your coat.

As John G. West, Jr. wrote in The Seattle Times, “It’s ironic that in a culture where almost every kind of expression– from pornography to taxpayer-subsidized art mocking religion–is treated as sacrosanct, attempts to share one’s religious faith are now being declared strictly verboten.”

And what is the result of all of this? A fear that many have to express their faith, to let anyone know that they are a believer, resulting in an underground sort of spiritual existence that separates God from the ordinary world in which we live.

Walking into a church in Indonesia for the first time I was surprised to see the words written over the door, “For non- Muslims only!” Why? Because Muslims weren’t welcome? No. Because Indonesia is a country of Muslims, and there it is against the law to talk to a Muslim about your faith. Most Arab countries follow the same pattern: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and wherever you find Muslim fundamentalists you find outward hostility to those who even talk about their faith publicly. But the crisis is not over there; it’s here!

This is a new problem, is it not? Wrong. It’s as old as the history of the Christian church. When the early Christians began to proclaim their faith, the Sanhedrin conferred together. Luke writes, “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everybody in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.” Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:16-20).

This, of course, forces confrontation. Do I live as a spiritual exile, as some are forced to do where there is no religious freedom, or do I discreetly yet openly affirm my spiritual beliefs? It’s a double standard that proclaims freedom of speech yet denounces those who exercise it. Unfortunately, you are forced to decide, something which should never have to be faced.

Resource reading: Acts 4