Can the Christian faith ever become a private matter, limited to the domain of the individual conscience?
The Gospel could be compared to music written on a piece of paper. What is, a musical score? It is a sheet of paper with signs on it, signs intended to become music. A staff full of notes that no one would ever play or sing, and that never, not once, would become a melody, would be a contradiction, an absurdity. Likewise, the gospels were written to be lived out. They are a collection of texts that want to become life, and it would be a complete contradiction for us to look at them from a distance, to perhaps study them, to examine them carefully (a useful thing, to be sure), if then we did nothing to put them into practice. What we would like to emphasize here is that, if a musical score exists to become a melody, the gospels exist to become community life and to shape the world. Indeed, this «putting the Gospel into practice» necessarily entails an experience of community, of people who—either as a family of blood, or as a family of faith, or as a group of friends, or as a parish team, or as an institute of consecrated life—, together, try to embody, in their own time and circumstances, what they learn in the gospels. And, together, then, they try to better the world they live in, making it more livable for everyone.
Today, in many cultural contexts, the idea that faith should be something strictly private, which would only affect the personal consciousness of individual believers, is gaining weight. I recently read a somewhat unfortunate article by a journalist (with whom, on the other hand, I usually agree), in which the author stated precisely that «no one should mock any religion, because, as long as it limits itself to the personal domain, what is the problem?» This is the issue, the crux of the matter. If the Gospel is to be enclosed into the personal domain, if it does not become fraternal life and action for social transformation, if it becomes something strictly private, then it will cease to sound. If we turn the Gospel into something private, we silence it.
Faith takes root and grows in our consciences and in our hearts, that is true. However, it does not stay there. The message of Jesus necessarily implies that those who adhere to it make it flesh, and they do so by living in community and thru their commitment to justice—a commitment to transform their environment. Privatizing the Christian faith will always be a contradiction, because the Christian faith is, by definition, communal and social.
And why is it that so many people, today, wish to turn faith into a private matter, limited to the personal domain? We could suspect, without wanting to be ill-thought, that a privatized Gospel benefits, above all, those who do not want anything to change, those who are already comfortable with the world as it is, those who do not care about inequality and injustice. Either because inequality and injustice do not affect them, or because they suit them. Those who think that the world should remain exactly as it is, are scared—with good reason—of a Gospel made life, made fraternity, made daily construction of the kingdom and rebuke of the abuses of a few against the rest. To privatize our faith is to deprive it of its transformative and liberating potential. If we do not want the Gospel to be reduced to dead letter, we will have to interpret, over and over again, the soft and captivating music that throbs in its pages. That’s why they were written.
Faith takes root and grows in our consciences and in our hearts, that is true. However, it does not stay there. The message of Jesus necessarily implies that those who adhere to it make it flesh, and they do so by living in community and thru their commitment to justice—a commitment to transform their environment. Privatizing the Christian faith will always be a contradiction, because the Christian faith is, by definition, communal and social.
And why is it that so many people, today, wish to turn faith into a private matter, limited to the personal domain? We could suspect, without wanting to be ill-thought, that a privatized Gospel benefits, above all, those who do not want anything to change, those who are already comfortable with the world as it is, those who do not care about inequality and injustice. Either because inequality and injustice do not affect them, or because they suit them. Those who think that the world should remain exactly as it is, are scared—with good reason—of a Gospel made life, made fraternity, made daily construction of the kingdom and rebuke of the abuses of a few against the rest. To privatize our faith is to deprive it of its transformative and liberating potential. If we do not want the Gospel to be reduced to dead letter, we will have to interpret, over and over again, the soft and captivating music that throbs in its pages. That’s why they were written.
