Leave Your Beliefs at Home!

Often, we are told that our beliefs or religion is personal and should not overlap into our public lives. Is it reasonable and practical to be expected to leave your belief system and core values (worldview) at home, as you venture outside the front door?

Let's first consider a few things. What is it in life that you love? Are family, friends, sport, reading, or work important to you. When you venture out into the public arena and come into contact with others, what do you talk about, after you have discussed the weather of course? You talk about the things that you love and are important to you.

Now lets talk about core values and beliefs. What is right, what is wrong, how others should be treated, what freedoms should be granted, when does a life start, is there a God? When we talk about current world events, what influences our opinions and conclusions? Why do we respond to a story of ladies held captive in a basement for 10 years with horror? It is an injustice that stems from our belief system or worldview. Why is it wrong for a President to fool around with his intern? Because he cheated on his wife and is supposed to be the leader of the free world. This response if thrust from our personal worldview and core values. People with different worldview's can have different reactions. 

To answer the earlier question, I do not know how people do NOT carry their beliefs and worldview into daily life. Those who make the initial claim certainly do, as evidenced by the claim itself. Their insistence on this belief, to leave your beliefs at home in private, it ironic and self-defeating. If they truly believed it, they would not impose it on others in the public square. It is simply non-sense. 

I think what they are trying to do is restrict religious freedom because that is consistent with their worldview. What they really mean is that we should not bring religion into the public square. This is hypocritical at best and bigoted at worst. The influence that their agnosticism or atheism has on their worldview is no different from the influence religion has on my worldview.

What they are in fact saying is that, if you believe in a god other than yourself, you have no right to talk about it in public. Only those who idolise themselves have the right to impose their beliefs in the public square. Next time someone accuses you of this, do not run away and hide. Do not fall victim to their anger or intimidation. Stand up to them, without arrogance and with love, to remind them that their public expression of that belief is in fact hypocritical and their argument is self-defeating. If they are true to their belief, they have no right to impose it on you.