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By Joel Randall, Church News
The Savior Jesus Christ offered an unparalleled example of how Christians can carry their faith, wherever they go, as a part of themselves.
“He treated physical diseases like physicians,” said Ruth L. Okediji in a BYU forum. “He counseled the rejects and the social outcasts, just like counselors do. He multiplied bread and fish to feed the hungry, just like charities and social welfare works. He challenged corruption and hypocrisy, just like good political leaders should.”
His ministry included reaching out in both temporal and spiritual realms, both internally and externally. In the same way, Okediji said, Christians can treasure their faith in both private and public, rather than just worship at home and feel their religion has no place at school or work.
Okediji — a professor of law at Harvard Law School and renowned scholar in international intellectual property law — spoke to BYU students and staff on Tuesday, January 30. She explained how her faith in Christ has driven her intellectual pursuits and defined her academic career, rather than detracting from them.
“I am fully an academic and fully a person of faith, all at once,” She said. “I am never less of one or the other. Nevertheless, our current religious freedom jurisprudence suggests just the opposite.”
Bringing Faith Into the Public Sphere
With great strides made in religious freedom, “the private sphere becomes a shield that allows us the most sacred moments of worship,” said Okediji.
“But it is also the instrument that endangers the rights of the fully integrated person to participate in society, because you can’t take all of you from that private space into the public sphere.”
Religious freedom, she explained, “simply means the political legal right to claim immunity from exercising the power that might prohibit, interfere with or otherwise constrain the exercise of one’s faith.” Some may therefore look to those who practice faith publicly as outcasts, said Okediji, rather than as citizens contributing to the well-being of society.
In reality, Christians have the responsibility of using their faith to benefit the public sphere, such as a work or school environment. Okediji told her student audience, “When you bring your faith with all that you are into chemistry or math, you are impacting the world. You are changing the world. You are making a difference.”
Love of God is the Heart of Human Dignity
When asked what the great commandment in the law was, the Savior responded, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37).
“If we must love Him with everything, then it goes without saying that we will be driven to lives that are increasingly full of God,” said Okediji. For those who love God with their whole being, “there will be no private sphere or public sphere that you are divided between. There will be no difference between who we are at work and at school and what we say or do at home or at church.”
Okediji said Christians can see the inherent human dignity — or a universal worth of each human being — of their brothers and sisters by keeping the first great commandment.
“Just love God,” she said. “This is the heart of human dignity. You are loved, I am loved, and we are to love others.” In fact, she continued, “human welfare demands that we love others.”
Fully Integrated People Carry Their Faith
Humans are “designed to be fully integrated people,” where the whole of who they are can be represented in all spheres of their life, “whether we are at work, whether we’re having fun, whether we’re in school learning, whether we’re worshiping in church.”
Studying and sharing beliefs in a public sphere is like studying the works of Shakespeare, said Okediji. “From the study of Shakespeare, we get better actors performing Shakespeare, we get performances more deeply anchored, we gain in the knowledge of Shakespeare.”
Similarly, “as we study religious truths, biblical truths, we ought to have a place where we too can perform better, where we can look more like Christ, where we can engage reason and debate. And that place is the public sphere.”
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