This is a problem that I used to have in the very beginning of my career, when I was still doing my undergraduate degree and working summer jobs and internships with software development companies. I was just in my early 20s, and was having to deal with being a Christian in the university and in the workplace. It’s very difficult to do it when you are young – everyone thinks that they know more than you do just because they are older – whether they have studied the issues or not. Not only that, but you have deal with the pre-conceptions that people have about Christianity from watching anti-Christian movies and televangelists, etc.

What a mess. So what is the way forward?

The way forward is for you to take Christianity OUT of the realm of private faith, Sunday singing, emotions and feelings, personal testimony, miraculous healings, apparations (if you’re Catholic), end times, Bible prophecies, and other stuff that scares non-Christians. And then you put Christianity INTO the realm of science, history, analytical philosophy, social science, economics, politics, law, and other public, testable, areas of knowledge.

After you’ve studied Chrsitianity and how it relates to public, testable areas of knowledge, it is easy to communicate your knowledge of things like the galactic habitability constraints, amino acid sequence specificity probabilities, minimal facts criteria for the historicity of the empty tomb, the grounding objection to middle knowledge, and the Laffer curve to other people. You are an expert at dumping the burden of proof on your opponent, every attempt by your opponent to make self-refuting statements is met with a whistle blow and a yellow card, and you wield Occam’s Razor like a samurai warrior.

Great! It all works great on people who will give you an hour at lunch to listen to your case. But what about the people who have heard through the grapevine that you are a Christian, identify you with Joel Osteen, and are snickering at you behind your back every time you walk by?

Decorating your cube at work

The solution is to decorate your cube at work.

Here is what you will need:

1. a peer-reviewed paper on from a scientific journal (like this one, free version here)
2. a peer-reviewed paper on from a social science journal (like this one)
3. a news article on some foreign policy issue (like this one)
4. a publication from a think tank on economic or social policy (like this one)
5. a textbook on economics (like this one)
6. a schedule of events from an apologetics event (like this one)
7. a DVD of a William Lane Craig debate at a big university (like this one)
8. a debate book from a big academic press (like this one)

Just print these out and read them, and then put them on your desk. That should get you some attention and end the snickering.