Witness (v.): To tell the Gospel message to others in a manner that might convince them to believe.
The headline of the Ask Amy column in Sunday’s Tribune is titled “Offended by religious book from old friend,” and before I even read it, I know it is about an evangelical. We are notorious for this sort of thing—the hard sell, the cold-call, an unwanted book arriving one day in the mail.
The story goes like this: close friends drift apart when faith paths diverge. One marries a “nice Jewish boy,” the other an evangelical. The first becomes devoted to social justice, the other to missions.
After two or three tries at expressing concern over her friends’ life choices, the missionary girl gave up on the talking and sent a book—an introduction to the evangelical faith along with a note advising some quick, book-prompted action.
Is it any wonder that this woman is outraged, writing into an advice column not really so much for advice as to be heard, as to have the world see this and recognize the pain of it, the wrongness of it?
Amy is level-headed about this, resisting the urge (whether she feels it or not) to attack. Instead, she suggests kindness, tolerance. She reminds the writer that her friend is, after all, a missionary, and that this is a core value for her.
But I am filled with sadness for this missionary woman, who would be shocked to hear her gifted book described in the headline as “religious.” She believes she is giving her friend something else. New life. A relationship with the Lord.
Somewhere down the line, she was told that this is witness. This is standing up for Jesus. To pray over a book and stick it in the mail—this is the noble work of God.
In the Christian bookstore, you can buy a God’s Team pen on a rope, a Life is Better with Jesus Rubik’s cube. When playing Rock Band with your friends, you can hand them Stick with Jesus drumsticks. You can give a new acquaintance a business card from a Scripture-emblazoned case before pulling out your Shield of Faith key ring.
You can wear a Christian t-shirt inked with the image of a cross and the words, Forgiveness & Redemption: This Offer Expires When You Do. Or, if it’s more your style, one with a deer peering out from the center that asks, Are you hunting for the Truth?
Can you hear it? The tinny sound of self-righteousness, the undertones of unkindness? It is not saying You are loved, but rather, I am in, and you are out. It is not saying, You are wanted, it is saying, You are wrong.
To the missionary woman, I would say this: I know what you’re trying to do, but this is not bravery. It is not even really honesty. It is a sound-byte, a half-truth, an easy out.
I would say to her that truth requires the whole messy story. Bravery requires that we give more than a message. It asks of us our own fragile hearts: our weakness and doubt and frail, thread-thin faith.
To witness something, after all, is to be present to it. Our own life. That startling rush of grace. An old friend’s quiet pain, a thousand miles away.
“To witness something, after all, is to be present to it. Our own life. That startling rush of grace. An old friend’s quiet pain, a thousand miles away.” <– Yes. This. Exactly. Exactly. There’s a 14-year-old version of me lingering in memory, the girl agonizing over her salvation because she wasn’t bold enough to share the tracts with random cashiers at a convenience store. Because she was too afraid to offend someone, because she had learned that the only reason for shame was a faith that was too weak, that offense became okay when it was for Jesus.
I work with the same kind of 14-year-olds today, and they’re still trying to muck through this idea: that their discomfort with sticking the gospel on a flyer (or a t-shirt or a clever poster) is perhaps not caused by their lack of faith but by a deeper grasp of it. I wish they could see that it’s their wrestling with these hard things–not their certainty or “nobleness”–that gives me hope.
“she had learned that the only reason for shame was a faith that was too weak” – I felt this same way when we did those things. Yikes.
I have started using the word “sharing” in conjunction with the Gospel. I think that captures the sense of witnessing that works best with the story of Jesus.
Sharing is better; it still sounds a little one-sided to my ear. “I’m going to SHARE with you what I have and you don’t.” It puts me in the power position and you in the acceptance position. I’d rather just talk. I’d rather have it as just an organic part of a conversation. I know that’s sort of a perfect-world kind of scenario, but still…that’s what feels more honest to me.
I love reading all the insightful comments that are born here!
It’s hard to compress what this means (and what it should look like) into a single term. “Sharing” is a word that feels more real to me than “witnessing,” and yet–I have friends involved in a ministry where even “sharing” has a very specific definition. When you see “sharing” on the daily schedule, you know that it means pulling people in with a spiritual survey or reading through a pamphlet together. (It reminds me a little of the term “moral failure.” A moral failure could involve pride or cruelty or lying, a million other things, but we only use it to describe one specific issue. Why did “sex” become a dirtier word than “pride”?)
One of my friends likes the idea of Christianity, except that it seems to him like a closed circuit, like certain ideas just can’t be reconciled with reality. He once brought up that he likes hymns because they’re not trying so hard to move away from the pain of life but are still redemptive. Another friend, a Christian, spent an hour with him, just geeking out about music theory. To me, that is sharing. Sharing life, sharing thoughts, being friends, finding truth in the intricacies of a minor key.
Okay, nothing I’m adding here is that original, and I don’t mean to polarize these approaches into “completely wrong” and “completely right.” (They’re only two examples, after all.) I guess what I’m fumbling to say is that the process of sharing (or witnessing, or evangelizing, or whatever we want to call it) is just as messy and unsystematic as finding one word to describe it.
Ah, witnessing. I’ve been witnessed to, and afterwards always felt more angry, belittled, and frustrated than moved to find out more about Jesus. I feel the problem with ‘witnessing’ to random people is the apparent disregard for the other person. How do you know if I need (or want) to be told about your brand of Jesus? If the witness-er doesn’t care enough about me to learn where I’m at in my relationship with God before lecturing me, then I want no part of what they are selling. Oh, and the self-righteously intoned “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” doesn’t count as learning about me.
Whew! I guess I’m still angry about that one…
Agreed. That disregard piece is such a sad, prevalent thing. That feeling of being just another “potential buyer.” It makes me angry too.
When I was in grad school, I was approached multiple times by Campus Crusade girls trying to convert me–maybe I looked especially open and approachable (or especially lost, who knows?). When I said I already was a Christian, we both knew I had to prove this fact to them before they would go away. I was the project-of-the-moment. My favorite moment was when I was given a certificate of appreciation from my InterVarisity chapter at an end-of-the-year gathering. Walking back home, I was stopped by some street evangelists who started witnessing to me. I told them I was a Christian and informed them I was certified and everything, flashing the document in their faces. End of conversation!
Hahahaha! I can just see that…
This is AMAZING. And it’s true…you do feel like you sort of have to “prove it” before you can get them to leave.
New business idea: miniature Jesus certifications that people can whip out when confronted with a roving evangelist. We could make a fortune.
Thanks for this — particularly pointing out what this brand of “witnessing” says — it’s a message of exclusion. And people say that witnessing on the street corner (i.e. passing out tracts) is way out of their comfort zone, but in truth, nothing could be easier. The hard work, the real, life-changing work, comes in sharing your life with another person. And without an agenda, but just to love them, and to be open to learning from them, too.
Yes, “learning from them, too.” We do not have a corner on wisdom or insight!
When I was in high school, I went to Mexico on a mission trip with my youth group. While there, we performed numerous musical street dramas to the Spanish version of Carman’s “The Champion” (please see: “Bad 80s Christian ‘rock’ ”). We would walk into the most public place we could find, all dressed up in our homemade angel or demon costumes, clear an area, blare a genuine boom box, and do our singing, dancing Jesus thang.
Now, I have been caught in my fair share of embarrassing situations (see: “best friend reads my diary out loud to neighborhood boys” or “entire extended family witnesses drunk under-age me via incriminating video…then plays it again and again”—and no, those two instances are not related). But those performances take the cake. Even my 14-year-old, boy-addled brain could tell what we were doing was offensive, ignorant. But we were told it was “okay” because it was in Spanish. Um? That’s like the equivalent of telling impressionable children that the foreign-looking man down the street who’s pushing drugs is okay because he’s miming about it to an English song.
The entire experience was so wrong on so many levels.
You’re the funniest.
And I am afraid that I myself have not only participated in but also CHOREOGRAPHED one of said street dramas. Oh yes. I feel your pain.
I’ve been thinking and writing lately about the problem with Christian jargon, and it really does come down to this: “It is not saying You are loved, but rather, I am in, and you are out. It is not saying, You are wanted, it is saying, You are wrong.”
As I wrote in my most recent post, sometimes these easy cliches and conversational structures are intentionally used to divide and create an “us-them” scenario; more often, though, we’re just too lazy or rushed to do the hard work of saying what we really mean, and to tell the personal stories behind our words.
Yes, I would agree that most Christians aren’t trying to intentionally communicate this. They are trying to communicate something that’s very important to them. But the words and methods that we’ve grown accustomed to using for this kind of thing have that inherent exclusion in their very DNA. There has to be a better way.
Sometimes I think we can’t afford to talk at all. It’s a cliche now: “before you talk to people about God, talk to God about people.” Change the “before” to “instead” and we might be on to something. If soul-saving is the objective of the witness then she/he is a failure out of the blocks. Only God saves. Let’s just ask Him to, and then enjoy the people in our lives freely…no proofs, arguments, stand-up-fors, just life with.
Love this, Neal.
Too many Christians don’t witness -thanks …
I came to your blog from Jon Acuff’s site. He has created a tremendous forum for sharing our blogs and impacting more people with them.
I hope my blog can be an encouragement to you also.
I write it for encouragement and motivation daily.
http://i-never-fail.blogspot.com
Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to watching the connections grow!
Am I hearing your definition of “witness” right, Craig? Of course every Christian is a witness to something. All, therefore, Christians “witness.” So you must mean “present the words of the gospel to people.” I would put it this way, using some of your words and some of mine: most Christians have never been invited into a lifestyle that engages the invisible parts of them with the invisible parts of others that links them with the invisible God. And if I understand you correctly, you are right, there are many 80 year old pew sitting, hymn singing, nursery serving, amen mumbling, $5 in the plate giving folk who’ve never experienced this bearing of witness to our only eternal hope, and it is tragic to have missed it. Yet we call them faithful.
This very issue is why I am still breathing. All of it. The Christian caught between feeling constantly guilty and thoroughly inadequate. Since we’ve all been told we’re to be witnesses, this is our lot in life I guess.
NO!
Then there is the incredibly interesting, valuable, mysterious…or beautifully “regular”…person in my life who believes a lot of things. I live to discover their beliefs because it is our beliefs that define us!
I love people, especially those most different from me! Because of that I live for them. Because of that my heart is broken for myself, grateful for a grace I know less of now, having come to know more of it. And I long for all to be drowned in it!
So I pray and watch.
For all our bloggers I have a challenge to make…
Never offer a verbal “witness” for the next two years. Never. Refuse to. On one condition. That you pray God to draw every person you meet, by name, and constantly, to Himself for salvation, and that they would also, having come to believe, be a lover of people enough to keep the life of prayer going.
And then watch.
Watch, because there will be divine interruptions constantly. Constantly. Stuff we’ve just never noticed. Now you will!
And then, people (and Addie cares about this as we all do) will find Jesus! It will be miraculous on every level.
I apologize if this feels self-serving, but it is why I breathe. I offer a resource. And it is, in the end, kingdom-serving: I live to engage every lover of Jesus with people: go to http://www.simplelivinginc.net and get our book: “Pray&Watch.”
This is an incredible book, by the way. I just started going through it with my husband a little while ago and would highly recommend it.
I think the essence of the ethical teachings of Christ (regardless of the theology that caused them) is to treat people the way you wish to be treated. I always felt there was a certain “notching the bedpost” aspect to agressive witnessers, that I wasn’t so much a person to them as a spiritual conquest. No one wants to be treated like that.
Absolutely. That’s a great insight.
I’m a horrible Christian.
I refuse to “witness”. I refuse to hand out tracts. I refuse to “go door to door”. I refuse to participate in visitation programs.
As a matter of fact, as soon as the word “program” gets attached to some method of sucking people into church, I’m gonna refuse it.
F.A.I.T.H. burned me. F.A.I.T.H. actually triggered part of the process that resulted in my near-loss-of-faith.
I refuse. I guess I’m not an evangelical any more. Even though I believe we are to make and baptise disciples.
Haven’t got it all figured out yet. But my stubborn arguments against tithing and witnessing pretty much mean I’m really not one of those…
I know what you mean. You’d really like Neal’s book, Pray and Watch. Seriously. Here’s the link: http://www.nsresources.com/browse.cfm/4,4048.html
Pingback: Witness-Wear |