Stephen
Terry, Director
Winsome Witnesses: The Power of Personal
Testimony
Commentary
for the July 11, 2020 Sabbath School Lesson
"We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that
you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and
with his Son, Jesus Christ." 1 John 1:3, NIV
For my birthday each year, I look forward to my
wife making a Schwartzwalder Kirsch Torte or Black Forest Cherry Cake like the
one seen in the picture. She is an American citizen, naturalized from Germany,
where she learned to make these delights. One of the things remarkable about
these and other German confections is that they use copious amounts of whipped
cream instead of the sugar-and-shortening frostings we are used to in the
United States. This means the desserts are much lighter, both on the palate and
in the stomach. The whipped cream enhances the flavor of the cake instead of
competing with it. An added benefit of the whipped cream is that you can add as
much or as little sugar as you like, and it still tastes wonderful. But with
frostings made from shortening, they require a lot of sugar and flavoring to be
palatable. Few people would relish eating shortening straight from the can. But
my mouth waters even now, far from my next birthday, just thinking about her
wonderful cakes.
So why am I talking about this cake in a commentary
about witnessing? If you have not realized it yet, I have been witnessing to
you. I have shared what I have experienced and learned. That is all witnessing is.
If you now desire to try a piece of this wonderful cake, then my witness has
been successful, and you will no doubt take advantage of the opportunity should
it present itself. But my witness can also fail. Suppose you just had a heavy
meal and the thought of food right now is repugnant, you might have little interest
in my witness about cake. Maybe you hate cake in general and prefer pies
instead. You might even counter my witness about cake with one about pies. I
might be tempted to think my witness was a failure, but even for those who are indifferent
or even openly hostile to cake, there will always remain a question in their
minds regarding what this wonderful cake might really taste like. As a result,
some who had little interest when first approached may yet taste and agree that
the cake is delicious. Without my ever knowing about it, they may become cake
lovers as a result and in turn, they may witness to others about their
experience, who will also witness to others. Eventually, someone on the far
side of the planet, speaking a language that is unknown to me, may end up
sampling a Black Forest Cherry Cake as the result of a chain of witnesses about
the cake traceable back to my witness to someone who seemed disinterested at
the time. Words are incredibly powerful. The simple statement "I like this cake"
has the potential to impact so many lives.
When we approach Christian witnessing, we may be
well-advised to remember what I have just shared. Witnessing is not so much
about knowledge as experience. Of course, we share what we have learned from
our experience, but without the experience, all the knowledge we have may be
simply like a dried-out cake to those who are listening. We see this even in
school. Some teachers presenting rote material from a book are better at
inducing sleep than imparting knowledge. Other teachers, who have experienced things
the books refer to are often alive with enthusiasm for the subject. That
enthusiasm can be contagious. Students in those classes may base their entire
professional career in that field solely because of the excitement the teacher
felt over their experience. For that reason, colleges will often encourage
their professors to do field work. The professors may even be able to mentor
students by including their participation in that field work, providing a
life-long bond of friendship and support. Those students will then have their
future careers enhanced by actual experience as well, continuing the chain of
witness.
If this is how witnessing works, some might ask how
then has the witness of the church become so anemic? In the book of Acts in the
Bible, we read of thousands converted in a single day. As a matter of scale,
this may still be happening globally. But in Acts, a local, informal witness by
Peter produced such results.[i]
In other words, they did not have to pull in figures from churches all over the
world to be able to say thousands were converted in a day. They did it in one
town, in Jerusalem. How was this possible? They simply shared their experience.
Today, many churches believe that winning converts
is all about proving the superiority of one's doctrine over someone else's. To
that end, they provide classes to teach people how to present their doctrine in
a logical and consistent manner, complete with rebuttals to any foreseeable challenges
that might arise. Conversion then becomes about winning the argument and experience
is relegated to doctrinal purgatory, straining against the old, inflexible
wineskins of dogma to be released. Perhaps this is because matters of doctrine
are easily controlled administratively. If someone strays too far from
orthodoxy, doctrine can be used to reel them back in. Or it can be used to cast
them aside. But experience has no real foil. One might be able to say that
someone is lying about their experience, and denominations do that all the time
to one another. One cannot say with evidence-based certainty Ellen White did
not receive visions, that Joseph Smith did not receive his golden tablets, or
that saints by the thousands have not had a personal relationship with Christ.
But this does not stop the demands some make for evidence from Christians for their
faith. This is like demanding from me proof that I like the Black Forest Cherry
Cake. One cannot prove experience; they can only share it. Then it becomes a
matter of personal discretion as to whether one also tastes the cake. Those who
have know what it is like and what others will be missing should they turn
away.
My wife is an excellent example of experience
influencing faith. When we first met, she wanted nothing to do with Mexican
food, but then a Hispanic man helped us with a jump for a dead battery one time
in a parking lot, and she became more open to my own love of Mexican food. With
her willing to try it, we visited a local Mexican restaurant where I knew they
had great food, and she fell in love with Fajitas. Now those are as exciting on
her birthday for her as her Black Forest Cherry Cakes are for me. But it was
not because I lectured her on the history of Mexico and the importance of Mexican
culture. It was an experience that changed her heart on the matter. Even my own
love of Mexican food and culture was the result of the experience I had living
at two different times in my life in El Paso, Texas, across the Rio Grande from
Juarez, Mexico.
If witnessing is not reliant on depth of theological
training and is instead based on experience, this may lead us to a conclusion
as to why the effectiveness of our witnessing is so meager. Perhaps we are trying
to witness without having an experience to witness about. This may explain why
witnessing is often left to the pastor. We may assume they have that experience.
After all, would they be pastoring if they did not? Having been on the other
side of the pulpit and gone through school with many who became pastors, I can
say from conversations I have had that such an assumption may be flawed. Some,
and maybe even many, pastors struggle to maintain that experience. Some I have
known have left the ministry because they felt like hypocrites, preaching each
week about something that they are not experiencing. The congregants may be the
last to know, but pastoral spouses and families know from experience the truth
of this struggle. But I do not share this to vilify pastors. Rather it is important
that we each look to our own relationship with God and not rely on a
relationship by proxy through another we think is closer to God than we are.
So, dear friend, how is your relationship to God?
Does it speak profoundly to your heart such as nothing else does? Is it so
wonderful that you cannot help but share it with others? If not, are you
seeking to find that experience? The first step is to believe that God exists[ii].
We can understand the simplicity of that, when we acknowledge that we would not
try either cake or Mexican food if we did not believe they existed. We respond
to restaurants and cookbook recipes that tell us these things do exist, and by
faith we reach out to discover the reality through experience. It is the same
when seeking an actual experience with God. We see churches and their advertisements.
We have friends who tell us about their experience, but until we reach out in
faith for ourselves to God, we cannot discover the reality of that experience.
It cannot be done by argument, or by reading vicariously about someone else's experience.
If you have considered yourself a Christian for
many years but feel you have no experience to share, I would encourage you to reach
out to God. If you have never claimed to be a Christian but are curious to
learn more, reach out to God. No matter what your life has been to this point,
simply ask God to reveal himself to you. It is not about proving by rational
argument that God exists. All of that is just yelling into the wind. Instead
God may reveal himself to you in the softness of a butterfly wing on your
cheek, the gentle purr of a kitten in your lap that touches your heart, or the
caressing coolness of an unexpected cooling breeze on a hot, summer day. When
we ask him to reveal himself, we are really asking for our eyes to be opened to
what has been there all along.
