Being a Witness

by Rebecca Manley Pippert

How can you be the salt of the earth if you have never gotten out of the saltshaker?

Rebecca Manley Pippert

One day on a plane I happened to sit next to a rather intellectual looking professor. We leapt into a stimulating conversation, and I intended to tell him about my faith at the appropriate time. But abruptly, he asked me what I did for a living. I said, "Well, I'm in Christian work." (It's one thing to be a Christian; another thing to do it for a living).

A look of amazement spread across his face.

He was clearly thinking, "Funny - she looked so normal!" Immediately his demeanor changed, and he was clearly trying to find the appropriate words to use for a "Christian type." He asked, with the slightest condescension, "Well, what's the name of your little organization?"

"InterVarsity Christian Fellowship," I replied.

He looked bewildered.

I asked, "Is something wrong?"

He said, "Oh, nothing really. It's just ... well ... you don't look like a Christian athlete."

Thinking at that point that he was joking, I said, "Well, yes, I play basketball for Jesus. It's a living."

Without a hesitation he said, "Oh, I'm sure it must be very rewarding."

It was a great temptation to play along with his feigned religious behavior and say, "Yes, well, it's such a little blessing. You know, we never lose a game." However, with uncommon restraint, I told him, "No, actually that was a joke. We make jokes sometimes. However, you asked if my work is rewarding. I would prefer to say it is terribly intriguing."

And almost in spite of himself he asked, "Intriguing? Well, why is that?"

I answered, "Because I work with students. And we constantly face the question of: 'How do we know anything is true? How do we know that we aren't taking our own little world and labeling it reality? Is there any basis for our faith or is it mere wish fulfillment?'"

He answered, "You may not believe this, but those questions were going through my mind as well. OK. What kind of evidences do you have?"

And so we talked about the evidence for Christian faith.

Then he said, "You know, besides the evidence, I think what impresses me most in this conversation is that you seem to be a person of hope and not despair. Why is that?"

Then I was able to share for the last five minutes of our descent that the reason is Jesus Christ.

How do we get to the point of discussing Jesus Christ with our friends? As communicators, we have been made "agents of reconciliation." The word is reconciliation, not confrontation. We are summoned to be fishers of people, not hunters. When we listen carefully to where they are, when we pique their curiosity, when we discern what their defenses are against Christianity and cite them before they do, when we do these things, we reveal that we care.

My experience with the professor was vastly different from my embarrassment in first sharing the gospel. At that time, I was in Spain as an undergraduate student. I knew God had called me to be a witness, but for the first several months, I allowed the fears and insecurities of sharing Christ - as well as my discomfort with being a witness in a different culture and a different language - to intimidate me.

For example, one day I was reading the Bible for my devotions when a cynical friend entered my room unexpectedly and said, "¿Que estas leyendo?" (What are you reading?) I was sure she would think I was a religious fanatic - not only reading my Bible but on a weekday! So I quickly slipped my Bible under other books and tried to look as cool as possible.

"Oh nothing, really."

"Yes you were, what were you reading?"

"Oh, not much," I answered.

"Becky, what were you reading?" she demanded.

"All right! It's the Bible!" I confessed. And I behaved this way so she would not think I was strange!

I slowly began to realize that we are called to expose our faith, not impose it, nor hide it. As I read the Gospels and saw how beautifully Jesus dealt with people, it began to free me up. It's a long story, but God gave me an antidote for my fears and timidity about sharing my faith. By the time I left Spain, and through the great encouragement of my roommate, Ruth Siemens, God used a Bible study that I was leading to win five people (including avowed atheists and one Marxist) to Christ. Until that time I had not seen one person ever become a Christian. Today I am the godmother of one of the former atheist's children. If you had asked me at the time if any of those five students seemed open to God, I would have laughed out loud. But I could not see their hearts, nor the power of God's Spirit to penetrate their hearts. So remember: All of you are potential "Godparents!"

Compassion: Called to Love
I learned that even more than our words, God uses the way we love others with Christ's love to build his kingdom. Jesus constantly taught that if we are followers of his, our lives will bear the stamp of profound love: to God, to our neighbors and to ourselves. If we are to be effective witnesses, our lives must be dominated by his love, not merely religious activity. Our sociology ought to reflect our theology. How we treat others will be the clearest signal of what we think God is like. The first Bible most people read will be our lives, long before they ever read the book.

And as I travel to campuses, I see students moving away from the "us-and-them" mentality that isolates Christians from the world except for an occasional evangelistic meeting. There is less of the "holy huddle" syndrome; less of the local "God squad" mentality; less manipulation and fewer gimmicks and more genuine involvement with the people we want to win. There is more real sharing of our lives - the strengths and the warts - than mere preaching and leaving.

John Stott says we must not be "rabbit-hole Christians." The rabbit-hole Christian is the one who leaves his Christian roommate, runs to class, and looks around the whole room to find a Christian to sit next to - which is a rather odd way of approaching a mission field. He or she then goes to the cafeteria for lunch and sits with all the other Christians. "Praise God," these Christians say, "all sixty of us here eating together. What a witness to all those people out there eating alone!" And then the rabbit-hole Christian goes to a prayer meeting and prays for all the unsaved on his floor.

To me that is the most insidious reversal of what it means to be salt and light. How can you be the salt of the earth if you have never gotten out of the saltshaker? We are called to love with the love of Christ. I think we all really know that. So why do we still struggle? First, we are too complacent. My pastor, Edward Bauman, tells the story of three devils. They were discussing what strategy to use to keep Christians from being effective. One of them said, "I know! Let's tell them that there is no hell - no punishment. Then they won't feel any fear." The other said, "No, I've got it! Let's tell them that there is no heaven, no prospect of reward." But the third devil said, "Wait, I know! Let's just tell them that there is no hurry. It's all true, but there's no need to rush, no urgency. They have plenty of time."

But there is a pressing urgency. The kingdom of God is at hand.

Gabriel Fackre says that to be an effective witness, you must get the story straight and get the story out. So, second, we must get the story straight. That means that you must understand what you believe; you must know what you speak of and not simply recite Bible verses. Be involved during the school year in Bible studies. Use your summers to deepen your knowledge of the faith by attending InterVarsity conferences or institutes like New College in Berkeley or C.S. Lewis Institute in Washington, D.C. Go where you can deepen your understanding so you have got the story straight.

Third, we must also get the story out. We need to work on building our communication skills. Analyze your style of communicating, find your areas of strength and work on your areas of weakness. For example, are you timid and shy? Do you feel intimidated because you never can think of how to begin a conversation, much less how to get the conversation around to God? Do you frequently miss detecting people's needs? Ask God to make you more perceptive and sensitive.

But remember that the key to communication is the ability to love as Christ loved. Jesus put a child in the midst of the disciples and said, "Whoever receives one such as this receives me." That is powerful. It means any person we touch, Jesus is touching too. It also means that when I touch a person, I am touching something of Jesus himself, no matter how distressing the disguise. How are you treating Jesus as you see him everyday?

C. S. Lewis understood this well. In "The Weight of Glory," he said:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal...It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours...Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

A witness has compassion.

Cost: Called to Do Justice
A witness also must know the cost of the faith. One year and one day ago, I sat in a courtroom and heard a judge sentence to prison someone who means a great deal to me. This person remains behind bars even now. It was a shattering experience for me. Very few incidents in my life have reminded me so grimly of the reality of evil and the inevitable consequences of sin. But I discovered something else. Suddenly verses about caring for the prisoner - verses which had always seemed so distant and remote - now seemed pointed at me. And I marveled anew at the depth of Jesus' identification with the poor and the oppressed. The Son of God, the Prince of Peace was also a convict.

It was a personal crisis that sensitized me to Jesus' words that we are to be concerned about prisoners as well, of course, as to other persons in need. I told God I wanted to do something to follow his words. One week after the sentencing, I received an unexpected call from Charles Colson's Prison Ministries asking me if I would consider teaching inside the prisons, as well as speak to a seminar for eleven women convicts who had recently been converted to Christ. That seminar experience became one of the highlights of my teaching ministry this year.

When I arrived I was scared. But they put me at ease by their warmth and humor and by their understanding of my own wounds, still fresh from my friend's court sentencing. I received far more from them than I gave. They demonstrated the miracle of people who had come from great darkness into Jesus' glorious light. They are praying for me now from their cells. This is a small example of how each of us must respond in individual ways to Jesus' mandate to visit the prisoner, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

But this, in a way is easy because it is one-dimensional. Those women still must return to the wretched living conditions in prison which too often does more to improve criminal skills than to reform criminals. And when they get out, will they be able to find jobs? How will they handle a society that is suspicious of them? What about the strained personal relationships to which they return? In other words, it is not enough that we love the prisoners simply by befriending and witnessing to them.

We are equally duty-bound by Scripture to attack the problem of crime and punishment at the structural level. Institutions as well as individuals are sinful. And God calls us to redeem the structures of our society as well as the persons in it. There are so many issues we must confront with biblical light: nuclear arms, poverty, racism, sexism, terrorism. I can't tell you where to start, only that you must - both at the individual and societal levels.

We live in a country where our poodles eat better than many people on this earth; where the evident goal of our culture, and sadly of many believers, is to obtain the comfortable life and self-fulfillment. I sat in my family's church on Christmas eve, the First Presbyterian in Champaign, Illinois, and the words that the pastor, Rev. Malcolm Nygren, read leaped out at me: "I, the Lord, love justice."

We must love in intimate ways those persons God puts close to us. But others, whom we may never meet, God also calls us to love through the pursuit of justice, mercy and fairness.

You may ask, but what does God's call to justice have to do with evangelism? Make no mistake, the way you seek mercy and justice for others authenticates the message that you speak. If your witness to God reflects nothing of God's concern for the oppressed and needy and suffering people of this world, there will be little authenticity to your testimony. Jesus tells us that we do not need to worry about what we wear and eat, because God cares for us and will provide. How do you reconcile that with the grotesque pictures of starving children with bloated bellies and two tiny pegs for legs? Was Jesus wrong? Or is it that God only provides for the converted? That is, if the children were not Hindu or Buddhist they wouldn't be starving? No. We are God's agents in caring for a hurting world. We are his agents of mercy and healing.

Could it be that we must share part of the guilt for the world's misery because instead of giving from our abundance, we have thought mostly of our own needs and luxuries? I wonder if among all the people attending Urbana there are even five persons who have been truly anxious over the necessities of life. In my entire life, I have never been anxious over anything that was not a luxury. Do you realize what percentage of the world population that puts me in, and the awesome responsibility? Scripture is persistent on its emphasis of special concern for the poor, the lonely, the oppressed. Make no mistake - we cannot separate the call to justice from true discipleship.

"Ah, but I'm in college now. I need to study and worry about these world concerns later," you say. Yes. You are at the university to study. But how you approach these years will largely determine the shape of your future life. The Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life, "a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

What makes the call of simple justice hard to hear is that it requires us to look at our own culture, to give and serve the poor instead of living fully out of our glut. And that is difficult because our culture is the very lens through which we see the world. We do not see our culture's excesses because we see with our culture. However, if we are not discipling ourselves to be honest about the strengths and flaws of our culture as we try to wean biblical faith from Americanism, we will make colossal mistakes on the mission field. It is painful to hear the stories of North American missionaries living on a far grander scale than those to whom they minister.

Consider these two Christian conferences where I spoke in order to get some understanding of our own culture. One was in South America, the other in North America. In Bogota, Colombia, a group of Christian student leaders (whom we would call the "exec") decided to create their own summer conference. Their summer consisted of going to the poorest of the poor in Colombia where they lived in a small pueblo with intolerable heat. They taught skills, talked about salvation, and simply loved the people by enjoying them. I saw them the first night they returned, glowing from their service. They gave not merely out of their abundance; they gave until it hurt, but they felt only joy.

Contrast that with the conference for young people I spoke to in North America. I was told that night that when the announcer said, "Here's Becky!" I was to walk through a revolving door under an arch of flashing lights. I was to be followed by a lion who was to come through the revolving door with flashing lights and roar on cue. It and I were followed by a Christian rock band and a born-again, stand-up comedian. It was like Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." When I asked why they had all of this raucous entertainment the answer was, "It really catches their attention." I couldn't decide which was more depressing: that they felt they needed flashing lights, lions, stand-up comedians and rock bands to get students interested in Christ, or that they felt I would be the ideal speaker for such an occasion.

Christians used to be fed to lions because we were so radical that the world wanted to silence us. Now we bring lions on to entertain us! I was told that some - not all - of the entertainers demanded exorbitant fees and a specified number of bottles of Perrier in their dressing rooms. One young singer sat at dinner with earphones on. She removed them only for grace. She seemed to be saying, "The only one that has access to me is this object - not people."

As I sat there I.wondered what my Colombian brothers and sisters would think if they saw the hundreds of dollars the American students spent on records and tapes and little puppets that were selling for $2.50 saying, "Smile, Jesus loves you." I am afraid they would think the Marxists were right, that American Christianity all too often is just materialism with a little God sprinkled in. There is no cost, no sacrifice, no sensitivity to the massive needs of the poor, but we sure know how to have fun. It is not that we are to be ungrateful for what God has given us.

It is not that we must insist on drabness. This is God's world, and we celebrate and enjoy his beauty and his gifts. But that celebration must be tempered by a sensitivity to the poor, those who are starving to death, the crying needs of the city streets. I have been mugged at gunpoint and had my home burglarized twice this year. The perpetrators are, at least partly, products of our age.

So what can you do? Begin by desiring to be a good steward of your resources. Take seriously Jesus' words on money. You do not have to dress without style or taste. But make it a game. Try to beat the system. Find great sales, and what you save you can give in constructive ways to the poor. Remember that your money is a gift from God to be used for his purposes. Think about how you will use your career and salary and professional position to be a servant of Jesus Christ, not a consumer American.

There is no other area where I tremble more before God in my life than this one. If your life does not reflect the justice of God's call, if it does not reflect service, your evangelism will be void of power and authority. A witness is one who knows the cost of the faith.

Character: Called to Holiness
Lastly, we are called to holiness. Jesus tells the disciples in the Sermon on the Mount "do not be like them." He tells us we are to be different from the world. I have a beautiful friend who, in the midst of personal crisis, posed for Playboy magazine. Sometime later she made a commitment of faith to Christ. Recently Playboy asked her to do another series and offered her enough money to have bought three or four Rolls Royces. She asked me with great sincerity, "Can I pose for Playboy now that I'm a Christian?" I do not condemn her. She was genuinely trying to understand what it means to be a Christian. I grieve instead for us - the body of Christ - that our model of godliness has been so shabby and weak that she would have to ask that question. Why shouldn't she ask it, when there are people who claim to be born again and continue to "live it up" (for example, the star who claims to be born again and demonstrates her witness by singing in someone's arms, "with you I'm born again"). Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson says, "Evangelicals seem to have been more influenced by the world than they have influenced the world."

We need desperately to re-examine what it means to be a holy people. Too often we have settled for a narrow understanding of holiness. It used to be that "I don't smoke, drink, dance or chew, or go with girls who do" characterized our understanding of holiness. Today we pat ourselves on the back, feeling smug because we are not as legalistic as our parents used to be. Yet in our attempt to identify with the world (which we must do), have we ignored the call to be different? To identify is not to be identical. We are to walk alongside our neighbor empathetically, but without compromising our difference. So what is holiness?

To understand holiness, we must look at the cross and the resurrection. Therefore, the first essential is we are called to die. Paul says in Romans 6 that when Jesus died, you died too. He means by this that everything that has ever kept God at a distance from you - all the junk, the brokenness - must no longer control you. To be a Christian, we need to look at the cross. To be a witness is to be holy, and if Jesus is our model, then the first thing we must be willing to do is to die. John 12:24 says, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (RSV).

The way to experience the power of our risen life with Christ, the way to be an effective witness, is to die to sin. You are to die to that which is destructive and keeps God at a distance. It would be a lot simpler if I said, "When you see things in your life that shouldn't be there, try to tiptoe around them or ignore them." But the Bible says we must die. It's an absolute in an age that loves angles. We have angles for everything: how to catch a lover, how to have fresh breath, how to witness. But God says our only angle is our bankruptcy, when we finally admit that we are broken, that we cannot control our lives.

We live in a narcissistic "me" decade. With its emphasis on my rights, my desires, my needs, our culture says that to be strong is to be in control. The Bible says that our strength comes from the realization of our brokenness. When we finally admit that for all the manipulating we attempt, when it comes down to it, we cannot control the things that matter most to us - life, health, our spouses or friends, our children's destiny. Even our money is subject to the vicissitudes of the president's economic policies. God is pleased to receive our resignation as self-appointed managers of the universe. Sometimes we must be wounded before we learn relinquishment. We cannot die unless we are willing to be honest about our sin. We have become too nice to believe in sin.

Bishop Fulton Sheen addressed the National Prayer Breakfast shortly before he died. "Good morning, fellow sinners," he told this politically and spiritually elite audience. They squirmed. He said, "I'm a Catholic. For years our Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception set us apart. I never thought I would live to see it, but that doctrine now seems to be universally embraced, for today everyone appears to believe that they were immaculately conceived." One of the difficulties in being willing to die is that there are so few Christians who are honest about their sinfulness.

I know an elderly Christian woman. She is a saintly inspiration to me in the genuineness of her faith. But she is not a helpful model in other ways, for she feels it is unspiritual to admit she struggles. Consequently, she seems very naive about the lurking presence of evil. She once told me, "Well, I'll be honest and tell you what I really need to confess. I don't write enough letters." Is that why Jesus died? He should have saved his blood if that is all that was wrong!

I heard a television evangelist not long ago say, "People ask me if I ever struggle with sin. I said, 'Maybe I do, but you'll never hear about it. I just go to God.' Others say, 'But don't you ever struggle with being godly, or loving your wife, or being a good father?' I answered, 'Maybe I do, and maybe I don't, but you'll never hear about it. I just go to God.' " Then he read a poem entitled "Be a Man." It went something like this: "Feel tired or discouraged? Don't let it get you down - be a man! Feel like throwing in the towel? Feel tired of struggling? Be a man!" I counted the refrain "be a man" twenty times. Now I have a little trouble identifying with a poem that is called "Be a Man." But more importantly, why did this man exhibit such resistance to even admitting that he struggles? I can understand his not wanting to bare himself in front of millions of viewers, but does he bring glory to Christ by refusing to say that he is even tempted?

Paul claimed boldly, "I am the chief of sinners." When Paul told of his struggle with his "thorn in the flesh," I do not recall Jesus' answer being, "For heaven's sake, Paul, would you buck up and be a man!" No. Our Lord's answer was, "Paul, I won't take away this trial of yours because I am glorified in your weakness. " I fear our TV evangelist has done what we often do. He has taken a popular image from our culture and spiritualized it. It's the myth of the Lone Ranger. All I need is God and my horse. I don't need anybody else. If I make mistakes, I'll just tell my horse and ride off into the sunset.

Beware of the cults within Christianity, including the cowboy cult. A holy person must know how to die. So do not be naive about the evil around you. Be honest about what tempts you. Know what things by God's grace you must put to death. See clearly what motivates you. Augustine claimed that what caused most sins were pride (self-aggrandizement) and sensuality (self-indulgence). Luther felt that the cause of most sins was unbelief. Many modern theologians believe sin is manifested by anxiety, insecurity and alienation. Know yourself well enough so that you confess the root problem, not just the symptom. I wish I could tell you that you will find lots of Christian models who will encourage you in this. But you may not.

Whether you find positive models or not, Christians have no excuse for naivety about evil. Heaven will not be filled with innocence! The Christian in heaven will say, "By God's grace and my sweat, I am home at last!" Never be ashamed of struggling with sin. To struggle may mean you are alive to God! You have seen what God desires and how far you are from being the person he wants, and you are willing to enter the fight, to allow God to change you and make you into his own likeness.

You will have to be gritty. You must learn what to say no to. If you sin now, you may hurt only yourself or another. But part of the complexity of growing older is that your life becomes intimately interwoven with several others. If you aren't willing to say no now, when future temptations come (and I assure you they will), your inability to say no will hurt not only you, but those whom you love the most.

We have to be tough-minded. That is difficult because we are pampered. We know very little of the cost of our faith. While a vast number of believers around the world have had to sacrifice their families and jobs and food, we respond like martyrs if God calls us to live with any unfulfilled desires at all. While others live in gratitude that they can read a Bible without going to prison, we complain that as singles we are required to be sexually celibate. Most of you wonder if you will marry. The vast majority of you will. But that is not the real issue. To spend so much time anticipating marriage is needless. If God wants you to be married, he will take care of it. He has done it for centuries. The real issue is: once married, what kind of a spouse will you be? Will you be faithful? Will you be a servant? Will you live in harmony? Raise godly children?

Your answers will be determined by the character you are building now, whether you are mastering godly patterns for living. If you think this has little to do with evangelism, you are mistaken. Wes and I have heard of a distressing number of divorces among evangelicals and often the same statement is made by the spouses: "It's a shame, but God forgives." It is certainly true that God forgives. But why don't we also hear that God cares about promises? Whatever became of duty? What kind of witness to the power of God to reconcile and heal is the evangelical divorce rate?

We are to be a holy people. That includes being willing to admit we have sinned. That is the negative. But there is also a positive side to being holy. The positive is seen in the resurrection. We find in Romans 6 that when Jesus rose, we rose too. The moment has come that we can be new people. The old has passed away. We can forsake the old and identify with the new. We can say, "My past has been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ and I have become new. The resurrection becomes my mindset. It shapes everything that I am and that I do." If we want to be holy, we must know how to die and how to live. We must die to sin so we can live to Christ.

Satan will do anything in his power to convince you that you are not new. For example, suppose you are shy and you go to a party. Someone starts talking to you, but you cannot think of anything to say back. There are some long silences. What is your thought during those silences? Do you think, "I am such a turkey. I can never think of anything to say. This is so embarrassing. I don't know why I come to these gatherings"? Or do you think, "My shyness is showing again, that's true. But isn't it thoughtful of the hostess to invite royalty to a party (because I am a child of the King)."

Or suppose there is someone that you want to witness to, but you are afraid. One day she corners you and says, "Boy, am I glad to see you. I've been meaning to ask you a question about your faith for a long time." So the question is asked and you can't answer it. What do you think? Do you think, "I knew it! I should have run when I saw her coming. Why do I get myself into these things?" Or do you think, "Isn't this exciting! I don't know the answer to this question. God says that he is glorified in weakness, and look how much he has to work with"?

Or let's say you leave Urbana, and during the first week on campus, you blow it - you sin. Is your thought, "There, you see, you want to know what I'm really like, look at what I just did. That's me - one step forward, ten steps back"? Or do you think, "Isn't it amazing that I did that! Isn't it amazing that I would do something so contrary to my new nature"?

There is a world of difference displayed in these various responses. One reflects the kingdom; the other reflects the world. You are called to be a witness. And you will be a witness when you have compassion; you will be a witness when you realize the cost that reflects the justice of the gospel; you will be a witness when your character is so shaped by God that you know how to live and you know how to die. And what has appealed forever to the world, but is ours alone, is joy. "Joy," G. K. Chesterton says, "which was the small publicity of the pagan is the gigantic secret of the Christian."

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Being a Witness

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December 27-31, 2009