How to witness
The word our Bibles translate as witness (marturion) is the basis for our word martyr. A martyr is a witness, one who has seen too much to live without telling the truth. Having seen what we’ve seen, we tell the truth about how God redeems people, and structures, outcomes, marriages. We are not consumers of religious concepts first, or critics of culture, but witnesses. You could be forgiven for thinking that the church is more interested in selling a truth than witnessing to it. What’s the difference between selling and witnessing? It’s the difference between telling someone about the way the lights and blue-black of the early morning swirl together in the Rhone Valley, and painting the picture.
Van Gogh painted that scene, which he called Starry Night, from his view in the asylum, Saint-Remy-de-Provence, his ear heavily bandaged. He actually painted variations of it twenty-one times in his life, the scene through the iron bars of his room. That beauty, mediated through his pain, was something he could not see any other way. Van Gogh did not just eat his pain, he did not just consume the idea that beauty perseveres, that there is light still; he painted it. He witnessed it. He made us witnesses of it. Starry Night doesn’t exist exept through that person at that precise moment in time. I’m betting we are a collection of people who, for better or for worse, know some kind of pain. It is tempting to think those truths and stories need to be discarded or buried, that they do not belong in polite conversation, that we can somehow tell the story of Jesus Christ without confessing how crossed-up we are. These stories of ours are not the truth by themselves, but they are part of it. When Jesus makes some to be apostles he builds the church not only on the truth of the Gospel, but the truth of their lives, too, stories into which the truth of Jesus had to filter, through the bars. That’s how our witnessing works, God’s sending us out into the world, full of our own stories, and paintbrushes in hand, palate of personal paints.
So how to we grow in our ability to witness to the light, as John records in his Gospel and Van Gogh records in Saint-Remy? I have some suggestions:
Listen to the lives of others. One unfortunate outcome of our cultural moment is our fascination with paper-thin analysis. It’s OKAY when we’re debating the relative merits of pineapple on pizza (no), or Tears for Fears (yes), but when examining one another’s lives we are tourists who refuse to understand what we’re seeing. We reduce the complexity of one another’s worlds to the point that we need not learn from them. The discipline of listening to the lives of others is an aspect of Biblical wisdom we need to sharpen, especially now. Reading biographies, long-form profiles of people you’ve never heard of, and just re-learning the art of conversation - digging into the lives of people you know. Try to just listen and ask clarifying questions. Avoid the habit of relating the experience of someone else to your own experience. Just listen, or read, and - this helps - give thanks to God for those stories. And thank the person too, whose story you’ve heard, if you’re able. That skill of listening will help you create categories for listening to your own life, too. I was reading an article on the history of loneliness and was struck by the observation of one psychologist that lonely people often cannot understand or recognize the loneliness of others, leading them into spirals of despair. We need to see, in one another, not only a gift of unique beauty and complexity, but also a key to our own healing.
Weave a basket or two. Are you obsessively distracted? Do you fill any silence, any unaccounted-for time with entertainment or consuming news, social media, etc.? A friend reminded me of Neil Postman’s take on social media: “Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.” The effect of this relentless information is that we do less, but, ironically, we also know less. The algorithms that seem to engage our listening hearts are most interested not in teaching us anything, or arousing our empathy, they are interested in monetizing our fear of silence. Monastic literature endorses the activity of basket-weaving, an activity some monks would use to keep their body engaged while they recited the psalms from memory. It was mindless physical activity that anchored them, rather than time-stealing and mind-stealing distraction. One monk used to sell his baskets at market but, finding the village flooded with his wares, began unweaving the baskets he weaved. He knew that while he was not producing anything, listening was the object. Aside from basket weaving, which isn’t really my thing, I’ve found that baking, lawn mowing, listening to music (not as background but as an activity) were opportunities for me to listen to what God is telling me. Most effective of all, for me at least, is a good long drive - but a walk may be more your thing. My wife’s listening activity is gardening. I love watching her garden because I know she’s listening to her life.
Maybe see a counselor. Perhaps this is controversial, but there are gifted people who can help us understand how God intends to heal us and how we can heal others. While I considered myself to be very self-aware, it has been an incredible blessing to have someone apply the Gospel in conversation, help me see what I don’t want to see, grieve what needs to be grieved, own what needs to be owned. But those conversations also offer an opportunity to see myself within the much bigger picture of God’s redeeming love. We’re in our own heads so much that we can rarely see these things clearly. We do not ask ourselves the necessary questions, and we do not often have someone in our lives that can skillfully help us pick the lock to the treasure in our chests. You trust a physician to assess your physical health, an accountant to assess your financial health, why not a counselor to understand your emotional and spiritual health? The outcome of those discussions may help you understand where the light comes in.
After calling his first Apostles in Luke 6, Jesus immediately brings them down into the real world where healing was needed. The foundations of the church, those first suffering stones, were set in the world of suffering people, to witness to the truth, the whole truth.
How are you listening to your life this week?