BY DUANE COVRIG
OD SAYS, "YE ARE MY WITNESSES, . . . my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he" (Isa. 43:10, ASV). Why does God need witnesses? What kind of witness does He need? Who makes a good witness or a bad witness?
Isaiah 43 has become a deep challenge to my understanding of what it means to witness for God. For years I held a distorted view that evangelism was all about promoting Adventist doctrines, living and preaching the health message, giving out literature, debating theological issues, and calling people to repentance and baptism. In many ways it includes all these items, but only as they arise out of a deep and loving relationship with God.
Witnessing grows out of knowing (with the mind and heart), believing (with deep conviction, not faith forced upon us by others), and understanding God (a deep penetrating wisdom that properly interprets our experience). As such, our witness is about our relationship with God. So what is your witness saying about your relationship with God?
I Tried Too Hard
My witness has often been about a demanding God. He wanted more from me and more from others. It is not that I didn't try to witness. I tried too hard. I forced a witness that wasn't authentic. I wanted to become the witness my church and Bible told me I should be.
Forced witnesses are the worst kind. I did Bible studies with high school friends, sold literature in college, taught Sabbath school classes, did five-day stop-smoking programs, preached, prayed with people, stood up for my diet and my Sabbath, did Ingathering, went door to door. I did some frontline witnessing stuff.
Bravo! But it wasn't a true witness that pleased God. Ouch!
Luckily, God in His kindness used those experiences to help me grow, and others were somehow blessed, I hope. But "when I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things" (1 Cor. 13:11, ASV). The love chapter invites us to a more authentic witness, one built on love for God and others.
The true witness is to know, believe, and understand God in a better way. What a privilege! We are called to benefit from His love and tell others of that love, by setting forth God's praises (Isa. 43:21). At times my old witness was more like that of the "elder brother" serving his father. I stayed home, worked hard, counted evangelistic contacts, got sour, and really felt the "heat of the day."
Jesus told us to watch out for such false witness and evangelism. He said people would try to act good but be ungrateful ravenous wolves-miserable, tumultuous, and cruel. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves" (Matt. 23:15, ASV). Should we commend these scribes and Pharisees for working hard at converting people? Christ didn't. They converted people to a false god.
I've hung around such Pharisees and scribes. I've tasted their witness. I've even acted like them. These Pharisees were faithful, rigorously faithful, but excruciatingly unloving. No wonder they produced even more rigorous "sons and daughters of hell."
Remember, the Pharisees' ultimate evangelistic campaign was to kill Christ and His disciples. Saul of Tarsus was one of their best evangelists before Damascus. The point is that evangelism and witnessing are not inherently or automatically good. Only as these grow out of knowing, believing, and understanding the One who is altogether lovely does witnessing and evangelism set forth His praises (Isa. 43:21).
Tight-fisted evangelism was a natural outcome of a Pharisaical knowledge, belief, and understanding of God. The result was evil and life-shriveling. Our witness should be different. "Thanks be unto God. . . . For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God. . . . from life unto life" (2 Cor. 2:14-16, ASV).
Don't be fooled. We should remember that Jesus' woes were tenderly leveled against tithe-paying, Sabbath-keeping, Bible-reading, Advent-hoping, prophet-quoting, evangelism-supporting Adventists.
This is serious stuff. So a witness checkup is always in order.
What's Our Spiritual Body Language?
What are we saying in our evangelism about God and His love to us and to others? Are we indifferent to their needs? Are we judgmental in our spirit? What are our actions, our "elder brother" spirit, telling others about how valuable they are to God and to us? Are we letting God make us authentic witnesses who sing His praises?
I have been deeply troubled by my witness of what Christ has done with and for me. It has been a painful self-examination. But I know that He is working in me to sing His praises. He can do the same for you.
Nevertheless, I fear that deep division about true witnessing and true evangelism would come into our churches. Many are deeply disturbed by all this emphasis on grace and God's love. They are afraid that mercy will dilute our testimony.
But grace and love have never diluted our testimony. They are the essence of our testimony. We have a "peculiar" message to give, but that "peculiarity" is the fact that what God has given to us is all about love. In love we must work together to use new ways to reveal old truths.
Don't Get Stuck in Yesterday
We need not fear "new ways" of evangelism that preserve the prophetic spirit and the spirit of love. Look at the promise of Isaiah 43:18-21:
"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beasts of the field shall honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people which I formed for myself, that they might set forth my praise" (ASV).
We need this water and rivers in our deserts. We have preached law and doctrine in ways that have dried up the land. We don't need more "elder brothers" who feel stuck at home-dutiful, hardworking, but distant from their Father; depressed and depressing to be around. We need to wallow in the refreshing streams that flow from a gracious Father. We need to embrace fully His prodigal love to us and interpret our Adventist heritage and contributions to the world within that view of grace.
Then people around us will see a new witness. They will have something to drink!
The main fuel for witnessing is always how we experience God and come to know Him. The disciples wanted to know what kind of great work they could do for Jesus. He said that their work was that they should believe. That's our work today as well.
When this wonderful experience of water in the desert accompanies our evangelistic efforts, purifies our dogmas and doctrines with a clarity of spirit and love, then people are going to come flooding in. Already we're seeing evidence of this today in some quarters.
Don't get me wrong. We need evangelism. We need more of it. We need it everywhere. We need it in my home and your home. But without the Spirit, evangelism will produce only more tight-fisted legalists, equipped more as persecutors than lovers.
I write not to discourage people from witnessing. Witnessing to others, after all, isn't easy. Cares and fears choke out wonderful opportunities for us to reach out to others about a God who really cares. Furthermore, it's important that we never feel we can't witness until we are perfect witnesses.
That's the point. We shouldn't pretend to be perfect. That's what the Pharisees did. They couldn't accept that the God of Abraham and Moses was a God for all people. As a result, they came to view themselves as better and elite. They became an arrogant and haughty remnant, not authentic witnesses to a world drenched with sin.
It's time to ask some penetrating questions. Do I really believe God is good? Am I comfortable witnessing for a God who throws parties for prodigals and prostitutes? Do I tell people how God and I wrestle with real issues? Do I share with them how God saves to the utmost the weak people that come to Him?
Be honest with people: about who you are, about how you struggle to believe and to love, about how God has been faithful, even when you haven't been. That is a true witness.
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Duane Covrig is an assistant professor of education at the University of Akron in Ohio.
