My husband and I were sitting in the last pew, and we were shaking with silent laughter and exchanging fistbumps of solidarity. I thought about all the times, as a teenager and college student, I listened to people’s testimonies–and even gave my own more than once. After the church service, when we greeted the pastor on our way out, she said, “I have to know why you were laughing.” Still giggling, I explained that everything she’d said rang true and brought back a lot of memories of similar experiences.
(In fairness, our pastor’s point was actually not about these differences or about passing judgment; she was talking about how “reasonable” any part of our faith really is. I’m not going to recap the whole thing here, of course, but it was a good message.)
Later, I had time to consider just what struck a chord in me and why, exactly, I found it so funny. I think I can answer that now. It’s not the idea of giving a testimony that I have issue with; it’s the specific way in which it’s often done that makes me cringe.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing the blessings in our lives. There’s no problem with talking about how our faith has shaped us or what we believe we can attribute to God. What I’ve found, however, is that in many evangelical circles, it follows a pattern that troubles me because of the heavy emphasis on having been bad, wretched, evil, self-destructive and having been turned around to become a “new” person.
I don’t doubt that faith changes lives. I’ve certainly seen it happen. But there are some disturbing aspects of testimony culture. First, when a person has not had a past involving much of what the conservative Christian world regards as sin, one of two things happens. Either the person becomes convinced that mere thoughts are enough to send them to hell, or the person makes up a testimony about being brought out of the pit. I’m an example of the former; Mike Warnke is an example of the latter (though an extreme one).
Second, there’s a common view that when one has come to faith, the person will automatically have some magical transformation. When it doesn’t happen that way, and a person continues to do what their particular church regards as unacceptable, there’s often very little grace. I recall one friend, many years ago, telling me that when he first stepped into a church, he had a serious, ongoing addiction. As a result of the warm welcome he received in the church, he began to turn his life around. He entered recovery and remained clean for years. In the end, however, the church continued to view him as little more than an addict, and every challenge on his journey was met with disapproval for not having come far enough, fast enough. After all, if he was now a committed Christian, how could he do something seen as sinful?
On the other side of that are people who have the “perfect” testimony with the public appearance of righteousness to match. More often than not, people like that are able to deflect blame for their shortcomings, particularly when they have used “biblical” authority to abuse others around them. This is often the case when thought-policing is involved in someone’s testimony. For example, young men who claim to have had “lust issues” can frequently excuse themselves by placing blame on women for being “immodest” and causing them to “stumble.”
Third, due to the heavy emphasis on the myriad sexual sins listed by conservative evangelicals, many people find their testimonies involve repentance for a wide range of human sexual experience and expression. Because the focus is on the meaning and appropriate context of sex, rather than on how to have healthy, ethical relationships, many people are led to believe that even their natural physical reactions are sinful and must be controlled. “Addiction” is thrown around without fully understanding the meaning of the word and sometimes becomes used as a way to bolster testimony. Someone who can claim to have overcome “porn addiction” (often without the help of an actual professional with experience in the field) is viewed as “honest” and is celebrated for such a victory over sin. That person may be held up as an example of the power of God and paraded around by church authorities.
As I said, it’s not the testimonies that are the problem necessarily; it’s the fixation on “proving” that God changes lives in extraordinary ways. It’s a natural result of the view that what one believes is of greater importance than what one does. When the whole message can be summed up with “Sin–repent–stop sinning,” and evangelism is reduced to “convince people they are sinners so they can repent and stop sinning,” we’ve lost the point of Jesus’ life and ministry.
I don’t believe people should stop talking about what God’s doing in their lives. I do think we need to reconsider how we handle it. It should never be about turning bad people into good ones or using words to shame others into belief or pretending that if we just pray hard enough things will work out in our favor. The testimony that convinced me to throw my lot in with the Christians was nothing like that. It was about the power of God’s love to help us see ourselves as worthy simply because we exist–God doesn’t make garbage. I’m grateful for that testimony and for the ways my life has been changed as a result. Maybe that’s where we should start: seeing each person as inherently valuable and taking it from there.
