Living As the Real You
[A quick note of apology for the sound quality on Steve’s end. Lots of distortion this time around. Sorry, folks! 🙁 ]
Whether it’s because you feel like your “testimony” isn’t good enough, or because you’re in a position of power that makes you feel like you have to be more than you really are, there is a strong temptation that almost all (if not all) of us face: to make ourselves sound like more than we really are.
In the workplace, it’s called “padding your résumé”. In Christianity, it’s called being dishonest. Lying. For one recent pastor, it showed up as a fictional account of being a Navy Seal. For others, it’s a temptation to impress people with the place at which we did some academic study, even if our grades were terrible when we studied there!
Ray and Steve discuss this delicate issue, complete with quite a few of their own personal anecdotes of how this temptation has surfaced, and continues to surface, in their own lives. Far from pointing fingers at others, Ray and Steve humbly look at their own lives and discuss the need to just be who we are and not to make ourselves out to be something else.
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May 23rd, 2011 at 5:35 am
I’m not on facebook (yet), but I herewith click the Like button.
I never really had a cool testimony either, growing up in a Christian home. What a rip-off!!! 😉
But I’ve been thinking about the whole ‘born again’ thing, and what strikes me is that the only time Jesus mentions this term is when talking to a religious guy who needed to get out of religion. He never approached those nasty sinners and fornicators he hung out with and told them: Hey, you gotta become a born again follower of me.
All this to say that I don’t see my born again experience as the day that I became a Christian anymore, but rather the period of time it took/is taking for me to get out of religion.
I don’t know if that makes for a cooler testimony, but I feel like for the first time I am talking about something that I have really been through (and struggled through) myself and can identify with. Does that make sense?
You guys were also talking about having your identity “in Christ” a lot. About a week ago I posted a few what-ifs on my blog about being “in Christ”:
What if it is very difficult for a modern day Christian to experience what it really means to be “in Christ”? What if the reason for all those books and teachings about who a Christian is in Christ is that we just don’t experience it? I mean what if we need all these reminders just because it’s not a reality in our lives? What if the reason that it’s not a reality in our lives is that we traded being “in Christ” for being in Christianity? What if being “in Christ” means to be outside of or free from religion/Christianity (and it’s nagging thought: “I’m not good enough for God. I have to change.”)? What if the freedom that Christ wants to bring is at odds with Christianity? What if religion has to make way for something new? “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2.Cor.5:17
I don’t want to be too negative here though…so on a lighter note: Ray, I will pray for your team if you pray for my team who are playing on Tuesday night to stay in the 2nd German soccer league (2. Bundesliga). VFL Osnabruck. Very important stuff!
Oh, and since you’re gonna talk about the rapture soon… My question is: Can you believe in ultimate reconciliation and the rapture at the same time? I mean because the rapture to me is about seperation (us vs. them), whereas UR is about unification. Do you know what I mean?
May 24th, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Hello, my name is Jeff and I am a recovering religion addict.
May 25th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
I was recently asked to give my testimony and I panicked because I didn’t think I had one — at least, not a good one. But then I went to jury duty, and during the voir dire the lawyers explained about the witnesses and that all they are supposed to do is tell what they have seen and/or heard. In John 3 (I think vs. 11) it says “we testify to what we have seen”, and then later in I John 5 it says “this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son”. So I got to thinking that perhaps we have the wrong idea about our testimonies.
For many years I have thought (and sometimes have been told) that my testimony was supposed to be about how bad I was and how good God was to save me from myself. But I’m starting to realize our testimony should be about what we have seen God do, which has everything to do with him and nothing to do with us. And in the process, we may begin to develop a healthier identity in Christ.
That’s my two cents anyway.
May 25th, 2011 at 10:15 pm
Ulf,
Good point that Jesus only used the phrase “born again” once, and that with a religious leader to break him out of his religious thinking. We try to squeeze those metaphors until they just can’t breath new life any more.
“What if the freedom that Christ wants to bring is at odds with Christianity?”
I think you’re on to something here, Ulf! When we talk about end-times stuff we will bring up your question Ulf…it’s a good one. BTW…my team got the 9th pick, which is as bad as they could have possibly gotten 🙁 I hope your team fares better!
Jeff,
My name is Ray, and I am still figuring out just how religiously brain-washed I really am. I think that freedom must come in doses.
Andrea,
Thanks for joining the conversation! We are glad to have you along! Your two cents worth may just add up to more than you think!
Maybe part of the problem with our feeling pressured to “give a good testimony” has to do with our belief in total depravity. Because we have been told how rotten and completely unworthy we are, ironically, we might just feel as if our testimony is “unworthy” of being heard since it doesn’t include enough of the “dark-side”. We might feel “less saved” than someone who’s outward change is more obvious. Could it be that love really “does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth”? (1 Corinthians 13:6) After all, I think our testimony has less to do with recounting how much hell we used to raise than with how much of the Kingdom of God we are displaying.
May 27th, 2011 at 8:20 am
Hi, my name is Ulf and I just decided that I like Oprah.
(Just watched her farewell on TV)
My team lost…down to 3rd league they go…once again…
Another rapture question that I have is:
Why isn’t God rapturing any Chinese Christians, or Christians in Muslim countries, or any of those millions of persecuted Christians all around the world throughout history and today? Is the rapture really just waiting for a few upper-middle class Christians in Western countries to be added to the persecution list? Isn’t it kinda outrages to say that the brutality that these Christians in the non-Western world are facing is not bad enough yet to deserve a rapture, just because a few white couch potatoe Christians are not suffering yet?
(disclaimer: it just came out this way. Don’t want to sound angry. 🙂 )