The Bible is full of testimony. It deals with what people saw, with what they know.
Job says: "I know that my redeemer lives, and that He shall stand in the last day upon the earth, and though the skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I will see God."
Paul says: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed unto Him against that day."
The blind man, healed by Jesus, and accosted by the Pharisees simply told what he knew: once he was blind; now he could see.
That's testimony--witnessing to the truth. It's what the church is about.
In the Emergent "conversation" however, testimony is uncomfortable--too rigid, too close to assuming an existing truth that is possible to approach or stray from.
They prefer "story".
I like stories, don't get me wrong, but they lend themselves to enlarging, warping, minimizing, or changing the truth; they may supplement, but should never take the place of testimony.
Jesus told stories sometimes, to emphasize a point, but when he was alone with his disciples, he explained them all. . . and he was concerned with truth and testimony. He testified of the Father, and He was constantly saying, of a truth I tell you; The old, "verily, verily," means truthfully, truthfully. It is the truth that He said we would know; that would make us free.
The blind man, healed by Jesus, and accosted by the Pharisees simply told what he knew: once he was blind; now he could see.
That's testimony--witnessing to the truth. It's what the church is about.
In the Emergent "conversation" however, testimony is uncomfortable--too rigid, too close to assuming an existing truth that is possible to approach or stray from.
They prefer "story".
I like stories, don't get me wrong, but they lend themselves to enlarging, warping, minimizing, or changing the truth; they may supplement, but should never take the place of testimony.
Jesus told stories sometimes, to emphasize a point, but when he was alone with his disciples, he explained them all. . . and he was concerned with truth and testimony. He testified of the Father, and He was constantly saying, of a truth I tell you; The old, "verily, verily," means truthfully, truthfully. It is the truth that He said we would know; that would make us free.
2 comments:
I agree with you totally on "the truth", I can't help but believe that some people prefer stories to truth because they don't like what the truth reveals (especiallly about themselves). It can be a bitter pill to swallow at times.
It's not our questioning of the truth that is valuable, it's our belief in it.
Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29
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