When testimonies come drifting in

March 16, 2019

Steven Davi­son asked what the tes­ti­mo­ny of com­mu­ni­ty even meant or whether it was spelt out any­where. No one could answer but no ine want­ed to omit it.

I sus­pect a process may be at work sim­i­lar to the one that has made “that of God in every­one” the puta­tive foun­da­tion of all our tes­ti­monies: an unself­con­scious thought-drift in a cul­ture increas­ing­ly impa­tient with intellectual/theological rig­or, or even atten­tion of any seri­ous kind, not to men­tion care for the tes­ti­mo­ny of integri­ty. These ideas arise some­how, some­where, and then get picked up and dis­sem­i­nat­ed because they sound nice, they meet some need, and they don’t demand much. They appar­ent­ly don’t require dis­cern­ment, anyway. 

The “Tes­ti­mo­ny of Community”

Evangelistic malpractice

February 8, 2019

Johan Mau­r­er on start­ing fresh in a cor­ner of the Quak­er world:

I was grate­ful that the “who” ques­tion was there — tes­ti­fy­ing that we are not cen­tered on our­selves, duti­ful­ly inven­to­ry­ing our Quak­er mark­ers. For me, evan­ge­lism (pay­ing urgent atten­tion to the “who”) puts all those oth­er tes­ti­monies in per­spec­tive. All those tes­ti­monies are “signs and won­ders,” qual­i­ties of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ par­tic­i­pate in mak­ing Jesus visible. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​t​i​c​-​m​a​l​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​.​h​tml

Spirit-led Structures for Quaker Meetings

September 18, 2018

Steven Davi­son urges us to rethink annover-reliance on committees:

This dynam­ic tends to quench the spir­it behind new lead­ings. All of our tes­ti­monies, and con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion in gen­er­al, start out as new — that is, prophet­ic; that is, Spirit-led — con­cerns and lead­ings. They deserve Spirit-led atten­tion and elder­ship, not a buck­et of cold water. 

http://​www​.nyym​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​s​t​r​u​c​t​u​r​e​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​m​e​e​t​i​ngs

The language and testimony of the fire alarm

July 15, 2013

Care­ful and delib­er­ate dis­cern­ment held in a man­ner of unhur­ried prayer is fine in most instances, but what’s a group if Quak­ers to do when a fire alarm goes off? Do we sit down in silence, stay cen­tered there some num­ber if min­utes, and then open up a peri­od of min­istries to reach toward discernment. 

Of course we don’t. Who would? Like any group if peo­ple in the mod­ern world, we assem­ble with­out ques­tion and leave the premis­es. But why? Because of shared lan­guage and testimonies. 

A ring­ing bell does not, by itself, con­sti­tute a call to action. Pow­er up your time machine and bring your battery-powered alarm sys­tem back a few thou­sand years and set it off. Peo­ple would look around in con­fu­sion (and might be afraid if the alien sound), but they wouldn’t file out of a build­ing. We do it because we’ve been social­ized in a lan­guage of group warning. 

Ever since our school­days, we have been taught this lan­guage: fire alarms, flash­ing lights, fire pull box­es. We don’t need to dis­cern the sit­u­a­tion because we already know what the alarm means: the like­li­hood of immi­nent danger. 

Our response also needs lit­tle dis­cern­ment. We might think of this as a tes­ti­mo­ny: a course of action that we’ve real­ized is so core to our under­stand­ing of our rela­tion to the world that it rarely needs to be debat­ed amongst ourselves. 

I must have par­tic­i­pat­ed in a hun­dred fire drills in my life­time, but so far none of the alarms have been fires. But they have served a very real purpose. 

When we do media in an advo­ca­cy sense, most of our time is spent devel­op­ing and rein­forc­ing shared lan­guage and obvi­ous courses-of-action. We tell sto­ries of pre­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions and debate the con­tours of the tes­ti­monies. We’re ready­ing our­selves for when we will be called to action. 

Unlikely Messengers

December 4, 2010

It some­times strikes me that the Lord some­times picks some might­i­ly unlike­ly mes­sen­gers. We are all flawed in our ways, true, but it’s easy to think there are those flawed more than our­selves. In part this is the whole beam in the eye prob­lem of per­spec­tive we find in Matthew 7. But the para­ble of the Lost Sheep record­ed in Luke 15 sug­gests that some are more lost than others:

What man of you, hav­ing an hun­dred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the nine­ty and nine in the wilder­ness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoul­ders, rejoic­ing. And when he cometh home, he cal­leth togeth­er his friends and neigh­bours, say­ing unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that like­wise joy shall be in heav­en over one sin­ner that repen­teth, more than over nine­ty and nine just per­sons, which need no repentance.

One of the best-known exam­ples of the formerly-lost sheep is the apos­tle Paul of Tar­sus. We first learn about him as Saul, a Phar­isee who active­ly per­se­cut­ed the ear­ly church. The sto­ry of the the light of heav­en inter­rupt­ing his jour­ney to Dam­as­cus is real­ly key to under­stand­ing Friends under­stand­ing of the Light as judge and instruc­tor (it’s also the source of one of my favorite line in the John­ny Cash oevre “it’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks”!).

But I always won­der what the oth­er Chris­tians made of the post-conversion Paul. We get a lit­tle of their reac­tion from Ana­nias but I imag­ine there was lots of talk and anger, jeal­ousy and con­fu­sion all swirling with what­ev­er joy they could muster that anoth­er soul was saved. A man who had “slaugh­tered” them was soon to present him­self as a major leader, tak­ing sides in the great debates over how Jew­ish the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty need­ed to be.

How do we react when God uses an unlike­ly mes­sen­ger to spread the good news? None of my blog read­ers are like­ly to have seen their brethren slaugh­tered but it’s safe to say we’ve all been wronged and mis­treat­ed from time to time. One of the great mys­ter­ies I’ve expe­ri­enced is how God has seem­ing­ly used oth­er’s dis­obe­di­ence to do His work. Know­ing this requires a scale of love that’s hard to imag­ine. Peo­ple do wrong can still be some­how act­ing of God. Peo­ple who have done wrong are some­times espe­cial­ly cho­sen of God. Heav­en rejoic­es more for that one saved sin­ner than all the rest of us try­ing to mud­dle along in faith. Even secret anger is akin to mur­der.

We Friends are right­ly inspired of 17th Cen­tu­ry New Jer­sey Friend John Wool­man’s excep­tion­al com­pas­sion and abil­i­ty to see out­side the prej­u­dices of his day, but even this “Quak­er saint” con­sid­ered him­self the unlike­ly mes­sen­ger, the lost sheep of  the Luke sto­ry. He wrote of a dream:“Then the mys­tery was opened, and I per­ceived there was joy in heav­en over a sin­ner who had repent­ed [Luk 15:7] and that that lan­guage John Wool­man is dead meant no more than the death of my own will.”

How do we hold tight to love, even for those we don’t like? When we greet even those who have dis­ap­point­ed us, we need to bear in mind that they might have trav­eled their own road to Dam­as­cus since last we met. They might be one of those God choos­es to teach.

(Thanks to Esther Green­leaf Mür­er’s Quak­er Bible Index for the Wool­man connection.)