Witnessing Love
Feb 21st, 2010 by Gene
Gene Marshall, January 2010
Witnessing love may be the most important skill for organizing and anchoring a vital circle of Resurgent Christian nurture and mission.
In his sermon “You Are Accepted,” Paul Tillich describes the happening of “grace” as an experience of reunion with Reality. “Grace,” as this word is used in the letters of Paul, is an event that happens to us. Tillich describes three parts to this event: (1) The awakening to our estrangement from Reality, (2) The dawning of our welcome home to Reality, and (3) The choice to accept and live this welcome.
Witnessing love can be described as the skill of assisting grace to happen for another person. We must say “assisting” not “causing,” for the actual happening of grace is beyond the control of the witness. Final Reality itself must do the dawning in the life of the other, and the other person must himself or herself see the estrangement, see the welcome home, and accept that specific welcome home to Reality. The witness is powerless to control Final Reality or the other person. Nevertheless, the witness has the power to focus the attention of the other person toward “noticing” the possibility of a transforming happening of grace.
Like grace, witnessing love has three parts: (1) Exposing the demons (i.e. bringing consciousness to bear upon whatever estrangements are preventing the other person from being his or her real person), (2) Welcoming the sinner (i.e. pointing out that person’s welcome home to Reality in spite of that person’s estrangements from Reality), and (3) Beckoning the saint (i.e. encouraging the real person to choose the welcome home and to walk within that home place. All three of these aspects of witnessing love are a challenge to the witness as well as a challenge to the person to whom the witness is made.
(1) Exposing the demons challenges the sentimentality of the witness. Because of his or her own sentimentality-type estrangements, the witness is tempted to underplay the destructive nature of the demons and thereby minimize or excuse the demons in some way or another. A sentimental witness resists being emotionally strong and brashly assertive with the demons. The term “demon” is poetry for estrangement from Reality. But “estrangement from Reality” is a rather abstract term that can sound too harmless. The poetry “demon,“ however, indicates how estrangement manifests as a powerful personal phenomenon that robs people of authentic life and issues in faulty knowing, inauthentic being, and unrealistic action.
(2) Welcoming the sinner challenges the witness’s moralism. The moralistic witness is tempted to resist enthusiastically pointing out Reality’s welcome to persons who have been seriously demon possessed and obviously badly behaved. The moralistic witness resists the sheer audacity of universal forgiveness. The moralistic mind of the witness is inclined to say, “Maybe some are forgiven, but surely some are not.” We must bear in mind that if all are not forgiven, then none of us are forgiven.
(3) Beckoning the saint challenges the witness’s rationalism. The rationalistic witness is tempted to persuade the other person to agree with something, rather than challenging that person to choose freedom – that is, to make that deep choice of accepting the welcome home to Reality. It is rationalism for the witness to reason with the other person rather than to point out to the other person the specific either-or moment that the other person faces: either continue in the pattern of estrangement with its despair-riddled consequences, or open up to the glory of realism however dreadful, unfamiliar, and intense that realism may be. Further, the witness needs to recognize the solitary nature of the other person’s decision about this profound matter. No manipulation or trickery is necessary or useful. Coming home means finding one’s own Freedom in that home place – a Freedom not created by human hands, but given directly from the Final Reality being experienced.
(1) Exposing the Demons
Exposing demons is daring work, for demons do not want to be exposed as demons. They invariably see their nature as innocent, unimportant, at least excusable. Indeed, demons may appear dressed in the garb of saintliness. Demons claim to be good, good for us, essential to our happiness. But demons lie. And these lies must be fought. The saintly garb must be stripped away, and the nude demon exposed in all its grim horror. So it is a battle to expose the demons. It is a battle between truth and falsity, between authenticity and inauthenticity. It is not a moral battle. It is not a sociological battle. It is an ontological battle, a battle for the true being of humanity. Our resistance to engaging in this fight is a form of sentimentality. This fight is about an either-or surrender, not a both-and compromise. Each of us either wins our freedom over our demonic patterns, or we lose our essential freedom into enslavement to the demons.
It is often said that we must not overemphasize images of fighting or battle. Rather, we must balance such images with images of building up life, with co-creativity, with food and home and art and other endeavors frequently associated with the feminine component within both men and women.
There is an important truth here. We must take seriously this advisement that our lives need to be more than battle and fight. But this advisement only applies on the finite plane of living. On the ontological plane of living it is always a fight between the demons and the saints, between estrangement and reconciliation, between truth and lies. On the finite plane there is both fighting and peacemaking, both warfare and negotiations. But in the Eternal dimension of living, it is always a fight with the demons. We can also speak of a surrender to the Eternal that brings rest and peace. But this rest and peace does not end the fight. The fight is unending. We simply have rest and peace for the ongoing fight.
Both women and men must fight, and both men and women must nurture and feed constructive things. A woman who does not fight is not yet a full woman, just as a man is not yet a full man unless he is accessing his more feminine side – his listening skills, his emotional expressiveness, his commitment to the ordinary everyday building of communal life together. But this male-female polarity is a description of human life on the finite plane of living. It is the yin and yang within all human relations and communal functions. It must be respected. But in the ontological dimension, living is always a battle – it is always a fight between respecting the way life is or not respecting the way life is, a battle between realism and illusion, a battle between living the truth and fleeing the truth or perhaps fighting the truth.
The honest and effective witness has to be firm with the demons. He or she, if honest, feels an ongoing anger toward the demons that are destroying human life. Love of human life includes anger toward the demons. This anger is clearly present in the witnessing of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. But this wholesome anger is not a restimulation of old hurts in the life history of the witness. The anger of the true witness has objectivity; it is a passion for truth and for Spirit health in the living of human life. If we do not admit that we have this anger, this rage against the demons, we are not prepared to be witnesses to the New Testament good news.
Estrangement from Reality is the enemy of realistic living. The demons are the enemies of God and the godly. Demons are delusory, but not thereby harmless. Our delusory living takes on embodied human form and ruins families, communities, nations, and planets. It is true that a demon is basically nothing, nothing essential to any person’s real life. A demon is an omission, an absence of Reality, an illusion, an untruth, a falsification. Therefore, a demon is no threat to an authentic person, except as a temptation to cease being authentic. When a demon is cast out, it vanishes into nothingness, for it was never something substantial It was only a false relationship with something. Nevertheless, the war with the demons is real, as real as the crucifixion of Jesus. The war with the demons is urgent, as urgent as hell or heaven, despair or joy.
A true witness to the New Testament good news needs to be stern with the demons. The effective witness must move beyond his or her sin of sentimentality. The despair and futility and malice that go with demonic possession are deeply entrenched and the exposure of these demons will require strong words and deeds, as well as clever words and deeds unhampered by any trace of sentimentality.
(2) Welcoming the Sinner
Once an estrangement or demon has been seen and admitted, the admitting person (i.e. the sinner) needs to see that he or she is welcome home to Reality. Pointing out this welcome is an assertive sort of service on the part of the witness. The sinner tends to identify with that false self who allowed himself or herself to be possessed by demons and do weird and destructive things. It may take strong words to call this person’s attention to being the good and innocent being who has been possessed by an alien force (demon or estrangement). Living our real lives is not something far away; it is we, in our demonic possession, who have been far away from our real lives. Our real lives are saintly, completely affirmed by Reality. Our actual inward being and our actual outward being and all our circumstances are the one and only wholesome truth. Our demons are just phantoms. Our past, however demon possessed, is now simply the story that has brought us to this wholly real and good moment of repentance and openness to realistic living. And our future – however scary, however fraught with unfamiliar realism, however tempted to further demonic possession – is wondrously open to Freedom, Trust of Reality, and the Love of our own lives and the lives of others.
The task of the competent witness is to underline these simple actualities. As sinners who are used to our demon-possessed lives, we doubt that living can be different. In the beginning we do not readily trust the good news that we are not hopelessly demonic persons, but innocent beings fully capable of identifying with our realistic innocence. The task of the skillful witness is to point this out – doing so in the hope that this person will see the light of his or her welcome home to Reality. This Welcome comes not from the witness, but from God, from the Final Reality. Welcome is the character of Final Reality – it always has been, is now, and ever shall be. You are accepted, I am accepted, everyone is accepted.
(3) Beckoning the Saint
When estrangement is revealed and the welcome home is pronounced, the true witness is still not done. The person to whom the witness is made has to decide to accept the welcome home for the happening of grace to be complete. This choice cannot be made by the witnessing person, but only by the other to whom witness is being made. And the other cannot be manipulated into making this choice. This choice is a bold, independent, solitary opting for Truth. The witnessing person needs to stand back and let this choice happen (or not). Perhaps the witness needs to virtually walk away in order to dramatize that this decision can only be made by the person to whom witness has been offered. In whatever way, the witness simply beckons the saintliness of the other person to step down from some safe boat of habituated living onto the unfamiliar waters of real life. The power of the witness’s beckoning is increased by the witness’s own acceptance of Reality’s pardon, and his or her own demonstration of realistic living.
In the story told in Matthew 14:22-32, Jesus is already walking on the water. Peter asks to join him. And Jesus says, “Come on then.” That is the beckoning witness. Peter must then himself step down from the safe boat and walk on the water. And when Peter loses faith and begins to sink yet again into still other estrangements, it is Peter and Peter alone who must reach out for the welcome home to Reality. The revelation of Final Reality is always there and is already walking on the water offering a hand. But Peter must himself take the hand. Peter must himself accept his welcome of the Divine Welcome Home to Peter’s own essential saintliness, a saintliness that is not Peter’s accomplishment but the simple gift of Peter’s full reality.
* * * * * * * * *
This completes my outline of the awesome task of witnessing love. A further exploration of the task of witnessing love can be done with case studies of specific instances of witnessing love to specific persons at specific times in their lives. Accurate case studies are difficult. We can also write novelettes that tell a true-to-life, but fictional story taken from our experiences of witnessing. Perhaps we can gather a whole notebook of such case studies and novelettes.