Witnessing love may be the most important skill for organizing and anchoring a vital circle of Resurgent Christian nurture and mission.\u00a0 Witnessing love can be defined as being a \u201cmeans of grace\u201d to one another in our Circle and to other persons with whom we make contact.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrace,\u201d as this word is used in the letters of the apostle Paul, is an event that happens to us.\u00a0 In his sermon \u201cYou Are Accepted,\u201d Paul Tillich describes the happening of \u201cgrace\u201d as an experience of reunion with Reality, an event that has three parts: (1) an awakening to our estrangement from Reality, (2) a dawning of our welcome home to Reality, and (3) a choice to accept and live this welcome.<\/p>\n
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Witnessing love is the skill of assisting another person to experience the grace happening.\u00a0 We must say \u201cassisting,\u201d not \u201ccausing,\u201d for the actual happening of grace is beyond the control of the witness.\u00a0 Final Reality itself must do the dawning in the life of the other, and the other person must himself or herself experience the estrangement, and must experience the welcome home, and accept that specific welcome home to Reality.\u00a0 The witness is powerless to control Final Reality or the other person.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the witness has the power to focus the attention of the other person on \u201cnoticing\u201d the possibility of a transforming happening of grace.<\/p>\n
Like grace, witnessing love has three parts: (1) Exposing the demons (i.e. bringing consciousness to bear upon the interiorly organized patterns that estrange a person\u00a0 from being his or her true being), (2) Welcoming the sinner (i.e. pointing out that person\u2019s welcome home to Reality in spite of that person\u2019s estrangement 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).\u00a0 All three of these aspects of witnessing love challenge both the person bearing witness and the person to whom the witness is made.
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\n(1) Exposing the demons challenges the sentimentality of the witness.\u00a0\u00a0 Because of his or her own sentimental estrangement, the witness is tempted to underplay the destructive nature of the \u201cdemons.\u201d\u00a0 A sentimental witness is tempted to minimize or excuse the \u201cdemons,\u201d rather than confront them with strong emotions and brash assertiveness.\u00a0\u00a0 The term \u201cdemon\u201d is old poetry for what we today call estrangement from Reality: addictions, entrenched patterns, destructive habits, malice, bondage, despair.\u00a0 Perhaps the image of \u201cdemon\u201c has endured because it pictures estrangement from our true being as a powerful phenomenon that robs people of authentic life and issues in faulty knowing, inauthentic being, and unrealistic action.<\/p>\n
(2) Welcoming the sinner challenges the witness\u2019s moralism.\u00a0 The moralistic witness is tempted to resist pointing out Reality\u2019s welcome to persons who have been seriously demon-possessed and badly behaved.\u00a0 The moralistic witness resists the audacity of universal forgiveness and is inclined to say, \u201cMaybe some are forgiven, but surely some are not.\u201d\u00a0 We must bear in mind that if all are not forgiven, then none are forgiven.<\/p>\n
(3) Beckoning the saint challenges the witness\u2019s rationalism.\u00a0 The rationalistic witness\u00a0 tries to persuade the other person to agree with something rather than challenging that person to choose freedom\u00a0 \u2013 that is, to make the deep choice of accepting the welcome home to Reality.\u00a0\u00a0 It is rationalism for the witness to reason with the other person rather than point out the either-or moment that the other person faces: either continue in estrangement and its despair-riddled consequences, or open up to realism, however dreadful, unfamiliar, and intense it may be.\u00a0 Further, the witness needs to recognize the solitary nature of the other person\u2019s decision.\u00a0 Neither manipulation nor trickery is necessary or useful.\u00a0 Coming home means finding one\u2019s own Freedom in that home place \u2013 a Freedom not created by human hands but given directly from the Final Reality being experienced.<\/p>\n
(1) Exposing the Demons<\/strong><\/p>\n In the 15th chapter of Luke, Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son to an assembly\u00a0 that includes Pharisees and scribes.\u00a0 These religious teachers surely identify more with the elder son who stayed home and did his duty than with the son who took his inheritance and squandered it.\u00a0 This elder son resented the father\u2019s forgiving the renegade brother and complained about the celebration held upon the return of this rascal.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 story exposes the self-righteousness of the moral teachers who are listening.\u00a0 The whole point of the story is that Final Reality forgives, indeed celebrates, our return to Reality.\u00a0 But according to the Pharisees and scribes, this was not the way the universe works.\u00a0 In their view righteousness is rewarded and unrighteousness is punished.\u00a0 Furthermore, they think they know which is which.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 story, he makes the prodigal son a thoroughly objectionable character to these moralists. And when the father in the story goes all out with kisses and robes and rings and shoes and a fatted-calf feast, these moralists surely identify with the elder brother\u2019s fury and complaints.\u00a0 The scribes and Pharisees in the crowd are not open to welcoming the tax collectors, riffraff, and other \u201coutsiders\u201d who are also listening to this story.\u00a0 Jesus has exposed their smug \u201cself righteousness.\u201d<\/p>\n We may not be accustomed to calling self-righteousness a \u201cdemon,\u201d but the meanness of racism, anti-immigration sentiments, and the rigid righteousness of so many religious bodies points up the seriousness of the elder brother\u2019s pattern of estrangement.\u00a0 Exposing such \u201cdemons\u201d is daring work, for demons do not want to be exposed as demons.\u00a0 Indeed, they may appear in the garb of saintliness.\u00a0 But demons lie.\u00a0 So, the saintly garb must be stripped away and the nude demon exposed.\u00a0 Sometimes estranged persons are aware that they have issues, but tell themselves that these issues are unimportant or excusable.\u00a0 Again, the witness needs to be stern to focus consciousness on the destructive extent of this form of demonic inhabitation.<\/p>\n In other words, the effective witness must take estrangement seriously.\u00a0 Estrangements from Reality are well-organized, destructive, and defensive.\u00a0 We exist in a world in which we experience an emotionally intense battle between truth and systems of evasion and illusion.\u00a0 Our resistance to engaging in this tough fight is a form of sentimentality.\u00a0 The effective witness notices the deep conflict between authenticity and inauthenticity.\u00a0 At the Spirit level of living, truth and falsehood can never be a both-and compromise.\u00a0 We either win our freedom over our demonic patterns or we become enslaved to them.<\/p>\n The honest witness to Truth feels an ongoing anger toward the estrangement that are destroying human life.\u00a0 A love of human life includes anger toward the demons,\u00a0 an anger clearly present in the witnessing of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels.\u00a0 We see his anger when he \u201clays into\u201d the hypocrisy and tyranny of the scribes and Pharisees, when he overturns the tables in the Temple,\u00a0 when he orders demonic forces to desist.\u00a0 Jesus also expresses anger toward his own disciples who are slow to learn or who fall asleep when needed.\u00a0 At one point he even accuses Peter of being captive to Satan\u2019s perspective.\u00a0\u00a0 But this wholesome anger is not a restimulation of old hurts in Jesus\u2019 life.\u00a0 Jesus was not having temper tantrums.\u00a0 The anger of the true witness is a passion for truth and for Spirit health.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Human estrangement from Reality is strong: it can ruin families, communities, nations, and planets.\u00a0 Nevertheless, though these \u201cdemonic possessions\u201d are powerful, they are basically nothing, nothing essential to any person\u2019s real life.\u00a0 A demon is an omission, an absence of Reality, an illusion, an untruth, a falsification.\u00a0 Therefore, a demon is no threat to an authentic person except as a temptation to cease being authentic.\u00a0 When a demon is cast out, it vanishes into nothingness, for it was never\u00a0 substantial.\u00a0 It was only a false relationship with something.\u00a0 In our behaviors the demonic is not merely our habitual behaviors; it is our attitude of attachment to and defensiveness\u00a0 of those behaviors.\u00a0\u00a0 That attitude can vanish suddenly, even though the behaviors may persist for a while.\u00a0 Though demons are essentially nothing, our war with them is real, as real as the crucifixion of Jesus.\u00a0 The war with the demons is urgent, as urgent as despair or joy (hell or heaven). (2) Welcoming the Sinner<\/strong><\/p>\n The story of the prodigal son can also be viewed from the perspective of the prodigal \u2013 i.e. those who are already aware of their estrangement from that all-powerful Finality and from their own essential selves.\u00a0 Such persons, feeling their despair and self incrimination, would surely identify with the prodigal son.\u00a0 They would also be addressed by the the father\u2019s excessive celebration of his return.\u00a0 Here the address is about turning loose of self-incrimination and hopelessness and taking in the truth that a fresh start is possible.\u00a0 With the enthusiastic welcome of the wayward son, Jesus witnesses to the welcome that all of us can experience from Final Reality, our Infinite Parent.\u00a0\u00a0 Witnessing love includes making this welcome known.<\/p>\n Once the \u201csinner has seen and owned up to the estrangement or \u201cdemon,\u201d he or she needs to see that he or she is welcome home to Reality.\u00a0 Pointing out this welcome is\u00a0 assertive care on the part of the witness.\u00a0 It may take strong words to call the estranged person\u2019s attention to the fact that he or she is a good and innocent being who has been possessed by the strong force of estrangement.\u00a0 Our real lives are never far away;\u00a0 we, in our demonic possession, have been far away from our real lives.\u00a0 Our real lives are saintly, completely affirmed by Reality.\u00a0 Our actual inward being, our actual outward being, and all our circumstances are the one and only wholesome truth and goodness.\u00a0 Our demons are just phantoms.\u00a0 Our past, however demon possessed, has brought us to this wholly real and good moment of repentance and openness to realistic living.\u00a0 And our future \u2013 however scary, however fraught with unfamiliar realism, however tempted to further demonic possession \u2013 is wondrously open to Freedom, Trust of Reality, and the Love of our own lives and the lives of others.<\/p>\n The task of the competent witness is to underline these simple actualities.\u00a0 As sinners who are used to our demon-possessed lives, we doubt that living can be different.\u00a0 We do not readily trust the good news that we are fully capable of identifying with our realistic innocence.\u00a0 The skillful witness points this out in the hope that this person will see the light of his or her welcome home to Reality.\u00a0 This Welcome comes not from the witness, but from \u201cThe Ground of our Being.\u201d\u00a0 Welcome is the character of Final Reality \u2013\u00a0 so it always has been, is now, and shall ever be.\u00a0 You are accepted; I am accepted; everyone is accepted.<\/p>\n (3) Beckoning the Saint<\/strong><\/p>\n When estrangement is revealed and the welcome home is pronounced, the true witness is still not done.\u00a0 For the happening of grace to be complete, the person to whom the witness is made has to decide to accept the welcome home.\u00a0 This choice cannot be made by the person making the witness and the one to whom the witness is made cannot be manipulated into making this choice.\u00a0 This choice is a bold, independent, solitary opting for Truth.\u00a0 The witnessing person needs to stand back and let this choice happen (or not).\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps the witnessing person needs to virtually (or literally) walk away in order to dramatize that this decision can only be made by the person to whom witness has been offered.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The power of the witness\u2019s\u00a0 beckoning is increased by the witness\u2019s own acceptance of Reality\u2019s pardon, and his or her own demonstration of realistic living. *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n I have used New Testament stories to illustrate Witnessing Love, but witnessing can occur without religious language.\u00a0 Anytime we assist someone to see their real fight with or flight from realism, to experience their welcome home to a fresh start, and then beckon them to step out into that freshness, we have done witnessing love.\u00a0 This can occur in a secular office, working outdoors, playing, dancing, visiting, wherever.\u00a0 Witnessing is seldom easy, often a bit scary, never certain of a good result, but witnessing love is a gift to humanity without which human life does not move forward into better days.<\/p>\n
\nAn effective witness to the New Testament good news needs to be honestly stern with the demons. The effective witness needs to move beyond his or her own sentimentality.\u00a0 The despair, futility, and malice of demonic possession are deeply entrenched, and exposing these demons requires words and deeds that are strong, clever, and\u00a0 unhampered by sentimentality.<\/p>\n
\nIn the story told in Matthew 14:22-32,\u00a0 Jesus is already walking on the water.\u00a0 Peter asks to join him.\u00a0 And Jesus says, \u201cCome on then.\u201d\u00a0 That is the beckoning witness.\u00a0 Peter must then himself step down from the safe boat and walk on the water.\u00a0 And when Peter loses faith and begins to sink yet again into still other estrangement, 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.\u00a0 But Peter must himself take the hand.\u00a0 Peter must himself accept his welcome of the Divine Welcome Home to Peter\u2019s own essential saintliness, a saintliness that is not Peter\u2019s accomplishment but the simple gift of Peter\u2019s full reality.<\/p>\n