Tell the Story Right, but Make Sure You're Telling the Right Story

In many churches, a huge emphasis has traditionally been placed on the telling of your story or testimony. Though many people tell their stories, the pattern is usually pretty much the same:

My life used to be horrible. I was involved in all sorts of things that I thought would bring me meaning/happiness, but they all failed me. I was miserable. I reached a crisis point at which I realized I couldn't find happiness in them and I turned to Christ. Ever since then, everything has been great for me!

Of course it is best if there is some sort of dramatic change in your life between your pre-Christian days and now. Something like, "I used to live in a gutter, strung out on drugs, but now I live in a mansion, high on God!"

There are a number of problems with this model. First of all, there is the underlying suggestion that without Christ, you'll inevitably feel miserable. The fact is though, that (inconvenient though it may be) there are plenty of people who do not have faith in Christ, and yet they don't feel miserable. You see, the real problem which we all share is not one of how we feel, but rather of how we are, namely dead in our sins.

Secondly, the paradigm presented offers a false hope. It seems to promise that once we turn to Christ, all of our problems will go away. In reality, as I've noted previously, Jesus promises us nothing of the sort, and in fact promises quite the opposite. If we believe that the purpose for turning to Jesus is to escape all of life's problems, then the first time we experience difficulty, we will undoubtably think that he is either unable or unfaithful to do what we think he has promised.

A final problem with the testimony model is who the story is about. Take a look again at the pattern I suggest is often followed. You will notice that the words me/my/I are mentioned eleven times, while Christ is mentioned only once. Far too often, we give a testimony about us, as opposed to proclaiming a gospel about Christ. As R. Scott Clark says in a recent post:

The dramatic story we Christians have to tell, however, isn’t, in the first instance, about us at all. In the first instance, the story we have to tell is about God the Son incarnate, about his obedience for us and his mercy to us. The subject of our story is not “we” or “I” but “He,” that is the God who saved us in Christ. Yes, we are, by grace alone, through faith alone, now a part of that story. Jesus is our federal head. He acted for us and now that he has made us alive (sola gratia) by his Spirit, who operates through the preaching of gospel narrative, and has by faith alone (sola fide) united us to Christ by his Spirit that story is our story.

That’s the only story we really have to tell. What we did or didn’t do before we came to faith, if we can even remember such a time, is inconsequential. Praise God many covenant children never remember when they did not believe. They feel no need to embellish their personal stories because they don’t live in an ecclesiastical culture where that sort of narrative is highly valued. Here is a concrete, practical difference between Reformed piety and conversionist, revivalist piety. The focus of Reformed piety is on the gospel and the gospel tells me that what matters most of all is not what has happened in me but what happened for me, outside of me, in salvation history. What matters most is that I believe it now. Yes, that salvation history has powerful consequences for my personal narrative but that story is unfinished. The gospel, however, is the story of a done deal: “It is finished.”