Professor Thomas Long is well known as a major representative of Christian faith. He has served on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently the Bandy Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology, Emery University. Ever since the first time I heard him speak in 1987, his witness has blessed me. So too in this book, in which Dr. Long addresses the importance of talking about what we believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Church.
He starts the book with a wry observation made by a New Yorker, "At fashionable dinner parties in this town you can talk about anything... But if you mention God more than once, you probably won't be invited back." (Page 3). I have been to parties like that and perhaps you have as well. Where, when people find out that you are a follower of Jesus, they glaze over, say something like "How nice for you..." and then drift away.
Now, aside from the fact that we might want to avoid such fashionable dinner parties in madcap Manhattan, what Dr. Long is also saying to us: "Christians of the world, speak up and be heard!" And then he goes on to say how and why and what we might want to be talking about, in matters of faith, in everyday conversation. I like that. Saying what we believe is a gift, even an art-the well chosen word can attract, peek the interest, engage, encourage and convince the listener. You have that ability as you go about your day to day routine. Your faith can lead others to Christ and help them along life's narrow way. But only if you will speak up.
Dr. Long's book (one of the top ten best selling religious books of 2004) is not a book about personal witness or evangelism so much as it is on telling the truth about who God is, for us. He says that how God has engaged our life is a story that just has to be told: to our children, in the midst of meetings, when a friend has a bad medical diagnosis, when people are disagreeing about school policies, our the fence I the yard and yes, even at a dinner party. He also address the difference between a time to speak and a time to keep silence-as we honor both God and the person God has put us with, in the situation in which God has placed us.
My personal favorite portion of this book is on page 46, when he says this, "It has been said that if we really knew how to see with the eyes of our souls, we would see angels going before every person we meet, saying, `Make way for the image of God! Make way for the image of God!'" We know from John 3:16 that God loves us that much... would that we would love one another as God loves us all. So we could equally look at each person we meet and reminder ourselves, "Jesus died for him. Jesus died for her."
Dr. Long ends the book with a story that is the point of the entire book. Contained in it is the vital question: If someone were to hear you speaking, could they tell who you are? Could they tell that you are a child of God and a follower of Jesus?
Long urges us Christians to express our faith in words during the course of daily living. Long maintains that we as Christians can't tell the whole truth, without talking about God. And if we can't tell the whole truth, we can't be fully alive as human beings. He shows that we don't just say things we already believe, but we talk our way to faith. As we express our beliefs in what we say, we come more and more fully and clearly to believe. Hence his title: Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian. The church, he believes, is a language school in which we learn how to speak faithfully in the whole of our lives.
As one who is a firm believer but who is also shy of expressing my faith in words, I found this book helpful, not only in its persuasive eloquence but also in the numerous stories Long tells which show the way.
