I propose to draw rather weighty conclusions from an anecdote which, prima facie, may seem overly mundane—but only prima facie, I hope. I was in church one Sunday when a gentleman, to galvanize the church into giving more-than-usual substantial offertory, shared a moving testimony. Years ago, he said, he gave a large chunk of his already-meagre national service allowance as offertory, not long after which, he continued, he was put on the waiting list of a prestigious scholarship he had applied for. Hezekiah-style, he referred God to the offertory he had given weeks back. Eventually, he got the scholarship (because someone on the main list was abruptly disqualified). For him, this was not only what the grace of God could do, but was also a testimony of the power of giving, especially because it was quite uncommon to have won a scholarship when one hadn’t at least completed their national service (as was in his case).

Even if this testimony is unique—as every testimony is—the pattern is generally not. From my experience, at least, a passel of our testimonies follow a similar trajectory: we first share a relatively unpleasant situation (e.g., sickness, joblessness, singlehood, financial crisis), then explain how there was a turnaround (sometimes as a result of something we did, e.g., prayer, fasting, giving, expression of faith) and how this is proof of the faithfulness of God. We may even attempt to reinforce the point of God’s faithfulness to us by illustrating how it was we (rather than others) who received that particular breakthrough/ opportunity. While admitting that I generalize, my intention in this text is to unpack the several lethal (even if unintended) assumptions and motives that sometimes lurk behind such patterns of testimonies.  

First of all, it is a great error to justify God’s faithfulness with a (perceived) positive outcome. To say that God is faithful because we have gotten a better-paying job, a first-class degree, a husband or wife, children, a huge contract, etc., is misleading and unscriptural. Admittedly, certain circumstances may help us appreciate the faithfulness of God in newer dimensions. A Daniel who walks out alive from the lions’ den, I think, would have a fresher appreciation (but not necessarily a firmer conviction since those who build their faith on experiences tend to need more experiences every now and then to fuel their faith) of the faithfulness of God than the one who only knows the Scripture, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4)—although that knowledge alone, in itself, suffices. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego understood that they could not pin God’s character on the outcome of situations. You might as well have reasoned with stones than attempt to convince the young men that, “Your God is faithful; therefore, He will save you from the furnace.” For them, God’s character was—and rightly so—independent of circumstances. It was with this conviction as ballast that they dared to defy Nebuchadnezzar’s orders (Dan. 3:17, 18). God did save them from the furnace, but they did not know that he would beforehand. Because of this, their understanding of God was not necessarily changed after their experience in the furnace, for the very reason that their doctrine was not defined by experience. 

I wonder if I am the only one who has noticed that tendency among Christians (in fact, sometimes, non-Christians as well) to desperately pursue an end (even if it is through ungodly means) so that upon attainment, they can share their “success story” with other brethren as proof of God’s faithfulness to them (too). One egregious example I readily recall is the story of a woman who testified about how God had blessed her with a car when, in fact, the car was reward for sleeping with a man she was unmarried to. Beneath this pressure to aggressively seek out tangibility of God’s faithfulness to us is a failure (or is it hesitance?) to admit that perceived negative outcomes and the faithfulness of God are not irreconcilable (which, of course, is why atheists point to all the evil in the world as indication that there is no God). [[ I use “perceived” because since God sees not as man sees (1 Sam. 16:7), a circumstance which may appear negative may turn out to be positive. In any case, “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).]] Indeed, in the case of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, God rescued them from the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. But what about the stories of martyrdom that Christian history is replete with? We know of Stephen, of Polycarp, of Christ’s disciples (indeed, Christ himself) and of Paul. For mature Christians, the fact of God’s faithfulness is not—cannot be—premised on experiences (which may be wrongly interpreted). 

As I have earlier pointed out, our testimonies tend to follow a linear trajectory: from a less pleasant situation to a more pleasant one. Self-evidently, we do this in order to communicate clearly the reality of the situation from which God rescued us—once poor but now rich; once sick, but now well; once single, but now married; once jobless, but now employed. There is a subtle trap here. To dichotomize “negative” and “positive” is, sometimes, to misunderstand that the two situations can be a continuum. What I mean, for example, is that humanly speaking, it is not a pleasant experience to be in prison, and especially so when you’re innocent. But in the eyes of God, that could be just the appropriate catalyst to make a prime minister out of Joseph in order to save the whole Israel—and indeed, the whole human population at the time—from extinction. In this case, therefore, it is, in my opinion, more accurate, to see the prison experience as a necessary part of a process—God’s grand schematic to accomplish his own purpose—rather than draw binary distinctions between the time Joseph was in jail, for example, and the time he became prime minister.   

In other words, the “negative” and the “positive” are not necessarily antithetical to each other (and especially so for the Christian) just as salting soup is not necessarily a less/ more positive experience than putting meat in the soup (since in the end both parts of the process give the soup its amazing taste). Claiming, therefore, that God came through for us at a particular time is to give the impression of a hitherto inactive God. Do I preach to the choir? Maybe. But my point is that the Christian can at all times be certain of God’s faithfulness, regardless of what is happening—and not only when things seem to go well for us. As I see it, Joseph’s sudden rise to prominence in Egypt was not a singular spectacular act of God’s faithfulness. Nor can it be divorced from the perceived negative experiences he had had. All Joseph’s life—when his brothers hated him and sold him to the slave traders, when Potiphar’s wife lied against him and he was thrown in jail—God had been faithful. All these “negative” episodes were indispensable pieces of the jigsaw of Joseph’s life. They had to be there for Joseph’s story to be complete. In fact, one even feels that the forgetfulness of Pharaoh’s cupbearer (for two whole years) to lobby for Joseph to get out of jail (Genesis 40:23) was purposefully orchestrated by God to prevent Joseph from interfering with God’s timeline. And yet—humor me—what do you think some men of God would preach about Joseph’s life had his story ended in prison? I think Joseph’s story would have been inspiration to many a deliverance minister for breaking the spirit of disappointment, forgetfulness and evil/ ungrateful friends. But all things being equal (although in reality all things are rarely ever so), had Joseph gotten out of prison through the intervention of that gentleman, Joseph would not have been the Joseph we know today. He might just have ended up being a free person in Egypt, perhaps exonerated for the crime he was thought to have committed (although even that is unlikely). Christian, no one has given you this Sisyphean task of proving God’s faithfulness. The God who called you is faithful (1 Thess. 5:24).  

Indulge me, please, as I now turn our attention to a tendency in testimony-sharing I truly loathe: hierarchizing and denominationalizing. Sometimes, to give the impression that we are the special object of God’s faithfulness/ favor, we resort to a rhetorical strategy of showing how we competed with other (sometimes more competent) people but it was we, not them, who got the opportunity in the end. A Christian may, for example, try to show how God has been good to them by telling a story of how they applied for a job together with some Muslim, but they (the Christian) got the job, rather than the Muslim. You see a shade of this rhetoric in the anecdote I began with when the gentleman talked about how another person was disqualified for him to win the scholarship. Such opportunities are then interpreted as God setting us apart and making his love to us obvious to all. In instances where these other people with whom we compete are Christians of other denominations, these opportunities may be interpreted as God’s special favor to our particular church denomination. 

But if we want to play politics, why do we fancy that we would have God as ally? Is God denominationalized? More a God of Great Commission Church International, than, for example, Lighthouse Chapel? More faithful to Church of Pentecost than Watered Gardens? Why do we sometimes give the impression that it is only if people come to our chapel that they can experience God? I daresay that much of our soulwinning enterprise is political. Even ministerial exploits can be worn like laurels, becoming platforms to inferiorize the efforts of others who haven’t achieved similar results. Because this inter-denominational politics is too appalling to linger long on, I turn my gaze on the matter of being in competition with unbelievers. Who said that being a Christian is the ticket to having a better life than non-Christians? Of course, if “better life” refers to “eternal life” or “Christ-like life”, then justifiably so. But if “better life”—as it usually does—refers to wealth, cars, affluence, fame, etc., then we ought to pause to ask ourselves if it is logically possible for people who have been told to lay for themselves treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:20) to outdo unbelievers in worldly possessions. I do not subscribe to the theology that a Christian must be poor. But I know that to be a Christian is to be sometimes disqualified from certain opportunities. As I know that persecution awaits all who desire to live godly lives (2 Tim. 3:12)—baffling our usual conception of the good life. Our hope in Christ is too valuable to be reduced to earthly possessions, for then, of all people, we would be the most pitiable indeed (1 Pet. 1:7; 1 Cor. 15:19).  

But, come, Christian, tell me, from where does this feeling of being in competition with unbelievers originate? From God? Why, if God’s interest is in making the Christian preeminent in worldly possessions, do you really believe that he would not have been a little more explicit—and consistent—about it? Is it not your God who gives unbelievers the stellar gifts—for we know that every good and perfect gift comes from God (Jas. 1:17; John 3:27)—which they even use against him in order to make wealth? It is your God who makes a king of Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17), Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 27:6) and Cyrus (Is. 44:28)—for his own purposes (Prov. 16:4). It is your God who gives people voices, with which they argue eloquently that God does not exist, and with which they swear and produce profane songs. Why, then, do you feel, when you compete with an unbeliever and win, that it’s a sign of God’s faithfulness? Have you even considered that this person who has lost this opportunity today could win a better than yours tomorrow? What would become of your doctrine of God’s faithfulness, then? What’s your definition of success, anyway? What’s the motive behind these needless battlelines you draw? God’s glory? Or yours? Look, let me point you to a holier competition: compete with unbelievers in being more Christlike. God will bless this.

Please allow me to focus, lastly, on the greatest danger we are prone to, namely that by drawing—or rather attempting to draw—explicit cause-and-effect relationships between situations and God’s faithfulness, we simplify complex relationships and wrongly presume to totally understand God’s ways. Who told you that you won a scholarship because you tithe? How would you explain the cases of people who do not tithe—or who are not Christians at all—but have won even more prestigious scholarships? Who told you that you got a job because you prayed all night? What about other people who have better-paying jobs but have never said a word of prayer? Or those who pray more but still have no jobs? Who told you that it is because you go to that church or because of your soul-winning ventures that you won that contract? Of course, there are instances where God himself tells us that a particular outcome is a result of a particular action. “Your faith has healed you”, said Jesus to the woman with the issue of blood (Mk. 5:34). God’s blessing to Abraham was also, as we see in the Scriptures, a direct result of Abraham’s obedience (Gen. 22:16-18). Absent of God revealing these things to us, it is rather presumptuous to draw such relationships, especially since co-existence can easily be mistaken for causality. To claim that a particular outcome was directly because of a particular action (when we do not conclusively know so) is to create expectations in the hearts of others, which when are not met when they replicate these actions, could be disastrous for their faith. One person prays all-night and gets a car. Thinking that the formula for getting cars is all-night prayer, he pushes others to do same and they do not get bicycles, even. Another gets a breakthrough some time after giving an offertory and prescribes it as a panacea for breakthroughs, never mind that others have done the same but have not received similar results. Experiences (as shared through testimonies) have their place, but they cannot replace doctrine. 

If this text gives the impression that I am attacking testimonies, then I’m afraid I’ve mis-argued. Testimonies are super important, and we must keep sharing them (Rev. 12:11). I’m only arguing for a more balanced perspective, seeing that our testimonies affect the faith of others, so that as much as is within our domain, we mitigate the negative unintended consequences that are likely to be triggered. To conclude, I would propose again that we consider these points, some of which reflect the highlights of this essay, a little deeply:

• Do we need to reconsider our conception of blessings? In answering this question, it might be helpful to take a closer look at the testimonies of the early church (Acts 5:41). 
• How can we share testimonies in ways that do not suggest we’re in competition with unbelievers and other Christians of other denominations? Or if we happen to be the hearers of such testimonies, how should we respond? 
• The conclusion that God is faithful is always correct, but could our premises be sometimes wrong? 
• Do we consider/ do our actions give the impression that we consider our service to God a means to an end?
• Does God deal with each of his children differently? To what extent should we prescribe our experiences to others as blueprints?