The Opposite Kind of Testimony

You may have heard someone describe her conversion to Christianity as
a process of "cleaning up." That is, she was going on the wrong
direction, into the wrong things, when she met Jesus, and having
decided to follow Him, "cleaned up" her life. And in fact, thanks be
to God that in the Bible and in history and in our present day, people
are coming to faith in this way; the power of the good news of the
life, death, and resurrection is still in business, freeing people
from abuse and addiction and anger.

I, however, have a bit of the opposite kind of testimony. In the
world's eyes, my life before I became a Christian was quite clean.
I'm not saying, of course, that I was sinless – far from it. When I
hear of God's forgiveness of my sins through Jesus' work on the cross,
it is not a theoretical salvation for me but a real one, from real
sins and real hurts. But my pre-Christ life was pretty clean.
Growing up in the suburbs, in a decent family and with decent friends,
life was clean.

It's my post-Christ life that has been messy. For just by dint of
living and working and worshipping in a big city like Philadelphia, I
have taken into my heart pains and burdens that were once foreign to
me in my former, sheltered life. I have known people who have
murdered and who have been murdered. I have prayed for and cried with
people dying of AIDS. I have come before God on behalf of friends
whose lives have been marred by substance abuse and sexual molestation
and childhood abandonment.

I am neither proud nor ashamed of my own faith journey. I do not look
down on or exalt those whose faith journeys have been different. For
whether your life has become cleaner or messier as a result of
following Jesus, even if your journey looks very different from mine,
we are going in the same direction to the same destination under the
watchful eye of the same God.