Testimony of a Journey

Following Jesus for many people creates some sharp turns, some complete turnarounds, and some left turns and some right turns. And often those on the journey of following Jesus requires respites and time away. Parents, pastors, and leaders at times grown impatient and resort to chiding and coercing the those on the journey to come back to where things were.

You can’t hurry love, and you can’t rush faith. Well, yes, you can. And both lose when they do.

Yahoo! News senior correspondent, Jon Ward, recently published a book called Testimony, a story (so far) of his journey in the faith. The subtitle, Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation, creates curiosity, and the reason why I picked the book up. Because he tells his story so well I couldn’t put it down.

Every generation has to come to terms with the Christian faith. Periods in history, as well as simplistic Gen X categories, require nuance. What they really need is for people to stop presuming “this generation” likes that, and the previous generation prefers “this.” Says who?!

Different people have different experiences, and different experiences and backgrounds form into rather singular characters and persons – and persons have a story to tell. Ward’s story is not a type of a story so much as a transparent depiction of his journey of faith that, often enough, corresponds with the experiences of others. The genre of the familiar essay works by one person – say Montaigne or Richard Rodriguez – writing up an experience that sheds light on another person’s testimony (there you have it). Ward’s book is not a string of “lines out for a walk,” to quote a well-known familiar essayist, but most of the chapters are short reflections on his life.

And his testimony of the journey of faith zigs toward his experience at Covenant Life Church (aka, Sovereign Grace stuff) with C.J. Mahaney, and then it zags to his vocation as a political correspondent, and then it zigs to his family (wife, children, father, siblings), and then zags back to politics. Ward’s journey, because of his commitment to following Jesus, explores the shocking reality of so many in his circle of evangelicalism, which I hasten to add is but one group and not what many in that group think – namely, the best and most faithful version of evangelicalism – I resume: the shocking reality of so many abandoning the way of Jesus for the way of Trump. His discovery cost him dearly.

Ward is as honest about himself as he is forthright in his descriptions of C.J. Mahaney; he does not slay the guy but he’s clearly got his eye on the corruptions and connections Mahaney somehow managed as he dropped out of college, started a church with a theme of humility on steroids, got cornered a couple times for nothing less than corruptions and deceit, managed to escape to Louisville where he joined hands with Al Mohler who eventually turned his back on C.J. Mahaney. What comes of Mahaney’s impact on Ward was a de-politicizing by Mahaney while another guy, Engle, became obsessed with abortion and political influence in the apostolic nonsense that draws in Eric Metaxas.

Ward made the decision in his journalism career to educate himself in politics and history, and it led him in a completely different direction that Mahaney mapped and that Engle chose. He pursued truth as he could know it. Ward:

The process by which we find truth is maybe the most important thing. It takes work to locate, and often as soon as we think we have grasp it comma it slips away. Truth is not a script. It is not a cheat sheet for life. Truth does not come from picking a set of answers and then arranging all the questions so that they line up correctly. Truth starts with questions period it requires an openness – to other points of view and experiences, to being wrong, to changing one's mind. A commitment to truth involves A passionate embrace of critical thinking.”

And his Christian faith was not just a companion but became his guiding light, and his guiding light has been the vision of Jesus for the kingdom of God. Jesus was for justice and compassion and mercy and uplift, and Ward had to educate himself on this and politics because, as I read him, neither got the attention they deserved in his evangelical bubble. C.J. Mahaney, if anything, was a bubble maker. By the way, Shannon Bonne (Harris), who was married to Josh Harris at Mahaney’s church, has her own memoir coming out in a couple months, and she details more dimensions of the nonsense at that church. Her book’s title is The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusions of the Good Christian Woman. I promise you a moving memoir.

Back to Ward. It begins especially with Reagan, though the historians like Daniel Hummel and others, can show the Reagan era was not a “period” unlike other periods. With Reagan, however, evangelicals like Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and James Kennedy (don’t forget his role in the history) led massive, populist segments into radical alliance with the Republican party and waved abortion as their magic wand. Ward becomes aware of this alliance, the combinations of some distinct Christian teachings (like complementarianism, like masculinism, like a brand of Calvinism) with charismatic influential leaders (like Mahaney, like Grudem, like Mohler) with the political world meant the evangelical movement failed a generation.

Here’s how: it did not, Ward emphasizes, teach them to think critically. Ward: “Twenty years ago, I thought that the biggest threats to truth were postmodern relativism and godless liberals. Today, to my shock, my own tribe of Christians has taken a battering ram to truth.”

The followers of the supposed evangelical voices became sycophants to leaders, followed them down the path, and failed to think. Those of you who have read my Revelation for the Rest of Us, or have heard one of my podcasts about it, know that I believe Revelation is uber-relevant today both to expose the political chicanery of so many evangelicals and to guide them into becoming – another Ward category – discerners of the times instead of political partisans. Dissidents, if you will, of Babylon. That’s how I say it. I think Ward would agree in part.

Ward’s book should be read by a wide audience because it tells the story of one man coming to terms with the Christian faith in a way that gave him the capacity to be a double dissident: he is a dissident about church corruption and a dissident about political nonsense. His exposure of Trump’s incapacity to tell the truth is worth the price of the book. Deceit, you may know from Revelation, is the way of the Dragon’s beasts.

Ward sums up his journey like this: “This is my account of trying to walk the path Jesus spoke of, despite all the ways I've seen the pursuit of truth sidelined, dismissed, and blocked, often in the name of faith.”