Who is a witness ...?

Recently, S and I had a conversation about her understanding of being a witness.

She asked me, "Who is a witness to your life?" Who witnesses who you are as a person and what you have done in your life?

I said I wasn't sure I understood what she was asking. "Are you speaking of 'witness' as in a legal sense?"

No, she said. There are lots of other kinds of witnesses. John the Baptist was a witness. He witnessed to (or foretold of ) Jesus' coming. He also witnessed to others while Jesus did his preaching and teaching.

S said the shepherds were witnesses in the story of Jesus' birth. The angels too.

Okay, I said. A little light was emerging in the darkness of my mind.

A witness can be a person outside the legal sense. You have witnesses at a wedding. Yes, I agreed. They are people who will 'testify' or 'certify' that yes, on this day, in this place, these two people committed their lives to one another. That is certainly acting as a witness.

S believes her purpose (at least one purpose) in her life is to act or serve as a witness.

And, as my partner, I asked, what do you witness about me? S replied that I am hard on myself. There is a part of myself, deep within she guesses, that almost loathes who I am. She said, "Allow yourself to have flaws." Because I strive for such perfection, she said, I don't let others get too close, so they can't see the flaws ... the flaws that I can't bear to see in myself.

Ahh, yes. Ooh, ouch, no! The truth can be painful to hear.

Quote

from Marcus Borg:

..."It shifts the focus of the Christian life from believing in Jesus [italics my emphasis] or believing in God to being in relationship to the same Spirit that Jesus knew ... that Christian life moves beyond believing in God to being in relationship with God."

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And if you're unfamiliar with the author, here's a blurb about Marcus Borg:

Marcus Borg is an O[regon] S[tate] U[niversity] Distinguished Professor in Religion and Culture and the Hundere Endowed Chair in Religious Studies.

Known as one of the leading historical Jesus scholars of this generation, he recently organized and spoke at OSU’s nationally televised symposium, God at 2000, that included, among several internationally regarded scholars of religion, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu. Two of Borg’s nine books have become best-sellers — Jesus: A New Vision and Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. He has lectured at the Smithsonian and Chautauqua Institutions and in England, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Israel, and South Africa.

An outstanding teacher, Borg has received all of OSU’s major awards for teaching and has been recognized by the Oregon State Legislature. The first person in the OSU College of Liberal Arts to be designated as an OSU Distinguished Professor, Borg has twice been president of the CLA Faculty Council. His upper and lower-division courses include Great Ideas, World-Views and Values in the Bible, Philosophy and Religion, World-Views and Environmental Values, and Great Figures: The Historical Jesus.

Borg sees philosophy as primarily concerned with the role of ideas in our lives. “Ideas matter much more than we commonly think they do, especially our world-views and values, namely our ideas about what is real and how we are to live,” Borg says. “We receive such ideas from our culture as we grow up, and unless we examine them, we will not be free persons, but will to a large extent live out the agenda of our socialization.”