Christians Call It “testifying” Because It Sounds Better than “lying.”

Eli Harman

June 14, 2017 ·

Christians call it “testifying” because it sounds better than “lying.” But words actually mean things. And properly speaking one can only “testify” about what is in one’s personal, first hand, knowledge, which never includes stories about life after death and rarely includes those about supposed events, miraculous or mundane, thousands of years ago. Conflating storytelling with testimony is just lying about testifying, and probably lying about the contents of those stories as well. If one says “I believe that virtue in this life will be rewarded in another, in these particular ways” then one is simply testifying about the *beliefs* that motivate ones actions

But if one says, as if it is a matter of fact, “Virtue in this life is rewarded in another, and in these particular ways” then one is simply conflating theory with fact.

There is no problem with ADOPTING a theory and using it, with or without evidence, as long as the facts available do not contradict it (and sometimes even if they do.) But passing it off as fact, when it is not fact, is to make more of it than one honestly may.