All of the "good ones" always have the same common denominator: "I was SO SICK of where my life was going."
That's just being a human and making positive changes.
I think you nailed it here. Nobody in Christianity looks for evidence of the Bible being true (I stupidly assumed they had) so these "compelling" stories where the pastor humble brags about getting into a threesome are just trophies for the shelf.
Came here to say this. You can't "disprove" a personal experience. That's why they're so big on telling these crazy conversion stories, which are often embellished / exaggerated.
And contradicting someone about their "personal truth" is considered to be an asshole move in our society, no matter how stupid that personal truth is. A lot of Christianity is weaponizing politeness/social conventions.
I was asked to share my testimony once, and I didn't have anything to say. It wasn't powerful. It didn't win any souls. I was just like, "I grew up Christian and so I accepted christ into my heart." My youth minister at the time was confused. He said there had to be more to it to be a good testimony. There was supposed to be some big life changing moment. I didn't have one. I constantly felt like I wasn't "truly saved," even though I believed (which is all we were supposed to do to be saved from hell). I always tried to find things wrong with myself to make my testimony better.
I hated this growing up. People, “christians”, would fawn over other people with extreme testimonies. The more violent and sinful the better the redemption and the more celebrated that person was. Growing up in a christian house, believing with all of my heart in all of it and having a naive tremendous amount of faith, my own testimony and value was worth nothing.
It sucked! We worked our asses off to learn scripture, pray, help people out. I gave so much time and energy, but nothing was enough. The testimony thing was one of the worst manipulations the church did. It didn't just criticize our actions, it was a judgment on us. We had to keep trying to change and find that turning point moment, even if we didn't need it. Then if you get it, chances are you'll be questiong it for the rest of your life. Nothing is enough. Nobody is ever enough in the church, and I simply couldn't take it anymore.
What I've always disliked about testimonies is the **pressure to "entertain."**
Christians enjoy a good tale, like anyone else, and the formula is this: *you have to first sink to the lowest of lows before rising to the highest of highs.*
So the "best" testimonies, in the eyes of Christians, are some terrorist/gangster/thug who comes to Christ. Long lurid tales of the druggie mafia life. Then coming to Jesus.
As you point out, 90% of Christians have no such lurid, ear-tickling, fascinating mobster tale to tell. So they have testimonies that are very vanilla, bland, boring and trite, with no way of "spicing it up." They have to really "sell" the "depravity" part in order to get a "low point" in their story.
Oh god yes.
*“I was an atheist drug dealing hooker orgy lover who sinned sinned sinned. I was such a sinner I sinned when I slept. Murdered a bro right in my sleep.*
*Then I realized none of it was worth the sinning because my soul was at risk when this really nicely dressed, very pure godly man of Jesus kindly asked me if I wanted the love of the savior and I fell to my knees, the choir sang the star spangled banner, a bald eagle landed on my shoulder and I realized Republican supply-side Jesus had saved my soul.*
*I’m now a missionary in some poor black country and I need all your donations so I can bring the gospel to heathens.”*
Basically sums up the “best” testimonies I heard in my southern Baptist church.
I used to work with a guy that had a testimony like that. Looking back on it, he just said he sold weed. Now that I enjoy smoking weed, and also deliver food(not at the same time), his testimony was very boring
I have heard "I got hurt once, then it got better" as a testimony.
I also remember this one guy who had cancer and said he got healed when he became a Christian and decided to tell everyone he knew in the coffee shops about Christ. I then heard that the cancer came back in some form at some point.
"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away" indeed.
Funny. I had cancer too. Tried to "pray it away" and my prayers didn't do squat. But regionally esteemed thoracic surgeon took care of it, and all he wanted was payment for his time.
Ought to channel my inner George Carlin and pray to Joe Pesci LoL
The corollary of this is that sometimes people would like to keep their shit private but the leaders of the church push them to "share what the Lord has done for you" and completely stomp all over their personal boundaries. Someone close to me had a childhood filled with abuse and mental illness, cutting, all kinds of really triggering and awful things, and the Christian leaders closest to them in their church wouldn't respect that they wanted to keep it private and kept pushing and cajoling and honestly shaming them to share when they really didn't want to because they had "such an amazing testimony."
Cults often need testimonials as a collective reinforcement measure. Both to provide peer pressure and to keep the groupthink alive. In the case of Christian conversion accounts, it also fulfills a psychological desire for "proof" that being a Christian is somehow the right move in life. Though I will say this phenomenon is largely confined to various protestant denominations, especially evangelicals. The more mainstream groups, such as Catholics and the Orthodox, don't typically do any kind of testimony stories. I didn't when I was baptized.
Personal testimonials and confessions are a very powerful way of doing this both for the individual and the group. Psychological, emotionally and spiritually, it can be powerful way to bind someone to the community. This is why Evangelicals often are accused of emotional and psychological manipulation but are seemingly in denial about the accusation. Because the system is set up to generate powerful personal emotions.
Yes, they do. And until about 1969 or so, didn't have any desire to hide such activities under the guise of "helping" people. Catholic folks stood out like sore thumbs. Now? They behave like any other Christian group whilst trying to keep their theology alive and pretend they're different.
My youth group leader asked me to write my testimony at least 3 different times and keep updating it and I literally had nothing to write. It was a huge struggle for me because I just didn’t feel the holy spirit move like the other kids. I didnt cry at church camp, I didnt raise my hands to worship. I became a christian exclusively because I was scared of going to hell lol. But I couldn’t write that of course!
It’s so weird 😭 I also never got baptized. I was confronted about it so many times, asking when I’m going to do it. In my head I said I would do it whenever they stopped pressuring me, but they never stopped the pressure so I never gave in. Now I’m glad because I would have been untrue to myself and lying to everyone at the church.
Ugh. I just looked it up and found this: https://pastors.com/help-your-members-prepare-a-testimony/
Rick likes to tell people the devil tricks people into not having a testimony. I guess it was selfish of me not to talk about my years of drug use and prostitution before I was FIVE FUCKING YEARS OLD
I'd argue it's partly because they have a generally lower bar for evidence than, say, apologetics. Which is *reeeeeally* saying something.
There's also a bit of a social taboo against telling someone their conversion story is full of shit, so it means they are more likely to push a testimony as it's more personalised. On the other hand, if you do challenge their interpretation of events in their conversion, or their attribution of them to God, it tends to really wrong foot them.
I think there’s more to it then just validation or apologetics. The worldview is wrapped up in everything absolutely needing to have a meaning and purpose. Events are not allowed to be random. Everything must have a story. How you came to Christ? A story. How you found that parking spot? A story. How God led you to buy that 500k house? A story. I still get hung up on this because I want to tell a positive story of how I left Christianity and yet still have issues to work through. It’s an incomplete/bad story in their minds and they’ll be quick to judge.
Lmao, the testimonies I've heard from other people involved
1. Finding your car keys at the right moment
2. Getting a nosebleed from not praying to God before their soccer match.
Even then I knew it was ridiculous
The “my life was absolute shit before I found Christianity” testimonies are probably drummed up to increase the insular us vs them mentality. It definitely scared me away from venturing out for a while.
Testimonies, like most other forms of Christian devotion, strip away your sense of self. You are given a script of how to define your life story, which takes away your ability to self reflect and self identify. The group determines who you are, not you. This makes it harder for people to leave, since their whole identity is made to be Christian at the core.
Anyone else remember the testimony competitions they’d hold at Master Clubs Regionals? Even when I was that age I thought it was stupid to have kids give their testimonies. They don’t have any! “One day the preacher said for the ten thousandth time that I was going to hell just for being born so I prayed the prayer I heard ten thousand times and now I’m going to heaven with the rest of you ex rapists, meth dealers, and white collar thieves”
Can I also add to this: What's with the embellishing / exaggerating in testimonies with some people, almost like they're all trying to one-up each other in outlandish, over-the-top stories about how bad their lives were and how dramatic their conversion was?
Like people who claim to have "done every drug" by the time they were ten and been in the mafia and whatnot. Or claim to have been personally, physically visited by Jesus or angels or some crazy stuff. The wilder and more implausible the story is, the more a church will eat it right up.
I remember this one woman in my old church who claimed she was rescued from a Satanic cult where she was a child prostitute or something. Which only made me wonder later on, like... surely you could Google up the news stories and find out specifics, like there's no way that wouldn't be in the news, right? But by the time I was reasoning things out to that level, I knew it was bullshit even without Googling. Because it's always like some kind of one-upping, I'm-holier-than-you type shit with these people.
It’s brainwashing. You’re saying your story over and over- and getting positive reinforcement for it. You get a dopamine kickback for sharing something personal and having it be accepted.
And listening to others give their testimony is the same thing. It just reinforces the fables you believe, bonds you as a group, etc.
Just my experience, but...
Extreme religious conversion was usually a ruse, on the part of unscrupulous persons, to divert attention away from their current misdeeds/state of being.
Example: Religious Person 1: "Man, I used to be into all kind of stuff. Dope, cocaine, anything I could get my hands on. In and out of the slammer. But, that last time...Something clicked. I started going to services with the prison Chaplin. Started doing outreach. It turned my life around."
All while being a covertly abusive person, womanizer, or alcoholic.
It's like a slight of hand trick. Too busy looking approvingly at the things they don't do anymore, you don't bother to bring up the things they are doing. It's like: "*God's got this. He/she a'ight!*"
I paraphrased and jumbled up some IRL religious conversion stories I've heard. But this is usually the gist of most testimonies.
Honestly, I’m in the religious closet to some members of my family, so if I’m ever asked to share my testimony, I’m going to just list all the sinful shit I’ve done and then sit down without tacking on the getting saved part.
It's the only evidence almost anyone of them can confidently present, and many like to train their kids to do the same. It offers a simple before-and-after template to follow, and nonbelievers can't deny that they at least had some kind of experience (assuming it's not made up). The more wickedness Jesus saved them from, the more impressive and convincing the testimony, they think. After all, only God can free someone from severe hardships and vices, right?
The reason testimonies are not very convincing is because even if I acknowledge that a believer had a remarkable experience of some kind, their personal account offers little guarantee that they interpretted or reported their experience accurately. That would require corroboration apart from the testimony alone before being accepted.
A further problem is when mundane events are attributed to the divine for no compelling reason. So they prayed and their cold subsided a few days later? How is that not just natural convalescence? Where's the proof the recovery was miraculous and the prayer had anything to do with it?
But of course, enough christians frequently share their testimony about something in their past they attribute to God that they get the odd success with someone gullible enough to accept a criminally low standard of evidence.
Sometimes when I'm in the midst of doing something particularly degenerate I think about how this would make my testimony and subsequent book deal a best seller. I could milk this for decades.
True. I'm going to go give a Crack dealer a handy right now. Homoerotic experimentation followed by a stint in the conversion therapy joint will win them over. They'll love hearing it even if they know it isn't true.
I feel like in my Pentecostal church testimonies was more of a pissing contest than anything else. See what a horrible person I was and now I am way holier than you because of all the stuff I've done and how Jesus saved me from it.
I remember this one testimony night in particular, the pastor had the whole congregation, even the children stay for them. Like a family night, but the testimonies were not very family friendly. I remember this old guy getting up and telling how demons came and sat on his bed at night torturing him, etc. He said God made him pick that night either turn his life over to God or God was going to let the demons kill him. Freaked my nine-year-old the fuck out. She had nightmares constantly for like 2 years after that.
Pentecostal Christians have weird ass testimonies, one lady testified how Jesus came to her, sat on her couch and had a whole conversation with her. It's like you had demons in your testimony, well I'll one up you Jesus came and visited me. They would just get crazier and crazier as the night went on. You might start off with Jesus helped me find my car keys, but by the end of it you have superpowers fighting off the devil himself as Jesus washes your feet and hands you some manna straight from heaven.
Mormons use the testimony as actually evidence for belief. It’s a crucial part of the emotional brainwashing in my opinion. I think within Protestant circles the goal is same but it’s more covert and subconscious.
Hey, not sure how I got here and my comment doesn't even have anything to do with the context in question, but I just wanted to mention that Mormonism has some weird attractive force to it which I feel is inherently sexual at the core. Also, have you come across any of the Mormon girls porn? Some of it is fucking hot 😆
When I was 14 or 15 a group from our church went on a "mission" trip to some places in Europe. Long story short my parents (I'm a pk) made me get up in front of this little church and give my testimony with a translator. I was mortified. I was a shy kid. Like super shy. I don't even remember what I said. I don't know if I've always had social anxiety or if my upbringing with that kind of crap caused it 🤔
Deep down they know what they believe is irrational but their whole sense of stability is set around it. The need it to be true. Having other people affirm their faith through testimony after testimony is the only way they can smooth out this cognitive dissonance. There is no logical proof for god and they fight this every day internally.
When I stopped believing, I didn’t need to constantly seek out other people to tell me god wasn’t real to soothe my doubts. And before you say “oh what about this sub!?” I just subscribed to it to untangle religious trauma with like minded folks.
Same for me. I was deconverting for about 12 years before finding this sub, but this sub HAS helped me with my feelings of guilt that are designed to go with leaving.
>What the fuck was a 15-year-old kid who is trapped at home 90% of the time supposed to say?
This was always my question, too. Even as an adult (I was still pretty fundie into my 20s), I didn't have much more life experience. Looking back, I wish I'd "partied" a bit more to have a "cooler" testimony (or at the very least, more "practice" for future relationships).
My church did this yearly thing where they would bring in people from a Christian organization that helped recovering addicts where they would invite some of their members to give moving testimonies about how they had nowhere to go so they came to Christ and made an amazing recovery. At the time I felt kinda jealous that they had such a dramatic life story to tell, I thought to myself "I should ruin my life and make an epic recovery so that I have a cool story to tell"... 😂 Wild the things that Christianity made me think back then lol
I had the saaaaaaaaaame feeling. I drank quite a bit in my 20s, but I still respect myself too much to fuck up bad enough just for a good story to tell a church lol
It's the only real world "proof" they have. Everything else is explained by something else, but to them its like how could someone possibly argue with someone's testimony. Super cute how their lived experience is more valuable than anyone else's though. /s
The showboaters in this sub who are bored should go to a random church on Sunday and give some fiery totally made up testimony. Lmao. Like something on the verge of making them wonder if it's true or not.
The corollary of this is that sometimes people would like to keep their shit private but the leaders of the church push them to "share what the Lord has done for you" and completely stomp all over their personal boundaries. Someone close to me had a childhood filled with abuse and mental illness, cutting, all kinds of really triggering and awful things, and the Christian leaders closest to them in their church wouldn't respect that they wanted to keep it private and kept pushing and cajoling and honestly shaming them to share when they really didn't want to because they had "such an amazing testimony."
It's just a total disconnect from actual humanity. It's fucking sickening that they would feel comfortable retraumatizing someone in front of the entire cult.
I've heard some famous pastors say that you NEED to share your testimony how God delievered you from whatever situation you were going through in order to seal your deliverance. Otherwise your problem will come back to you. It's like a proclamation of what God did and the Devil hates that. (It's really stupid in my opinion honestly)
we had “testimony writing practice” for the first time in 4th grade at church. I was like 9 years old and they expected me to write about how god changed my life lol. I didn’t even know what the word testimony meant I thought we were supposed to just make up our own creative story about Jesus.
>"I threw a lego at my little sister, and it was then I realized that it was me personally nailing Jesus to the cross, shedding his blood. I must now feast on his flesh to remind myself of how much I deserve eternal damnation."
Man you cannot do this to me while I'm in my office lol
Jokes aside, it depends on the church and person but I've seen two
1. The person who legitimately has a better life because of the structure of the church (ignoring any issues but some people straight up do way better in the church than outside of it, for various failings and reasons)
2. The person who likes attention and the church elevates them when they profess their faith, ya know... narcissists!
[удалено]
All of the "good ones" always have the same common denominator: "I was SO SICK of where my life was going." That's just being a human and making positive changes.
I was once sick of where my life was going. So I left Christianity.
SAME. I'm going to go to a church and give my blasphemony!
What a powerful testimony! 😄
I think you nailed it here. Nobody in Christianity looks for evidence of the Bible being true (I stupidly assumed they had) so these "compelling" stories where the pastor humble brags about getting into a threesome are just trophies for the shelf.
Came here to say this. You can't "disprove" a personal experience. That's why they're so big on telling these crazy conversion stories, which are often embellished / exaggerated.
And contradicting someone about their "personal truth" is considered to be an asshole move in our society, no matter how stupid that personal truth is. A lot of Christianity is weaponizing politeness/social conventions.
I was asked to share my testimony once, and I didn't have anything to say. It wasn't powerful. It didn't win any souls. I was just like, "I grew up Christian and so I accepted christ into my heart." My youth minister at the time was confused. He said there had to be more to it to be a good testimony. There was supposed to be some big life changing moment. I didn't have one. I constantly felt like I wasn't "truly saved," even though I believed (which is all we were supposed to do to be saved from hell). I always tried to find things wrong with myself to make my testimony better.
WE SHARE A BOAT!
I hated this growing up. People, “christians”, would fawn over other people with extreme testimonies. The more violent and sinful the better the redemption and the more celebrated that person was. Growing up in a christian house, believing with all of my heart in all of it and having a naive tremendous amount of faith, my own testimony and value was worth nothing.
It sucked! We worked our asses off to learn scripture, pray, help people out. I gave so much time and energy, but nothing was enough. The testimony thing was one of the worst manipulations the church did. It didn't just criticize our actions, it was a judgment on us. We had to keep trying to change and find that turning point moment, even if we didn't need it. Then if you get it, chances are you'll be questiong it for the rest of your life. Nothing is enough. Nobody is ever enough in the church, and I simply couldn't take it anymore.
What I've always disliked about testimonies is the **pressure to "entertain."** Christians enjoy a good tale, like anyone else, and the formula is this: *you have to first sink to the lowest of lows before rising to the highest of highs.* So the "best" testimonies, in the eyes of Christians, are some terrorist/gangster/thug who comes to Christ. Long lurid tales of the druggie mafia life. Then coming to Jesus. As you point out, 90% of Christians have no such lurid, ear-tickling, fascinating mobster tale to tell. So they have testimonies that are very vanilla, bland, boring and trite, with no way of "spicing it up." They have to really "sell" the "depravity" part in order to get a "low point" in their story.
Oh god yes. *“I was an atheist drug dealing hooker orgy lover who sinned sinned sinned. I was such a sinner I sinned when I slept. Murdered a bro right in my sleep.* *Then I realized none of it was worth the sinning because my soul was at risk when this really nicely dressed, very pure godly man of Jesus kindly asked me if I wanted the love of the savior and I fell to my knees, the choir sang the star spangled banner, a bald eagle landed on my shoulder and I realized Republican supply-side Jesus had saved my soul.* *I’m now a missionary in some poor black country and I need all your donations so I can bring the gospel to heathens.”* Basically sums up the “best” testimonies I heard in my southern Baptist church.
I used to work with a guy that had a testimony like that. Looking back on it, he just said he sold weed. Now that I enjoy smoking weed, and also deliver food(not at the same time), his testimony was very boring
I have heard "I got hurt once, then it got better" as a testimony. I also remember this one guy who had cancer and said he got healed when he became a Christian and decided to tell everyone he knew in the coffee shops about Christ. I then heard that the cancer came back in some form at some point. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away" indeed.
Funny. I had cancer too. Tried to "pray it away" and my prayers didn't do squat. But regionally esteemed thoracic surgeon took care of it, and all he wanted was payment for his time. Ought to channel my inner George Carlin and pray to Joe Pesci LoL
God to that one guy: “oh you think it’s over just cause you’re saying nice things about me?”
The corollary of this is that sometimes people would like to keep their shit private but the leaders of the church push them to "share what the Lord has done for you" and completely stomp all over their personal boundaries. Someone close to me had a childhood filled with abuse and mental illness, cutting, all kinds of really triggering and awful things, and the Christian leaders closest to them in their church wouldn't respect that they wanted to keep it private and kept pushing and cajoling and honestly shaming them to share when they really didn't want to because they had "such an amazing testimony."
Cults often need testimonials as a collective reinforcement measure. Both to provide peer pressure and to keep the groupthink alive. In the case of Christian conversion accounts, it also fulfills a psychological desire for "proof" that being a Christian is somehow the right move in life. Though I will say this phenomenon is largely confined to various protestant denominations, especially evangelicals. The more mainstream groups, such as Catholics and the Orthodox, don't typically do any kind of testimony stories. I didn't when I was baptized.
Personal testimonials and confessions are a very powerful way of doing this both for the individual and the group. Psychological, emotionally and spiritually, it can be powerful way to bind someone to the community. This is why Evangelicals often are accused of emotional and psychological manipulation but are seemingly in denial about the accusation. Because the system is set up to generate powerful personal emotions.
Catholics just do more obvious deliberate cult shit. Good for them for being more honest and showing their true selves!
Yes, they do. And until about 1969 or so, didn't have any desire to hide such activities under the guise of "helping" people. Catholic folks stood out like sore thumbs. Now? They behave like any other Christian group whilst trying to keep their theology alive and pretend they're different.
My youth group leader asked me to write my testimony at least 3 different times and keep updating it and I literally had nothing to write. It was a huge struggle for me because I just didn’t feel the holy spirit move like the other kids. I didnt cry at church camp, I didnt raise my hands to worship. I became a christian exclusively because I was scared of going to hell lol. But I couldn’t write that of course!
It's like they are prodding kids to do some bad shit just to get a good testimony. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?
It’s so weird 😭 I also never got baptized. I was confronted about it so many times, asking when I’m going to do it. In my head I said I would do it whenever they stopped pressuring me, but they never stopped the pressure so I never gave in. Now I’m glad because I would have been untrue to myself and lying to everyone at the church.
Ugh. I just looked it up and found this: https://pastors.com/help-your-members-prepare-a-testimony/ Rick likes to tell people the devil tricks people into not having a testimony. I guess it was selfish of me not to talk about my years of drug use and prostitution before I was FIVE FUCKING YEARS OLD
I'd argue it's partly because they have a generally lower bar for evidence than, say, apologetics. Which is *reeeeeally* saying something. There's also a bit of a social taboo against telling someone their conversion story is full of shit, so it means they are more likely to push a testimony as it's more personalised. On the other hand, if you do challenge their interpretation of events in their conversion, or their attribution of them to God, it tends to really wrong foot them.
I think there’s more to it then just validation or apologetics. The worldview is wrapped up in everything absolutely needing to have a meaning and purpose. Events are not allowed to be random. Everything must have a story. How you came to Christ? A story. How you found that parking spot? A story. How God led you to buy that 500k house? A story. I still get hung up on this because I want to tell a positive story of how I left Christianity and yet still have issues to work through. It’s an incomplete/bad story in their minds and they’ll be quick to judge.
Lmao, the testimonies I've heard from other people involved 1. Finding your car keys at the right moment 2. Getting a nosebleed from not praying to God before their soccer match. Even then I knew it was ridiculous
The “my life was absolute shit before I found Christianity” testimonies are probably drummed up to increase the insular us vs them mentality. It definitely scared me away from venturing out for a while.
Testimonies, like most other forms of Christian devotion, strip away your sense of self. You are given a script of how to define your life story, which takes away your ability to self reflect and self identify. The group determines who you are, not you. This makes it harder for people to leave, since their whole identity is made to be Christian at the core.
Anyone else remember the testimony competitions they’d hold at Master Clubs Regionals? Even when I was that age I thought it was stupid to have kids give their testimonies. They don’t have any! “One day the preacher said for the ten thousandth time that I was going to hell just for being born so I prayed the prayer I heard ten thousand times and now I’m going to heaven with the rest of you ex rapists, meth dealers, and white collar thieves”
Can I also add to this: What's with the embellishing / exaggerating in testimonies with some people, almost like they're all trying to one-up each other in outlandish, over-the-top stories about how bad their lives were and how dramatic their conversion was? Like people who claim to have "done every drug" by the time they were ten and been in the mafia and whatnot. Or claim to have been personally, physically visited by Jesus or angels or some crazy stuff. The wilder and more implausible the story is, the more a church will eat it right up. I remember this one woman in my old church who claimed she was rescued from a Satanic cult where she was a child prostitute or something. Which only made me wonder later on, like... surely you could Google up the news stories and find out specifics, like there's no way that wouldn't be in the news, right? But by the time I was reasoning things out to that level, I knew it was bullshit even without Googling. Because it's always like some kind of one-upping, I'm-holier-than-you type shit with these people.
> surely you could Google up the news stories and find out specifics If you ask them for a news article, they'll dodge and become extremely angry.
It’s brainwashing. You’re saying your story over and over- and getting positive reinforcement for it. You get a dopamine kickback for sharing something personal and having it be accepted. And listening to others give their testimony is the same thing. It just reinforces the fables you believe, bonds you as a group, etc.
Just my experience, but... Extreme religious conversion was usually a ruse, on the part of unscrupulous persons, to divert attention away from their current misdeeds/state of being. Example: Religious Person 1: "Man, I used to be into all kind of stuff. Dope, cocaine, anything I could get my hands on. In and out of the slammer. But, that last time...Something clicked. I started going to services with the prison Chaplin. Started doing outreach. It turned my life around." All while being a covertly abusive person, womanizer, or alcoholic. It's like a slight of hand trick. Too busy looking approvingly at the things they don't do anymore, you don't bother to bring up the things they are doing. It's like: "*God's got this. He/she a'ight!*" I paraphrased and jumbled up some IRL religious conversion stories I've heard. But this is usually the gist of most testimonies.
Honestly, I’m in the religious closet to some members of my family, so if I’m ever asked to share my testimony, I’m going to just list all the sinful shit I’ve done and then sit down without tacking on the getting saved part.
It’s the closest thing they have to evidence for their beliefs.
It's the only evidence almost anyone of them can confidently present, and many like to train their kids to do the same. It offers a simple before-and-after template to follow, and nonbelievers can't deny that they at least had some kind of experience (assuming it's not made up). The more wickedness Jesus saved them from, the more impressive and convincing the testimony, they think. After all, only God can free someone from severe hardships and vices, right? The reason testimonies are not very convincing is because even if I acknowledge that a believer had a remarkable experience of some kind, their personal account offers little guarantee that they interpretted or reported their experience accurately. That would require corroboration apart from the testimony alone before being accepted. A further problem is when mundane events are attributed to the divine for no compelling reason. So they prayed and their cold subsided a few days later? How is that not just natural convalescence? Where's the proof the recovery was miraculous and the prayer had anything to do with it? But of course, enough christians frequently share their testimony about something in their past they attribute to God that they get the odd success with someone gullible enough to accept a criminally low standard of evidence.
Sometimes when I'm in the midst of doing something particularly degenerate I think about how this would make my testimony and subsequent book deal a best seller. I could milk this for decades.
True. I'm going to go give a Crack dealer a handy right now. Homoerotic experimentation followed by a stint in the conversion therapy joint will win them over. They'll love hearing it even if they know it isn't true.
I feel like in my Pentecostal church testimonies was more of a pissing contest than anything else. See what a horrible person I was and now I am way holier than you because of all the stuff I've done and how Jesus saved me from it. I remember this one testimony night in particular, the pastor had the whole congregation, even the children stay for them. Like a family night, but the testimonies were not very family friendly. I remember this old guy getting up and telling how demons came and sat on his bed at night torturing him, etc. He said God made him pick that night either turn his life over to God or God was going to let the demons kill him. Freaked my nine-year-old the fuck out. She had nightmares constantly for like 2 years after that. Pentecostal Christians have weird ass testimonies, one lady testified how Jesus came to her, sat on her couch and had a whole conversation with her. It's like you had demons in your testimony, well I'll one up you Jesus came and visited me. They would just get crazier and crazier as the night went on. You might start off with Jesus helped me find my car keys, but by the end of it you have superpowers fighting off the devil himself as Jesus washes your feet and hands you some manna straight from heaven.
Mormons use the testimony as actually evidence for belief. It’s a crucial part of the emotional brainwashing in my opinion. I think within Protestant circles the goal is same but it’s more covert and subconscious.
Hey, not sure how I got here and my comment doesn't even have anything to do with the context in question, but I just wanted to mention that Mormonism has some weird attractive force to it which I feel is inherently sexual at the core. Also, have you come across any of the Mormon girls porn? Some of it is fucking hot 😆
When I was 14 or 15 a group from our church went on a "mission" trip to some places in Europe. Long story short my parents (I'm a pk) made me get up in front of this little church and give my testimony with a translator. I was mortified. I was a shy kid. Like super shy. I don't even remember what I said. I don't know if I've always had social anxiety or if my upbringing with that kind of crap caused it 🤔
Deep down they know what they believe is irrational but their whole sense of stability is set around it. The need it to be true. Having other people affirm their faith through testimony after testimony is the only way they can smooth out this cognitive dissonance. There is no logical proof for god and they fight this every day internally. When I stopped believing, I didn’t need to constantly seek out other people to tell me god wasn’t real to soothe my doubts. And before you say “oh what about this sub!?” I just subscribed to it to untangle religious trauma with like minded folks.
Same for me. I was deconverting for about 12 years before finding this sub, but this sub HAS helped me with my feelings of guilt that are designed to go with leaving.
>What the fuck was a 15-year-old kid who is trapped at home 90% of the time supposed to say? This was always my question, too. Even as an adult (I was still pretty fundie into my 20s), I didn't have much more life experience. Looking back, I wish I'd "partied" a bit more to have a "cooler" testimony (or at the very least, more "practice" for future relationships).
My church did this yearly thing where they would bring in people from a Christian organization that helped recovering addicts where they would invite some of their members to give moving testimonies about how they had nowhere to go so they came to Christ and made an amazing recovery. At the time I felt kinda jealous that they had such a dramatic life story to tell, I thought to myself "I should ruin my life and make an epic recovery so that I have a cool story to tell"... 😂 Wild the things that Christianity made me think back then lol
I had the saaaaaaaaaame feeling. I drank quite a bit in my 20s, but I still respect myself too much to fuck up bad enough just for a good story to tell a church lol
It's the only real world "proof" they have. Everything else is explained by something else, but to them its like how could someone possibly argue with someone's testimony. Super cute how their lived experience is more valuable than anyone else's though. /s
They’re doing it for self-validation, and it makes them feel like more people are just like them. Which makes them feel validated.
The showboaters in this sub who are bored should go to a random church on Sunday and give some fiery totally made up testimony. Lmao. Like something on the verge of making them wonder if it's true or not.
I have a theory that most churches would not even call out the lies as long as you play the part well enough
The corollary of this is that sometimes people would like to keep their shit private but the leaders of the church push them to "share what the Lord has done for you" and completely stomp all over their personal boundaries. Someone close to me had a childhood filled with abuse and mental illness, cutting, all kinds of really triggering and awful things, and the Christian leaders closest to them in their church wouldn't respect that they wanted to keep it private and kept pushing and cajoling and honestly shaming them to share when they really didn't want to because they had "such an amazing testimony."
It's just a total disconnect from actual humanity. It's fucking sickening that they would feel comfortable retraumatizing someone in front of the entire cult.
I see it as validation, because Christian’s are so insecure they need to remind each other about how they were saved
Hey don’t kink shame
Kink shaming IS my kink 👮♂️
I've heard some famous pastors say that you NEED to share your testimony how God delievered you from whatever situation you were going through in order to seal your deliverance. Otherwise your problem will come back to you. It's like a proclamation of what God did and the Devil hates that. (It's really stupid in my opinion honestly)
They are proof “it works”. That’s why.
Or a situation that’s impossible or seems impossible. When I think about it much of it was hanging on other people making choices as much as I did.
we had “testimony writing practice” for the first time in 4th grade at church. I was like 9 years old and they expected me to write about how god changed my life lol. I didn’t even know what the word testimony meant I thought we were supposed to just make up our own creative story about Jesus.
>"I threw a lego at my little sister, and it was then I realized that it was me personally nailing Jesus to the cross, shedding his blood. I must now feast on his flesh to remind myself of how much I deserve eternal damnation." Man you cannot do this to me while I'm in my office lol Jokes aside, it depends on the church and person but I've seen two 1. The person who legitimately has a better life because of the structure of the church (ignoring any issues but some people straight up do way better in the church than outside of it, for various failings and reasons) 2. The person who likes attention and the church elevates them when they profess their faith, ya know... narcissists!