Witness

Witness is the title of a book by Whittaker Chambers. On a superficial level, it's the story of the Alger Hiss spy case. But primarily, it's the story of Whittaker Chambers' journey into and out of Communism.  This is a largely forgotten chapter in American history and that's unfortunate. The book is long and is tedious when dealing with the formal trial of Alger Hiss. But the part about how Whittaker Chambers became and functioned as a communist spy is riveting. However, I believe the best part of the book is the foreword, which Whittaker Chambers crafts in the form of a letter to his children. This brief essay should be required reading for every American high school student.  Whittaker Chambers wrote that "two faiths were on trial:"  "Communism and Freedom."  The differences between the two faiths ultimately came down to one thing:  God.  According to Chambers, "the Communist vision is the vision of Man without God."  
This struggle still goes on today, and the spirit of Communism lives on in a number of related "faiths."  It lives on, for example, in those who maintain that the individual is of lesser value than the group and that it's moral to sacrifice any number of individuals for the sake of a particular group.  It's not enough, though, to oppose such a vision.  Chambers wrote, "a man is not primarily a witness against something.  That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something.  A witness, in the sense that I am using the word, is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences."
God grant me the courage to be a witness for Jesus Christ and for his gospel and for the worldview that is Christianity.