Weakness

At a time when authenticity seems to be a rare but sought after commodity, it's good to be reminded that we don't always need to put our best face forward. There is a place for weakness and vulnerability...

The Myth of Flawlessness

There's a myth that has woven itself into the fabric of Christian thought that says the goal of our faith is to make perfect people. I don't think the Christian faith is about being finished and perfect; it is, rather, trusting God in our unfinishedness. Any perfection that happens in our lives is simply the result of the finished work of the Jesus. Both Philippians 1:6 and Hebrews 12:2 talk about how Jesus began the good work in our lives, and it will be completed by him. The scriptures even teach us that Jesus will take great delight in presenting us to the Father completed and perfected by him (Jude 24). It's in the mess of our weakness that our spiritual health and faith begins to grow and mature. It's in the mess of our weakness that we are met by a merciful God. We need to be flawed human beings to experience the fullness of what God has for us. There's no back up plan for the strong and perfect!

Pretending Kills the Authentic

Like Adam and Eve, we try to hide and conceal our emptiness and shame. If the strategy for concealing our emptiness is hiding, then the strategy for filling our emptiness is performing. When we perform, we display for others what we judge as good while hiding what we assume others will see as wrong in us. We display only what will get other's approval. While this sounds quite normal to us, it is actually a spiritual problem: we create the hypocrisy we hate. Living by hiding and pretending isn't life! I believe that the community of Christ should be a place of transparency and honesty, where people are free to share openly about their weaknesses, struggles, and sin so that they can be met with the healing grace of God (James 5:16). I also believe that such transparency protects our witness in the world. I am convinced that it is not our faults and struggles that harm our witness but our pretending that we don't have any faults or struggles. Our pretense kills authentic relationship and authentic witness.

God's Sufficiency & Grace

Some things dont' get fixed. We shouldn't presume that God will fix our weaknesses and inadequacies. He didn't do it for Paul, and He may not do it for us. Acually, we need our weaknesses. in 2 Corninthians 12, Paul begged the Father to take away his "thorn" because he did not want to be a weak man. Rather than removing the affliction, God's remedy was grace -- "you will know my grace as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death". We don't know what Paul's weakness was, but whatever he wrestled with, it forced him to be completely dependent upon God. In a way, his weakness was his umbilical cord to the Father. Paul was met by the mercy of God in his weakness, and the power of God was demonstrated through this man -- despite his inadequacy. If he didn't have the wound, he wouldn't have had the power. This is the way the Father always does things; He always uses the weak "to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Wholeness in our Brokenness

When we try to make the scriptures endorse a life of denial, the power of truth gets lost. It does us no good to affirm the reality of our identity in Christ and at the same time deny the reality of our struggles and weakness. The affirmation of his identity in us should never deny the humanity in us. We believe in the mercy of God who meets humanity at its greatest point of need. Where the real Jesus meets the real us is the place the unique work of Christ takes place in our life. When we admit the truth about ourselves and by faith trust God to do what only He can do, we are placed in Christ -- and are "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). Truthfulness is the starting point for change.

Growing in Grace

Although our culture treats weakness as failure, God sees it as a universal human experience. There's something to be said for accepting our limitations as a gift from God. In Jesus' story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), there was one primary difference between the younger (prodigal) son and the older son. The younger son was painfully aware of his neediness, but his older brother was caught up in his own rightness and morality. The younger knew he was lost. In our weakness, we experience the grace of God, and the more we know the grace of God for ourselves, the more we will live with grace towards others. One of the greatest benefits for embracing the journey of weakness and brokenness is that weak and broken people will be drawn to the grace of God that we have experienced. As we share with others out of our own vulnerable places, people will trust us more. While we may not be able to understand their particular struggle, we can empathize with their weakness and begin to introduce them to the One who can give them life! As we live in God's grace, we will grow in grace for those He loves. Our weakness tunes us into His heart.

This article has been re-posted from my blog HOPE, originally posted on February 20, 2007.