A friend of mine said recently that before he became a Christian he used to say, “God is for the weak.” That’s a little like saying, “Religion is a crutch!” Those who think they don’t need either God or religion can be very dismissive. Karl Marx, the father of communism called religion “the opium of the people.” He said that we have constructed religion as a kind of a drug to help us cope with the pressures and hardships of life.
But think a little deeper. What really lies behind the statement that God is for the weak… or that religion is a crutch? There is a huge amount of pride and arrogance behind such claims. My friend readily acknowledged that when he used to say that God was for the weak, what he was really saying was, “I am strong enough not to need God.” Those who call religion a crutch are really saying that crutches are for handicapped people and I’m not handicapped so I don’t need a crutch. The claim of God being for the weak, rests on our own self-assured sense of self-sufficiency.
The problem is that our sense of self-sufficiency has taken a big hit in recent times. The present pandemic should make us wiser than to claim that God is for the weak and that religion is a crutch. We, in our western society, pride ourselves in our abilities and in our scientific achievements. Hey, after all, we’ve been to the moon and back. Who still needs God? But then along comes this extremely tiny little bug, so small that you can’t even see it with the naked eye, and it has created world-wide havoc. What devastation this little microscopic critter has caused. Certainly, no one who ends up in hospital with the Covid-19 virus can say they are strong or that they don’t need some sort of crutch. Covid-19 has shown us just how vulnerable and weak we human beings really are.
The apostle Paul once made a claim that at first glance doesn’t make much sense. It seems so self-contradictory. In his second letter to the Corinthians (chapter12) he says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” What a puzzling statement to make. You are either weak or strong or somewhere in between, but how can you be both weak and strong at the same time. What did Paul mean when he said that when he was weak then he was strong?
Paul had just provided a lengthy list of hardships that he had undergone. A list that went from beatings to shipwreck and from hunger to imprisonment. Well, okay, there were some really positive things that had happened too – like a vision of Paradise. But on top of all the problems that Paul wrestled with there was also some mysterious issue that he doesn’t spell out. He just calls it his “thorn in the flesh”. Some suspect it was poor eyesight from the blinding appearance of Jesus on the road to Damascus. But Paul doesn’t tell us exactly what troubled him. He does relate that on three occasions he specifically pleaded with God to take away that thorn in the flesh. Paul felt that it was a weakness that hindered his work. But God didn’t take it away. Instead God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
That’s what opened Paul’s eyes to where his real strength came from. Not from himself. It came from God working in him and through him. And that’s what caused Paul to say, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” My friend came to the point – as most people do sooner or later – where he realized that he wasn’t as strong as he thought he was. He needed God. And you’re not as strong as you think you are either. If the Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t made that clear to you yet, something else will. When we trust in ourselves and say that God is only for the weak then we are simply not recognizing our own human vulnerability. Real strength to handle life is found in Jesus and then we too discover with Paul that when we are weak then we are strong.
John Westendorp