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Good News - Broward Edition
14 January 2014
Last
month,
I
talked
about
Reader’sDigest
Christianity,and
how it reduced the Christian faith to
pithy, easily-achievable goals that
ensure our personal improvement.
Today, I have a different (though
depressingly
similar)
target:
“LiveStrong”Christianity.LiveStrong
bracelets are today even more
popular than the infamousWWJD
braceletswere 10 years ago, despite
the public fall from grace of their
namesake, Lance Armstrong.
In the minds of many people
inside the church, Livestrong is the
essence and goal of Christianity.
You hear this obsession in our
lingo: We talk about someone
having “strong faith,” about
someone being a “strongChristian,”
a “prayer warrior,” or a “mighty
man/woman of God.” We want to
believe that we can do it all, handle
it all. We desperately want to think
that we are competent and capable
–we’ve concluded that our life and
our witness depend on our
strength. No one wants to declare
deficiency. We even turn the
commands that seem to have
nothing to do with strength
(“Blessed are the meek” or “Turn
the
other
cheek”)
into
opportunities to showcase our
spiritual might. I saw a church
billboard the other day that said,
“Think being meek is weak? Try
being meek for a week!”
We like our Christianity to be
muscular, triumphant.We’ve come
to believe that the Christian life is a
progression from weakness to
strength – “Started from the
bottom, now we’re here” (Drake)
seems to be the victory chant of
modern Christianity. We are all by
nature, in the terminology of
MartinLuther, theologians of glory
– not God’s glory, but our own.
But is the progression from
weakness to strength the pattern
we see throughout the Bible?
Take Samson, for instance. As
a kid growing up idolizing Rocky,
Rambo, and Conan the Barbarian,
the story of Samson was right up
my alley. I may have been bored by
the rest of the Bible, but not the
Samson narrative. Anybody who
could kill a thousand bad guys with
the jawbone of a donkey had my
respect. He was the Wolverine of
theOldTestament and I wanted to
be just like him. Samson seems, at
first blush, to be an exemplar of
“Livestrong” Christianity.
The story of Samson is
actually the exact opposite of the
“weakness to strength” paradigm
that has come to mark our
understanding of theChristian life.
Samson’s story shows us that the
rhythm of Christian growth is a
progression from strength to
weakness, rather thanweakness to
strength.
Samson starts off strong. He’s
invincible.
Seemingly
indestructible. Clearly unbeatable.
He’s what we all want to be –what,
down deep, we’re all striving to be;
maybe
not
physically,
but
spiritually.
We think his strength is in his
hair (heck, even Samson thought
that his strength was in his hair),
but before every great deed
Samson performed, we read, “The
Spirit of the Lord rushed upon
him.” Before he tears a lion apart
with his bare hands (Judges 14:6),
before he kills the 30 men of
Ashkelon (14:19), and before he
kills a thousand men with the
jawbone of a donkey (15:14), the
exact same phrase is used: “The
Spirit of the Lord rushed upon
him.” The author of Judges is at
pains to make it clear that these
feats of strength are not Samson’s,
but God’s.
Think about the times in your
life when other people have told
you that your faith was strong.
Aren’t people always saying that
when you feel the weakest? When
you feel like you’re barely hanging
on? There’s something to be said
for the real-world truth of Paul’s
words in 1 Corinthians 1:27 – “But
God chose what is foolish in the
world to shame the wise; God
chose what is weak in the world to
shame the strong.” It is when we
feel foolish that God shows himself
to be wise. It is when we feel weak
that God shows himself to be
strong.
The Philistines are not
defeated
until
Samson
is
weakened. His hair is shaved, his
eyes are gouged out, and he’s
chained up like an animal in the
zoo. He finally realizes that he is
weak and that God alone is strong
and so he prays and asks God for a
generous portion of strength. God
answers his prayer and Samson
brings the building down on
himself and all the lords of the
Philistines. It is when Samson is at
his weakest that he is most
powerfully used.
Gideon
experienced
something similar to Samson.
Gideon is prepared to fight a battle.
He’s got his army ready – 32,000
strong. But God reduces his army
from32,000 to 10,000 by getting rid
of everyone who’s afraid. Then he
reduces the army from 10,000 to
300, keeping only those who drink
“like a dog.” Then he reduces their
weaponry to trumpets and empty
jars. No knives, no swords, no
spears. God wants to make it
obvious that their promised victory
is owing to his strength, not theirs.
We see this same pattern in
the life of the Apostle Paul. By his
own admission (Phil. 3:4-6) he
started off strong. His spiritual
résumé was more impressive than
anybody else’s. And yet, God
systematically broke him down
throughout his life so that by life’s
endhewas saying stuff like, “I’mthe
worst guy I know,” and, “I’m the
least of all the saints,” and, “For
when I amweak, then I amstrong.”
The hope of the Christian
faith is dependent onGod’s display
of strength, not ours. God is in the
business of destroying our idol of
self-sufficiency in order to reveal
himself as our sole sufficiency. This
is God’s way – he kills in order to
make alive; he strips us in order to
give us new clothes. He lays us flat
on our back so that we’re forced to
look up. God’s office of grace is
located at the end of our rope. The
thing we least want to admit is the
one thing that can set us free: the
fact that we’re weak. The message
of the Gospel will only make sense
to those who have run out of
options and have come to the
relieving realization that they’re not
strong. Counterintuitively, our
weakness is our greatest strength.
So, the Christian life is a
progression. But it’s not an upward
progression from weakness to
strength – it’s a downward
progression from strength to
weakness. And this is good news
because “Livestrong” Christianity is
exhausting and enslaving. The
strength of God alone can liberate
us from the burden of needing to
be strong – the sufficiency of God
alone can relieve us of the weight
we feel to be sufficient. As I’ve said
before, Christian growth is not, “I’m
getting stronger and stronger, more
and more competent every day.”
Rather,
it’s,
“I’m
becoming
increasingly aware of just how
weak and incompetent I am and
how strong and competent Jesus
was, and continues to be, for me.”
Because Jesus paid it all, we are
set free fromthe pressure of having
to do it all. We are weak. He is
strong.
Do you agree or disagree that
Christian growth is a process of
growing weaker and more
dependent? Email your response
to editor@goodnewsfl.org.
Tullian Tchividjian is a South
Florida native, Senior Pastor of
Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church,
a visiting professor at Reformed
Theological Seminary, and
grandson of Billy and Ruth
Graham. He is the founder of
LIBERATE (liberatenet.org), a
bestselling author, a contributing
editor to Leadership Journal, and
a popular conference speaker.
Tullian and his family reside in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Follow
Tullian on twitter at:
@pastortullian.
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LIBERATE
- Tullian Tchividjian -
Progressing Downward