Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing

by Andy Crouch

This book is about how to embrace the life for which we were made—life that embraces the paradox of flourishing, that pursues greater authority and greater vulnerability at the same time.

But perhaps the question actually has things backwards. When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he told a parable that turned that question on its head, ending with the question, “[Who] was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:29, 36). If we were to similarly turn the question of flourishing around, maybe we would be asking, “Who is helping Angela flourish?” We might be asking, “Who is flourishing because of Angela?” And even, “How can we become the kind of people among whom Angela flourishes and who flourish with Angela in our midst?”

The real test of every human community is how it cares for the most vulnerable,

Then the question goes one step further. Is Angela helping us flourish? Is she the occasion of our becoming more fully what we were created to be, more engaged with the world in its variety and complexity, more deeply embedded in relationship and mutual dependence, more truly free?

Think of authority this way: the capacity for meaningful action.

Perhaps most importantly of all, true authority is always given.

Authority, like flourishing, is a shared reality, not a private possession.

Instead, think of it this way: exposure to meaningful risk.

Vulnerable at root means woundable—and any wound deeper than the most superficial scratch injures and limits not just our bodies but our very sense of self. Wounded, we are forced to become careful, tender, tentative in the way we move in the world,

We image bearers are bone and flesh—strength and weakness, authority and vulnerability, together.

her parents choosing to love sacrificially, day after day, in the face of a most uncertain future.

Authority, the capacity for meaningful action,

The real temptation for most of us is not complete apathy but activities that simulate meaningful action and meaningful risk without actually asking much of us or transforming much in us.

Video games are a far more satisfying version of withdrawing—because while you are engrossed in them, you feel totally convinced that you are flourishing.

We human beings, as one ingeniously devised experiment after another has demonstrated, are considerably more motivated by the fear of loss than the possibility of gain.

Indeed, one way to understand the pervasive theme of judgment and hell in the New Testament is that those who would have authority without vulnerability ultimately cannot be trusted with authority at all. In the end, the justice of God will abolish the authority of those who have purchased their power at the price of others’ flourishing, those who refuse to enter into relationship with the God who is authority and vulnerability together.

We have ended up at the real root of the problem: the quest for authority without vulnerability.

Leadership begins the moment you are more concerned about others’ flourishing than you are about your own.

But personal growth now serves a different end—not our own satisfaction or fulfillment, but becoming the kind of people who could actually help others flourish.

True transformation of the world, and ourselves, will only happen as we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ—as his way becomes our way, his source of power becomes our source, and his patterns of life become our patterns.

The drama of leadership is hidden vulnerability.

This is what it is to be a leader: to bear the risks that only you can see, while continuing to exercise authority that everyone can see.

Or as Max De Pree likes to say, “Bad leaders inflict pain. Good leaders bear it.”

The idols are all the forces that whisper the promises of control,

No one of us can be ready for moments like this—instead, we must, long before, train ourselves in the image of Christ to be prepared should such a time come.

In the grip of idols, we believe that our problem is not enough authority. Life becomes a quest to acquire enough authority to manage and minimize our vulnerability.

We do not lack for authority. In Christ we have all the authority that we need and more—“all things are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21). But what unlocks that authority is the willingness to expose ourselves to meaningful loss—to become vulnerable, woundable in the world.

someone who draws out from us the capacity to be truly and fully human.

Accountability. In the most literal sense, we invite others to examine our “accounts”—to probe the records we keep and the stories we tell for signs of truth or falsehood.

We pursue true vulnerability, the kind that leads to flourishing, when we use our authority to recognize and address failure rather than using our authority to conceal and minimize failure.

Do your homework

Love your audience—

be yourself

Do your homework—prepare for authority. Love your neighbor, enough to need them, enough to know what they need—open yourself to vulnerability. And then be yourself—show up with all that you have and all that you are and all the truth of what you will never be.