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

by Andy Crouch

The Christian world has its own versions: Is the mission of the church evangelism and proclamation or is it justice and demonstration? Are we supposed to be conservative or radical, contemplative or active, set apart from the world or engaged in the world? Or take the topic that almost generated the first great biblical 2x2 chart. Is the life of the Christian about faith or works? (“Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you a 2x2 chart of my faith and works”—James 2:18, my take on the original Greek!) Then you’ll be ready for the ultimate question: Was Jesus of Nazareth human or divine? Was he Son of Man or Son of God?

Conversely, even if you are personally materially well-off, if your community is mired in suffering—if your parents, people and nation have known little for generations but enforced helplessness due to tragedy and injustice—then you are not free from the oppressive reality of suffering. And this kind of suffering is far deeper, and far less tractable, than the suffering all of us experience as individuals—because simply escaping it as an individual does nothing to change the fundamental systems of vulnerability without authority.

Systematic Racism

are not meant to be eternal cruise-ship passengers. We are meant for more than leisure. This is true for our own sakes, but it is also true because, like the diminished human beings aboard the Axiom, we are still responsible for a world gone wrong. The deepest reason for the call out of Withdrawing is not our own health, though this quadrant is none too healthy or satisfying a place to live. It is far more about the neighbors and the created order we have neglected, who have no option to board a cruise away from vulnerability, who live, in some cases quite literally, among the trash our affluence has discarded. To disengage from the profound needs of those caught in suffering is to reject the call to bear the image of God. We all began in the protection of paradise, but attempting to make that safety our final state will in fact consign us to hell.

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.

Ironically, the reason video games develop so little real skill is that they are too rewarding. Real authority is a tedious business. Developing the depth of competence required to play an instrument, pilot an aircraft or transplant a human organ requires thousands of hours of unstimulating, unstinting practice that gives us little immediate sense of authority.

We live in a world where sin has been, in the fullest sense, institutionalized—where for generation after generation, the privileged and powerful rule without risk, exposing others to the deepest vulnerability while excluding them from true authority. Exploiting and Suffering sum up the tragedy of our whole human history.

The most beloved children’s books of our time—or perhaps any time—are unflinching in their understanding that true happy endings are won only at the greatest cost and that no king is truly a king without a cross.

The ones who succeeded were the ones who failed loudly, quickly and boldly—rather than softly, slowly and timidly.