Articles
Strength and Weakness
Here are two passages. Do you know what makes them alike?
“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.”
“What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.”
These seem like completely different churches, but they’re not. Both passages were directed at the Galatians. (The first is Galatians 3:1, the second Galatians 4:15.) In the same book Paul both roundly criticizes and publicly praises the Galatians.
That’s a difficult concept for us, for our society loves to boil everything down to simple statements. An iPhone is either the most innovative device ever or the most retched creation of all time, and a politician is either a champion of all that’s right and good or a moral reprobate.
This same all-or-nothing thinking can creep into how we see brethren, too. Have you ever judged someone as uniformly strong or weak, as either helpful or useless, as either tenderhearted or cold. I have. That should not be, for it’s a rare person that fits one extreme. I have both strengths and weaknesses; why should I expect anything different from others?
Paul certainly didn’t; he rebuked the Galatians for their slide back into Judaism while commending them for the way they treated him. There’s no inconsistency there; it just shows that a church’s character has many facets.
May we be the same way! Let’s not keep from praising someone’s strength because of an unrelated weakness. Let’s not allow an opinion we disagree with to keep us from respecting a brother or sister. Let’s be quick to encourage strengths and patient when dealing with weaknesses. May we see the whole person, not just the one piece that stands out the most!
