Is Weakness a Good Thing?

It all depends on how we interpret the word "weakness."

Is weakness a good thing? It’s an inevitable thing, a common thing, a prevalent thing. But is it a good thing? Most people would be quick to say “no.”

When I taught writing, I would frequently reference denotation and connotation. Denotation is the referent for a word. The word “tree” denotes a type of vegetation with roots, a trunk, and branches. Connotation includes all the associations and values that come along with words in patterns of use. They are the associations that pop into someone’s head without filtering. Typically, connotations can be positive, negative, or neutral. “Rainbow” has a positive connotation and brings to mind leprechauns, clouds, and post-rain sunshine. “Sludge” has a negative connotation, for obvious reasons.

Where do you think “weakness” fits on the connotation scale? While we would all say “negative,” it depends on what the speaker means by the word. That’s an important message to carry with you if you read Eric Schumacher’s book, The Good Gift of Weakness. He puts “good” and “weakness” in the same sentence, so you can guess what perspective the book takes. And, on the whole, I found it very helpful and encouraging. Here are some of the main takeaways I think people should grasp.

Key Takeaways

• Schumacher says, “Weakness is the inability to act or produce an effect. In short, a weak person is one who cannot do things or make things happen. That’s us—weak” (15). While we all know people we believe are “strong” in different senses, he notes, “Any semblance of power in a creature is a derived and dependent strength: It comes from God and depends on him to sustain it” (15). That’s a good reminder for all of us.

• I think it’s fair that “weak” is synonymous with “dependent” in Schumacher’s book. And we’re dependent on God for everything. The author specifically discusses our dependence on God for our place, presence, purpose, provision, protection, and partners.

• Our weakness is also bound up with our calling to faith. He writes, “Faith highlights God’s choice to display his strength through the weakness of his people” (56). Strength through weakness is a biblical, Christ-centered teaching that we need constantly repeated.

• The majority of the book goes through all of the biblical narrative using “weakness” as a perspective on the text. I found many insights with this approach. One of the overall benefits is that it helps readers grow more comfortable with a trait we feel pressed to hide: our weakness and constant need for help.

• One of my favorite sentences from the book: “Self-sufficiency is a deadly delusion” (35). How true that is! This week, I wrote an article on what we call “autonomy” that makes a very similar point:

  

Limitation

Essentially, Schumacher is talking about the gift of our limitation. I agree that this is part of how we were made as image bearers of God. In my memoir I Am a Human, I put forward limitation as one of the markers of humanity.

Limitation is a son of transience. When things are always changing, when waves of time are always lapping at the thin shore of the present, we see how little we’re able to control. We hate this instinctively. And then we draw the false conclusion that limitation is an evil, that we have to wage against it until our minds crack or our bodies crumble.

But limitation is the very thing that opens us to relationship. A limitless being needs no relationships. God didn’t need a relationship with us; he wanted one. I’ll never understand why, and I don’t need to. The important thing is that, for us, limitation is built into our being for divine reasons. Limitation is a relay race. It shows us how far we can go before we need to hand the baton off to someone else, or receive it from another runner.

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For more, check out I Am a Human.

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If “weakness” means limitation and dependence, then it is good. And our hearts are slow to learn that lesson. We encounter so many obstacles to our make-believe self-sufficiency each day, don’t we? Physical illness, moral failures, the loss of family and friends, frustrated purposes. And yet we soldier on under the tattered banner of independence. It’s the great plague of humanity.

That’s one of the many reasons I so love Jesus Christ. He’s not just “strong when I am weak.” He was weak for me. In taking on a human nature, he became weak in every sense that we are, except for sin. He knows what it’s like to have a body with limitations. He knows what it’s like to ask for help. As the divine Son of God, Jesus had all the power in the world (and beyond the world) to do the will of his Father, and yet he chose to submit himself to his Father’s plan. That plan was for him to suffer and die in weakness before being raised to new life by the Spirit—so that we would find our strength in him. Because of Jesus, we can say, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). What a potent truth! It slaps our suffering in the face and says, “You will serve God’s ends, not Satan’s.”

Find a way to ask for help today. Be intentional. And in that asking, you can smile. Our weakness, our dependence on God and others for all things, is the crystal key to God-given strength. It’s a relational strength, a strength in dependence, not a strength independent.

Praise the God who knows our weakness and invites us through Jesus Christ to be strong in dependence on his loving faithfulness.