Celebrating Our Incompetence

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 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; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” —1 Corinthians 1:26-31

God surrounds himself with a bunch of incompetents. The people he uses have rarely been great people, nor have great people been the people God uses. It’s not that he has to make–do with fools. He chooses them. 

Oh, to be sure, some of God’s children are rich and famous, but there aren’t many. (Lady Hamilton, a member of the British noble family, once quipped that she was saved by the letter “m,” for, as she put it, “Paul said ‘not many are called.’ He did not say ‘not any.’”) Most of us are ordinary people, unimportant, and unnecessary in the eyes of the world. Few of us have much clout; we’re neither super–stars nor super–saints. Like St. Francis’ “Jesters” we’re the joke God is playing on the world. 

But therein lies our strength. Paul, who was inclined toward paradoxes, put it this way: “When I am weak, I am strong” “If I must boast,” Paul continues, “I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised for ever, knows that I am not lying. In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands” (2 Corinthians 11:30-33). 

Paul came to Damascus thinking he create a revival but precipitated a riot. The folks there put him in a fish basket, lowered him over the wall and sent him packing, pleading with him not to return lest he undo all that God had been doing in the city.

What a bitter embarrassment! It was the worst of days and the best of days. It was the day that Paul learned that he was, as he later put it, “nobody” (2 Corinthians 12:11). 

But not to worry! Paul became “somebody.” He rounds out the picture this way: “We have this treasure (God) in jars of clay (our bodies) to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Corinthians 4:7). Deity in humanity—God’s presence in ordinary vessels of clay. 

And so it comes to this: nothing that comes from us is a source of hope; nothing is worth defending; nothing is special and worth admiring. Every virtue, every endearing quality, every proclivity toward goodness comes from God. Without him we can do nothing. When we accept that fact we can rest in him who alone is our wisdom, righteousness and power.

God has promised to use us for his intended purposes, but first we must admit our uselessness and cast ourselves on him. In the words of an old hymn, “All that he requireth is to feel our need of him.”

David Roper

2.24.18