Weakness

Peephole into the Bible

WEAKNESS

“ . . . God decided to save those who embrace God’s world-transforming news ( “evangellion” in Greek and “gospel” in English) through the “nonsense” we preach. At a time when Jews expect a miracle and Greeks expect enlightenment, we speak about God’s Anointed (“Messiah,” “Christos” or “Christus”) crucified! This is an offense to Jews, nonsense to Greeks . . .” (Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians 1:21-25)

Dr. John Caputo talks about “the weakness of God” or what he calls “soft theology,” as a better picture of God than the view of God as “supreme being,” all-powerful” (omnipotent), and all-knowing (omniscient.) Not being much of a philosopher, I have always tended to equate those superlatives with limitations of God and ask: “If God is “the most - - -”, how can God be anything more than that?”
Instead, “Jack” Caputo, following Thomas Aquinas, describes God as “being itself.” He calls this “soft theology” or “theo-poetics” as opposed to a “hard theology” God as judgmental, punishing, and violent, even militant. Thinking of God as the source and base of existence makes sense to me, especially as I read the Old Testament laws to care for and be just to the disadvantaged, the widow, the orphan, and the alien, and the New Testament narrates that the ideals of love and justice could not be stopped by the execution of God’s Anointed One. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed it this way: “The arc of justice is long, but it bends toward justice.”
May we trust in God’s weakness rather than the world’s strength to accomplish Jesus’ vision of God’s kindom on earth.

Lyn Pickhover, Trusting in God’s Weakness to Heal the World