Subversion of the Strong

by Jon

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” 1 Corinthians 1:27

“God chose me because I was weak enough.” Hudson Taylor

Reading through world news these days, I am struck with how in confrontations, nations face each other in postures of strength and superiority. From the increasing harshness of retorts, rising severity of economic sanctions, to elevating destructiveness of weapons and corresponding counter-weapons.

In a world where one-upmanship leads to mutually assured destruction being a genuine looming possibility, I look at the Bible and see how God is stunningly different. In 1 Samuel 4, when Israel was at war with the Philistines, and when Israel was facing the prospect of military defeat, Israelite leaders decided to “bring out the big guns” by transporting the ark of the covenant from Shiloh into the battlefield to raise the army’s morale. While the Philistines were shaken by God entering the camp, they fought and surprisingly, Israel still lost despite of the ark, with the ark carried back by the Philistines as a trophy of war to the temple of Dagon as a sign of Yahweh’s submission to their patron god.

However, under Israel’s mourning and the Philistines celebration, God who seemed to have been defeated, was working. The next day as we read in 1 Samuel 5, the Philistines surprisingly found that the statue of Dagon in their temple had fallen on his face before the ark of the Lord. After dismissing this and putting the statue back, the Philistines found Dagon again fallen on his face the next morning but this time with his head and heads broken off. Following this, God inflicted tumors and tormented the Philistines until they had to admit that Yahweh was stronger than the Philistines and their god Dagon, eventually forced to send the ark back.

In a world where one overpowers another using exceedingly superior force, this is one of the many examples in history of how God used the weak, flawed and unlikely people to subjugate the strong. Perhaps the best example is our Lord Jesus through which God executes His plan to save humanity, coming not as a general with vast armies to wipe evil off the face of the earth and establish dominance, but as a helpless infant to overturn the system of the world from within.

Understanding this leads me to question how I resolve issues that I face daily and whether I choose, like the world, to rely on authority, right or reason to get my way, or choose to submit and be still in trust of God to either correct wrongs done against me or to correct my wrongs. Perhaps when we are faced with problems and challenges that seem larger that we can fathom or solve, instead of relying on our abilities or psyching ourselves up with personal motivational rhetoric, we have to ask ourselves, like the missionary Hudson Taylor did, whether we are ‘weak enough’ to rely less on our human ingenuity and planning, and instead, be faithful in both the small and big ways on the course that God calls us and trusting that in our weakness that God’s strength can be exhibited, witnessed and glorified through circumstances.