Strength in Weakness

The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. ³³I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!’ (John 16:32-33)

O.K., this one is overtly and apologetically Christian.

The market goes up for a day or two and then tumbles for the next three in a row. The U.S. is still entangled in two distant wars. The auto industry is teetering on collapse and the creative solution is to throw money at it. Jobs are being lost and hearts are growing weary. It's gloom and doom everywhere we turn. Of course all this bad news is good news for the media. Nothing sells and thrives like fear, evil and blood.

I remember reading Neil Postman's, Amusing Ourselves to Death. The book is an insightful look at how television has come to dominate our lives. But I think today of something that Postman points out very early in the book relating not to the television but the telegraph. He suggests that the telegraph imposed information upon us that we didn't even ask for and that it changed the way that we gain knowledge. “To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing lots of things, not knowing about them” (69-70). Postman points out that photography, which appeared at about the same time, fit well with the telegraph's “news from nowhere” and provided an illusion of context for the unknown names and places that we suddenly had to deal with. The television is now a super-telegraph imposing a limitless stream of information and images--all of which are well beyond our neighborhood and influence.

The overwhelming experience of all this is futility. The more we see, the more we are reminded of our weakness in the world. This is because the world is no longer a neighborhood or a city. It is literally The World. And the constant stream of images pouring into our minds demands that we deal with it.

Postman's book was initially published in 1985. This is now a very long time ago--at least in terms of the entertainment industry and the rise of electronic media. It seems fair to say that we are not going to escape from the super-telegraph and all of its dark power over us. It is the loudest voice in the world. And because bad news sells so much better than good news, we can expect to be hearing about our weakness for as long as we walk this dusty planet.

As depressing as this might be (and it is depressing), there is a great hope in the midst of all this. The Christian message is a consistent affirmation that there is strength in weakness. Of course, we see it in the story of Jesus and we hear it in the preaching of Paul but it is also a consistent refrain that extends all the way back to the beginning of our story. Futility was familiar to Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Jeremiah, Hannah, David and pretty much all of the Biblical characters. Yet, these people were not overcome by the forces that threatened them. Whether it is Moses before Pharaoh or Jesus before Pilate, there is a consistent insistence that the appearance of strength is really only that. True power comes from someplace other than The World.

This is the thing that we want to cling to in these dark and stormy days. Who knows, maybe they're not even that dark and stormy but even if they are...Remember, it's just The World.