The Vulnerability to be Strong

What role does vulnerability play in our relationship with God? Is it a weakness or a strength? This week Tania compares vulnerability and victimization, and writes about how they connect to our relationship with our Creator. -Editor.

It seems like life pretty consistently asks us to be strong. Stand on your own. Make a something of yourself. Follow your dreams. Do the right thing. Stick to your goals. Live your principles. A lot is expected. And while these more external expectations of strength can seem hard to meet, even more is asked of us. The Lord asks us to be strong: we have to take action in order to allow Him to work in our lives. So with all this strength required, what role does vulnerability play? Lately I have been thinking about vulnerability as both its own kind of strength, and a tool to find strength in a world that defines strength as something else.

Perhaps one of the reasons vulnerability is overlooked is because we sometimes confound being a victim and being vulnerable. Both involve an acknowledgement of weakness, even helplessness. But one says: the world is against me and I can’t do this, while the other says: this is hard for me and I’m going trust you enough to let you see that I’m hurting. I have written before about the incapacitating power of the victim mindset; it’s no good. But vulnerability is something else, something with a power of its own. What is this power, and what is its relationship to strength? How can it help in our relationship with the Lord and with others?

It is first necessary to clearly distinguish victimhood and vulnerability. Perhaps the crucial difference between them is in accepting responsibility for our part in the situation.

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If It's Labelled, Judge It

Tania addresses the balance between loving people and charitably helping them with their flaws. When is it ok to judge? What kind of judgement is helpful? Through a simple personal experience, she offers a starting place for these questions. -Editor.

I came up with an analogy the other day. While scrounging for dinner in a forgotten cupboard, I uncovered a can of corned beef hash. Never having had hash before, on opening it, I discovered that it not only very closely resembled dog food, but smelled just like it too. And yet hash is something edible. That got me thinking; good and evil aren’t always clearly distinguishable, and sometimes evil very closely resembles things that sustain us. While absurd in its origins, this analogy sparked some thoughts that I had been mulling over for some time.

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Meditate | Remembering to Pray

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

I like to think that the prayer has answers to most every struggle. The problem is that I’ve said the prayer, the “Our Father” we called it as children, so many times that I often forget to say it, or rather, I forget to mean it.

So I try to think more deliberately on the prayer as I speed recite it before my thoughts wander, or drowsily slip in and out of phrases before sleep. When I have done that recently, I was surprised by how powerfully I was struck by one line:

“give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11)

I struggle to trust in the Lord.

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Meditate | Path of Darkness

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments, or better yet, your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

Something I have always struggled with is the fact that the Bible doesn’t only have nice stories. When turning to the Word for comfort, you could easily open to something upsetting, for instance, the story of Judah and Tamar. Widowed and neglected, with her only hope for a secure future in producing offspring, Tamar dresses as a prostitute to trick her father-in-law, Judah, into impregnating her. Repulsive, gritty and disorderly though the story is, Tamar is not portrayed as doing something wrong. Is the Lord telling us that we should stoop to any depths to change our fortunes? That the ends justify the means?

Is that what the story is saying?

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I'm the Greatest Victim

Tania exposes the private moments when she feels victimized and enjoys wallowing in self pity. She then explores avenues around that clever trap. What is stronger than the pull to feel small? Get busy reading this. -Editor

One of my favorite daydreams is imagining situations where I am the nobly suffering victim. It’s pretty easy to see how I am busy, over-involved, underappreciated, and unloved more than anyone can fathom. Victimhood is a potently attractive but very binding mindset. I know though that most of my victim daydreams are not productive, and are fed by a love of myself more than anything else.

Victimhood does not affect everyone, but it is an issue that a lot of people come into contact with, and that I think bears talking about. I asked a few people I know about their experience with victimhood, here were some of their responses:

“When I choose to be a victim, I choose to give all my power away. Without my power I don't recognize myself.”

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