God Hath Chosen the Weak Things Is a Recruitment Policy

There is a particular way people leave a job in a church and it does not involve resigning.

They stop putting their hand up. That is all. The email goes out, and they read it, and they think about the thing that has happened to them and how it would look in that room, and they do not reply.

And nobody notices, because nobody is auditing who did not volunteer. So it happens silently, over about a year, and at the end of the year the person has removed themselves from a list that nobody else was holding.

I did that for about eighteen months. My reason sounded sensible in my own head: a man in my condition should not be up front. I told myself it was about not being a distraction. It was actually about not being looked at.

There is a passage in Corinthians that reads like a recruitment policy, and if a person reads it as a policy rather than as a comfort, it does something different.

Read it as a list of criteria

Here it is.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. (1 Corinthians 1:27, King James Version)

Hath chosen. Twice. It is a decision word, made in advance, and it is stated as a completed policy rather than as an exception made for somebody.

And look at the two categories named: foolish and weak. Both are disqualifications by any ordinary standard. Nobody builds a team that way unless they are doing it on purpose.

The verse before it makes it more uncomfortable, because it is aimed straight at the readers:

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. (1 Corinthians 1:26)

Not many. He is describing the actual composition of that church, to their faces, and he does not soften it.

So this is not encouragement offered to a weak person. It is a description of who is in the room already.

You are inside a stated policy rather than an exception to one. 1 Corinthians 1:27 says God hath chosen the weak things twice over as a settled decision. It is the same Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:11 dividing to every man severally as he will, who does the placing that no self assessment overrides.

Gideon runs the same argument and loses it

There is a conversation in Judges that goes exactly the way this one goes in a person's head.

An angel tells Gideon he is a mighty man of valor, which at that moment is objectively untrue, because he is hiding in a winepress.

And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. (Judges 6:15)

I am the least in my father's house. He has done the audit. He is not being modest; he has facts and he lists them.

And the answer is not a correction of the facts:

And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee. (Judges 6:16)

He does not say the family is not poor. He does not say Gideon is not the least. He says something about accompaniment, and that is the entire answer he gets, and it turns out to be enough.

You are answered with accompaniment rather than with a revised assessment. Judges 6:16 says surely I will be with thee without disputing one item on the list. It is the Spirit of God, whom Judges 6:34 says came upon Gideon, who is the accompaniment the promise actually meant.

The vessel is chosen because it is cheap

Paul says something about the container that turns the whole subject around.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

Earthen vessels. Clay pots. Cheap, breakable, entirely ordinary, the kind of container nobody in that world would have described as valuable.

And read the purpose clause: that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. The unimpressiveness of the container is not an accident being worked around. It is the design, and it exists so that nobody misattributes what comes out of it.

Which means a visible weakness is not a problem for the display. It is the display working correctly.

That was the sentence that got me back into a room. Not that my leg did not matter. That a man limping across a stage and saying something true is a clearer picture of the arrangement than a man striding across it.

You are the kind of container the treasure was put in on purpose. 2 Corinthians 4:7 gives the reason as that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us, and it is His Spirit, Acts 1:8 promising power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you, who supplies what a container was never asked to produce.

The parts that look weakest are called necessary

And there is one more line, in the chapter about the body, that is stronger than most people remember.

Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary. (1 Corinthians 12:22)

Are necessary. Not tolerated, not included out of kindness, not accommodated. Necessary, which means the body does not work properly without them.

Paul is arguing against a church that was ranking its members, and his argument is not that the weaker ones should be allowed to stay. It is that the whole thing fails without them.

So the person who quietly stopped putting their hand up did not remove a nice extra. By Paul's account they removed something the body was relying on, and did it so quietly that nobody could object.

You are necessary rather than accommodated, and Paul uses that exact word. 1 Corinthians 12:22 says those members which seem to be more feeble are necessary. It is the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:13 by whom we are all baptized into one body, who did the assembling that a person's withdrawal quietly edits.

And if the withdrawing has gone further than one list, and you have been slowly stepping out of rooms in general, say it out loud to a person: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Quiet withdrawal is the hardest thing for anybody else to notice and the easiest to keep doing.