Strong and Weak
Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
by Andy Crouch
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Pub Date Mar 12 2016 | Archive Date May 04 2016
InterVarsity Press | IVP Books
Description
Two common temptations lure us away from abundant living—withdrawing into safety or grasping for power. True flourishing, says Andy Crouch, travels down an unexpected path—being both strong and weak.
We see this unlikely mixture in the best leaders—people who use their authority for the benefit of others, while also showing extraordinary willingness to face and embrace suffering. We see it in Jesus, who wielded tremendous power yet also exposed himself to hunger, ridicule, torture and death. Rather than being opposites, strength and weakness are actually meant to be combined in every human life and community. Only when they come together do we find the flourishing for which we were made.
With the characteristic insight, memorable stories and hopeful realism he is known for, Andy Crouch shows us how to walk this path so that the image of God can shine through us. Not just for our own good, but for the sake of others.
If you want to become the kind of person whose influence leads to healthy communities, someone with the strength to be compassionate and generous, this is the book for you. Regardless of your stage or role in life, whether or not you have a position of leadership, here is a way to love and risk so that we all, even the most vulnerable, can flourish.
Advance Praise
—John Ortberg, senior pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, author of Soul Keeping
"Andy Crouch has done it again! Strong and Weak is an intellectually insightful, socially relevant and prophetically passionate book that shows us how to multiply our power to create a world where people from every tribe and nation can flourish and reach their full God-given potential. I love it!"
—Brenda Salter McNeil, Seattle Pacific University, author of Roadmap to Reconciliation
Available Editions
EDITION | Hardcover |
ISBN | 9780830844432 |
PRICE | $20.00 (USD) |
Links
Average rating from 12 members
Featured Reviews
This book saved my church plant. Crouch's powerful defining of authority (the capacity for meaningful action) and vulnerability (exposure to meaningful risk) and the way he discusses the different ways they intersect in leadership was just the re-boot my perspective needed. I particularly appreciated his point about the temptation to withdraw from all authority and vulnerability, naming it as one of the prevailing problems preventing us from flourishing today. To flourish, Crouch argues, we have to take meaningful risks in a context of having the capacity to take meaningful action. I'll be scrawling some version of that saying across the top of every sermon I give for the foreseeable future. A great read for anyone who wants their life to count.
I loved Crouch’s two major previous books, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling and Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. I felt this one was also very profitable, though not quite as deep as his other two. All the same, I’m planning a second read-through. I want to get this. I think he’s on to something big, something abidingly useful and true. What really made me think so was when he finally got to showing how this thing—embracing a life of vulnerability on the one hand and authority on the other—is so thoroughly true of Jesus. He emptied himself, but spoke with authority. He humbled himself, but forgave sins. The Bible was a bit less evident in this book than in the others (particularly Culture Making); Crouch in this book felt Gladwellian more so than preacherish. But this connection of his thesis to Jesus is so strong that I was persuaded. Crouch writes as a Christian and a theologian, as a gifted popularizer and a not a self-help guru.
Crouch is one person whose books you don’t want to miss if you want to do what the Bible calls for: “Those who have believed in God [must] be careful to devote themselves to good works” (Titus 3:8). How can your good works make a difference, truly helping others? What is the best way to work with others to do good for your neighbor? Crouch got me thinking about the role institutions, in particular, play in answering that question. That was in Playing God. Now he has me thinking about the ways in which I must take risks and increase my vulnerability if I want to lend authority, authority to “make something of the world,” to others.
Here’s just one comment that he made that was wise and immediately helpful:
When media are tools that help those who have lacked the capacity for action take action, and bring them together to bear risk together rather than be paralyzed in Suffering, they can lead to real change. But when the residents of the comfortable affluence of Withdrawing use media to simulate engagement, to give ourselves a sense of making a personal investment when in fact our activity risks nothing and forms nothing new in our characters, then “virtual activism” is in fact a way of doubling down on withdrawing, holding on to one’s invulnerability and incapacity while creating a sensation of involvement. Only when technology serves a genuine, embodied, risky move toward flourishing is it something other than an opiate for the mass elite—the drug that leaves us mired in our apathy and our neighbors in their need. (87–88)
A little note on the audio: make sure to see Crouch’s 2×2 chart before you listen to the book, or you’ll have a little trouble following along:
What are we meant to be? If where we are now and where we ought to be are so far apart, what's the reason? These two questions dominate the discussion of this book about the paradox of life. The first question deals with our self-understanding while the second talks about the gaps between who we are and where we ought to be. Essentially, it is about great hopes, great regrets, the human condition, and how one can flourish. The author's key thesis is this: "Flourishing comes from being both strong and weak. Flourishing requires us to embrace both authority and vulnerability, both capacity and frailty — even, at least in this broken world, both life and death."
Andy Crouch is executive editor of Christianity Today and has served for ten years as campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. With his keen interest in Christianity and culture, he has previously written books like Culture Making which deals with the Christian in modern culture, and more recently, Playing God which is about the stewardship of power. If "Culture Making" is about the broader engagement of Christians in their existing culture; and "Playing God" about the engagement of Christians in their use of power; this book is about Christians in their personal and honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses, with an eye on personal calling and identity.
Using a 2x2 chart to depict the range of options that often downplay one attribute in order to play up the other, Crouch argues passionately for BOTH/AND paradigm. True flourishing comes from being both weak and strong. He uses a parenting 2x2 chart to parallel his flourishing chart as follows. For instance, the worst form of parenting is the "Absentee" parent who is neither warm nor firm. Likewise, the worst form of living is that of "withdrawing" which essentially removes the plank of growth and opportunity from under our own lives. In seeking to flourish, one needs to live life not simply on the highlights, but also to embrace the lows of life. Crouch stresses that flourishing is not about growth nor affluence. It is about being fully human, warts and all. It is not about individual but the community. True authority is the capacity for meaningful action, and if I may put it, interaction. Vulnerability is about exposure to meaningful risk. One by one, he works through the quadrants of suffering, exploiting, and withdrawal, to show us that those are less than who we are meant to be. The suffering quadrant is perhaps the most painful. In fact, it is not the individual pain but the communal and multigenerational suffering that form the deepest forms of suffering. He points out the fact that half a century's worth of investments to address the problem of poverty have not really helped. This is because of exploitation by the powerful.
Crouch has a very important message to share. In a world that tends to see flourishing in terms of quantitative growth and material riches, we are reminded that God sees beyond the surface of positive thoughts and external well-being. True humanity is not about highlighting the positives and downplaying the negatives. True humanity is about learning to embrace both the strong and the weak parts of self. It is about living in a community of acceptance in spite of our flaws. It is about embracing suffering from a position of authority, having the commitment to choose to use or not to use. We learn to avoid entering into a quadrant of exploiting when we wield authority but lacks vulnerability. We most certainly should not withdraw when under threat and when left vulnerable to forces beyond our control. True flourishing is about being fully alive.
So What?
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Let me offer three thoughts with regard to this book. First, life is truly a paradox that requires us to embrace the BOTH/AND paradigm. Just playing to our strengths alone could very well mean we hide our weaknesses to the point of lacking authenticity. In terms of ministry, this is very important because ministry work is full of ups and downs, joys and unhappiness, and all manner of expectations rushing at us from all directions and in all shapes and sizes. If we learn to see the truth of this paradox, we will learn not to take our strengths for granted and to see our weaknesses from the eyes of faith.
Second, I like the way that Crouch uses the 2x2 matrix to show us the way to flourishing. It is very helpful considering the main message of this book deals with the two axes of vulnerability and authority. This is why I find it most helpful to have the chart open before me as I read the book. Without the chart, it is easy to get lost in the details. It is also difficult to visualize without getting the image in our heads first. Once this is done, Crouch is a skillful teacher in showing us the flaws of each quadrant and why we should all move toward the FLOURISHING quadrant.
Third, this book is perhaps Crouch's best yet. He has managed to distill parts of his other books into this new volume. With his experience in campus ministry and the knowledge of the Christianity and Western Culture, he knows that the evangelical world tends to be heavy on the positives and to downplay the negatives. There is a natural avoidance among evangelicals to see weaknesses as a bad thing. In fact, after reading this book, one might learn not to use the good/bad paradigm and to choose truth over falsehood instead.
After reading this book, I am most encouraged to embrace all of life, both strong and weak, and to accept myself even more, my strengths, my weaknesses, my everything. Most importantly, I can only do these things according to how God strengthens (or weakens) me.
Rating: 5 stars of 5.
conrade This book is provided to me courtesy of InterVarsity Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.
This is a wonderful book. About a topic that you never read so much more. How to be weak and strong?
Creating a life based on biblical principles seems like an ideal way to live. However, we as humans tend to be in a constant battle of living a Kingdom based life versus a carnal based life. Crouch helps the readers see the light of Scripture to help gain new insight into living the Kingdom based life we are meant to live.
Authority without vulnerability will not suffice. Neither will vulnerability without authority. The two together are what is needed. And these two together, I have come to believe, are the very heart of what it is to be human and to live for God and others.
Authority and vulnerability what does that look like? This is what this little book addresses. It confirms that the test of humanity is how it cares for the most vulnerable and how misplaced authority is the down fall of culture. For example authority and vulnerability with our children gives our children confidence and security. They are given a environment for flourishing. If you have all authority, you have a dictatorship and if you have all vulnerability, you have chaos. It deepens love to be received and to give. It gives room to maturity.
This is a good study on the weakness and strengths of authority and vulnerability. How the two causes one to flourish for the good of others. It also shows the gospel. The authority of the gospel and our need of the Gospel.
It is a fine balance but one that is worth striving for to express love that never wavers and is always faithful.
A Special Thank You to InterVarsity Press and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review
Andy Crouch is a writer, editor, musician and speaker. He has written Playing God, Culture Making and his latest book, Strong and Weak. He is executive editor of Christianity Today and is a classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz and gospel. He lives with his family in Pennsylvania.
I wrote Strong and Weak because I have come to see authority and vulnerability at the very heart of what it is to be human, and therefore image-bearers of God. The empirical reality is that we have far more authority—capacity for meaningful action—than any other creature on this planet, for good and for ill. At the same time, in countless ways we are more vulnerable than other creatures—we are physically limited, we have far longer periods of infancy and old age than other creatures where we are dependent on one another, and of course we are haunted through our lives by the consciousness of our own frailty and mortality.
Vulnerable comes from the Latin vulnus, which means wound. To be vulnerable is to be woundable—and while all creatures can be physically wounded, for human beings this goes far deeper. The wounds that really shape us are the ones that touch our souls—which is another thing that makes us so distinct from other creatures, the quality of self that both gives us great authority and agency and also makes us capable of bearing pain that is not just physical but psychological.
To be a truly creative person, you have to be woundable—because to be creative, you have to love. And love always involves granting freedom to the beloved—love that only forces and coerces the other is not love. But that means love will always be a risk—the most profound risk.
Every year I pick one or two big books I’ve never read, or only read quickly and under duress, to read on our family summer holiday. One year it was Dante’s Divine Comedy, another year it was Tolstoy’s War and Peace. One thing I’ve learned is that the classics are almost always worth my time. They have survived for a reason, and the sooner I get over my embarrassment about not having read them or paid attention to them and just start reading, almost always they reward every bit of the time and attention they require.
Among the more obscure books I’ve read and would recommend—neither of them exactly easy reading—are Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, a sweeping and devastating travel journal from her trip through the Balkans between the World Wars, and Sigrid Undset’s novel Kristin Lavransdatter, arguably the national novel of Norway. Undset’s book is what I’m looking for when I read fiction—a work that takes us far from our own world and assumptions and yet connects us to people from very different places and times in our fundamental humanity.
The book that absolutely knocked my socks off is Andrew Briggs and Roger Wagner’s beautifully illustrated and crisply written The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions. A scientist and an artist (both based in Oxford) take readers on an absolutely fascinating journey, from primeval humanity to the present, showing along the way that science and religion (and art) have always been intimately linked.
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