Walking with a limp
the less appealing part of the metaphor, the "limping" part
When I started this blog on the old Wordpress site back in 2017, the first doubt I had about the theme of the blog was, “This will fail. People don’t want to read about shortcomings and brokenness.” And it is a very real consideration. A responsible, biblically-informed writer would be balanced, wrestling with the full counsel of God’s Word; so I cannot only write about problems. I would like to think that in over six years and hundreds of posts, I have imparted much hope and edification.
But humans are human. We are not perfect, and I have learned over the years that absolutely no one benefits from airbrushed identities of ourselves. In coming to faith in the year 2000, I absorbed a lot of popular Christian culture, and inevitably, that included material from many pastors of huge churches who were “successful”, and appeared to be perfect. I’ll never forget my first visit to one church around 2004, I was almost blinded by the shine emanating from the preacher’s shoes. It would be the kind of thing that the Instagram account Preachers & Sneakers would have profiled, had it existed back then.
After a couple of decades of watching popular Christian leaders commit jarring abuses behind the scenes, I have learned (to quote a popular phrase by the late John Wimber) to not trust a leader who does not limp. Somehow, many of us have been conditioned to feel secure with a leader who projects an image of knowing everything and being bulletproof. But over time, I have learned to appreciate the willingness of a leader to answer a question with, “I don’t know.” And I have to be willing to be truthful and give that answer as well.
The fact is, we all have a limp through this journey of faith and life in some way, at least metaphorically, and in some cases, literally. If we take God at his word, God chooses the foolish things of this world, and God’s power is made perfect in weakness. So the way I see it, there is no sense in cosplaying a Christian superhero anymore. I do not think the majority of younger generations, who have tended to crave authenticity more than effectiveness, are going to swayed by it anyway.
The limping metaphor came to me by way of a few life experiences. When I was in 7th grade, I had a bad knee injury while playing basketball, which required surgery a week later, and again when I was age 20… and my knee still doesn’t work right to this day. Additionally, I was no golden boy as a child; I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome around 5th grade, and dealt with depression the latter half of my teenage years. I know what it is like to limp through this journey of life.
And biblically, one story that resonates most with me is the story of Jacob, who apparently wrestled with God in Genesis 32, and left the bizarre and intense encounter with a blessing, a new identity, and a limp from his injured leg.
Take some time and familiarize yourself with Jacob’s story (years ago, I wrote three pieces on Jacob’s story, find them here, here, and here). When we get to the story of Jacob wrestling with a man (who the text might be implying was actually God), the text has already established Jacob as a trickster, a scoundrel, and having very little do with with a faithful walk with Yahweh. Jacob was running scared… he had ticked off his brother Esau years prior, and was journeying in Esau’s direction. Jacob was quite scared because he was in between a rock and a hard place.
After having a surprisingly favorable encounter with Laban (see Genesis 31), and before his encounter with Esau, Jacob must have taken a nap, only to be awaken by God seemingly in the form of a man, who wrestled with him “until daybreak” (Gn. 32:24). That’s quite a long fight, I would imagine.
I know barely anything about the sport of boxing, but do know that at times, when one boxer is getting pummeled by the other athlete, the one will try to hold on to the other’s arms, looking like a big hug (called “clinching”). The first time you see it, it might be confusing; one moment, two people are savagely swinging at each other, and suddenly, they are hugging it out. Well, this is to slow the opponent’s momentum. The first boxer knows he is outmatched at a particular moment, so he holds on.
Sidebar… maybe some of us need this reminder when going through some turbulence in life and we are wondering why God is allowing it all to happen. Rather than running from God, and instead of throwing wild punches at God… hold on persistently until you get a response. Anyway…
Jacob seems to have done this to the point where the mysterious God/man told Jacob, even after Jacob’s hip had been injured (and Jacob is probably flopping around with really poor wrestling technique), to let him go. And Jacob refused to let go until he got what he needed from this fight: a blessing from this stranger.
When all was said and done, Jacob had a transformative encounter: the new name of Israel, a renewed identity rooted in God, and limp from his busted hip as a reminder of his experience with God. Jacob was blessed, but God took away Jacob’s self-sufficiency and trickery. Previously, he deceived and ran. Now, Jacob limped.
That type of an infirmity tends to be used by God to remind us to not go back to who we were. For Jacob, the limp would be to rely on God’s faithfulness rather than Jacob’s deceit. For the Apostle Paul and the “thorn in the flesh” of 2 Cor. 12, it would prevent Paul from becoming conceited.
There are a lot of ways in which I can interpret my experience with a bum knee, but one important result has been to remind me that I am no self-made man who can chart his own course in life to glory through ambition and skill. I can’t even bend my knee without my kneecap getting all wonky. I will always be dependent upon God’s grace. I struggled for a long time resenting my imperfections like my knee. I have come to see it as a form of grace in a similar way to how Paul viewed is mysterious thorn.
Hopefully, the reader can see why the limping piece is so rich in Jacob’s story, and in our lives. This is a long journey, and sometimes, it is the limp that keeps us faithful, to stay on the road for the long haul.