Opinion | Christmas Should Humble Us

But from a Christian standpoint, Craig Barnes told me, “Our weakness finally opens our eyes to the need for a Savior. Nothing prevents that more than our strength. No one has ever said, ‘I was so successful I just had to come to Jesus.’”

“We can only love when we are softened,” according to Peggy Wehmeyer, a former religion correspondent for ABC. “We are most likely to be softened when we are weakened.” Ms. Wehmeyer, who wrote movingly about her husband’s suicide in these pages, told me that the aftermath of his death was “the most powerless I’ve ever felt. Trusting in God’s goodness and yielding without being able to nail him down. That’s where peace begins: Surrender, in powerlessness.”

It’s important to point out here that there are sufferings we may experience that make us a more resilient, deeper and more compassionate person, yet if we were asked whether we are glad for having gone through it, we would answer no.

James Forsyth, senior pastor of McLean Presbyterian Church in Virginia, which I attend with my family, was sexually abused as a teenager. “I wish this thing hadn’t have happened to me,” he says. But, he adds, “You can have scars and still be healed. There are some things in life you never move on from, but you do learn to carry them differently.”

Whatever their full effects, human weakness and suffering are not meant to be ends in themselves. For Christians, they are meant to spur us to seek out God from a place of need and provide an opportunity for the display of divine power. And again: Power understood through the prism of Christianity is different from how the world generally understands power. Kerry Dearborn, professor emerita at Seattle Pacific University, described to me the difference between power over others and the power of connecting with others, which she said requires that there be openness and vulnerability.

As I understand the words of Jesus as recorded in II Corinthians, weakness opens us up to a fundamentally new definition of strength — strength that is not coercive, domineering, prideful and self-seeking but rather compassionate, sacrificial, humble and empathetic. God’s power, perfected through our weakness, makes us instruments of mercy, seekers of justice, agents of reconciliation. It helps us see the world in a different way.

Renée Notkin, a pastor at Union Church in Seattle, told me: “I am daily inspired by how Jesus continually turns the world upside down in regards to power, might, world success and achievement. Jesus’ subversive challenges to the human-crafted structures that oppress and bind is what keeps me following Jesus and holding on to hope that there is a third way — the Jesus way that brings healing to individuals, communities and nations.”