Shaming the Strong

Learn how to live from those who are dying

“God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. “

I Corinthians 1:27

The silence was thick as we sat there. It’s hard to know what to say in a situation like this. Do you talk about the weather? Do you ask him how he’s feeling? I knew what I didn’t want to talk about. The cancer that is killing him.

As a pastor I’ve had the privilege of sitting in many hospitals to care for people. Mostly they are cold and clinical spaces, noisy with beeping monitors, and busy with nurses. The patient is in a gown with tubes and sensors going everywhere. It’s clear you are there because something is not as it should be. But this time I was sitting in a warm and cozy living room, a place of life, family, laughter, and for relaxing. He looked mostly like he always did. Christian t-shirt on, ball cap pulled down, glasses like normal. It wasn’t like a hospital, looking in from the outside you wouldn’t think anything abnormal here. But if you looked closer you’d see the medicine bottles around, you’d see how gaunt he has become, and you could even see the pain he felt as he talked.

That was just the thing though. What are you going to talk about? As a general rule as a pastor I’ve learned in hospital visits to spend a few minutes getting the details, and then just talk about anything else. People get so tired of talking about being sick. I tried that approach, but the words felt too light for a heavy moment.

No matter how he felt, I knew he was still reading his Bible, so I asked what he had been reading lately. Mainly from Mark he said, reading about Jesus. God brought to mind what I read that day. 1 Corinthians 1 is one of my favorite passages, but the words took on new meaning in front of him that morning. I flipped my phone there to read, but I didn’t need it, as the words have been burned into me since I first read them.

“God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. “

I Corinthians 1:27

I’ve read those words a lot, preached them a lot to others, and to myself even more. I’ve felt weak and helpless before, and the message of Paul reminds me that God doesn’t work the way the world does. But sitting in that living room and seeing my friend there, weak and riddled with cancer, the words took on new meaning. Few things in our world are as strong as cancer. It comes for the rich and the poor, the famous, infamous, and unknown. Cancer doesn’t care about your bank account or followers list. It just keeps going, age, wealth, gender, or status be damned. Cancer is strong.

But he was making it look weak to me that day. The way he was living with that diagnosis, and dying with it too, was putting cancer to shame. Don’t get me wrong, he was still struggling. As we talked about his parents who had visited, the conversations with his kids, or his wife, the pain of loss was very real. But his love for Christ was greater than the strongest cancer. He was putting cancer to shame by how he was living, and by how he was dying.

I told him about the millionaire Bryan Johnson. After making his money in tech, he’s become a “biohacker” who has become famous for trying to slow, stop, or even reverse aging. He spends $2 million a year, works with 30 doctors and experts, and tracks hundreds of bio markers constantly. He has an extreme diet, takes dozens of supplements, controls his sleep and light exposure, and even experimented with things like blood transfusions from his son. He’s trying to defeat the strongest enemy of all, death, but he just looks foolish doing it. All the ice baths and stats checks and protocols can’t hold off death, because it’s too strong.

Here in this living room there were no doctors and no around the clock care and no secret protocols. Sure he takes medicine and sees doctors and does what he can, but that’s not what makes him different. Those words have meaning because Phillip is putting the strength of cancer to shame by the way he lives, and by the way he dies. He will be the first to tell you it hasn’t always been this way. He tried to find happiness in many other things for many years, until Christ found him in the desperate prayers of a junkie. By God’s grace he got clean and began to preach and help other men in addiction, and led a ministry to help others do the same. He got married, restored relationships he had broken, and was seeing God move in mighty ways. But then the cancer came.

He attacked it with the same energy he had overcome addiction with and that he pursued God with. But cancer is strong, and it doesn’t accept defeat. Even if he doesn’t beat cancer physically, he is beating it another way. He’s weak in every sense of the word right now, but God is using that weakness to put cancer to shame. The millionaire who tries to defeat death with money and tricks just looks like a fool to most of us. But the man who has been beat up by chemo, radiation, tumors, and pain looks like a hero who can put cancer to shame. He’s putting cancer to shame by how he lives, and how he dies.

I’ll remember that conversation the rest of my life. That moment will be burned into my heart, and every time I hear that verse I’ll think of the weak man who put cancer to shame. Not by his own strength, and not by his money or team of doctors, but by Christ. God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God used Phillip that day to remind me of the truth of scripture, of the power of God to change lives, and of the hope that Christians have. Why does God work this way?

“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. “ Through God we can learn lessons on generosity from the poor, we can learn about leading from servants, and we can learn how to live from those who are dying.