A few years back Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a book called Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.¹ Unsurprisingly, the book is most concerned with not being fragile. Usually, the fix is to become resilient, or the ability to withstand hardship. The book makes the case that Antifragility – the ability to thrive in the face of chaos and hardship – is better.

Which is good, I think. It seems to me that getting better as the chaos around you grows is, well… advantageous.

It’s also easy to use antifragility as a stepping-stone to invulnerability. But trying to become invulnerable is… not advantageous. Because in the Kingdom of God, vulnerability isn’t a weakness or something to be avoided.

In the Kingdom of God, Vulnerability is Strength.

Brené Brown kind of stumbled across this truth². In her book “Daring Greatly,” she makes a pretty good case vulnerability is the only way we can experience love, joy, and belonging. I’d suggest you can’t have relationship without vulnerability. You have to have the courage to take the risk of being hurt. It’s the only way to actual know and be known.

Which brings us back to the first marker of the Kingdom of God – Relationships are the Most Important.

God demonstrated his willingness to be vulnerable by putting on human skin in the man named Jesus. Imagine that! The one who made everything by speaking it into existence, became like one of his creations so that he could be with us, knowing that he was going to be killed in the process. I don’t know how you could be more vulnerable.

This flips the purpose of our weakness. Weakness is no longer something to be protected or guarded or eliminated – it’s the very thing we need in order to be connected to God and others. Vulnerability is Strength.