Armor and Clay Pots: A Reflection on the Story of David And Goliath

 My favorite part of the story of David and Goliath is when Saul puts his own armor on David. The armor was too big and heavy for David to move well, which tells me just how small David really was compared to the soldiers in Israel’s army, much less Goliath.

 When I read this story, I think of Paul’s words in in 2 Corinthians 4:7: But we have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us. We have a hard time admitting that we are clay pots, fragile and easily broken. We encase ourselves in armor—the armor of financial security, moral superiority or respectability—to present a confident self to others. We do not want to be seen as weak and vulnerable.

 Yet it is reliance on such armor that God criticizes when he condemns the lukewarm church at Laodicea in Revelation 3:17: You say, ‘I’m rich, and I’ve grown wealthy, and I don’t need a thing.’ You don’t realize that you are miserable, pathetic, poor, blind, and naked.

What God wants is not our strength or respectability or morality. God wants clay pots—weak, vulnerable, fragile pots—so that we rely on God, not ourselves. Watchman Nee, In The Normal Christian Life, recounts what he said to a man who struggled to please God: “The trouble with you is that you are weak enough not to do the will of God, but you are not weak enough to keep out of things altogether. You are still not weak enough. When you are reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do nothing whatever, then God will do everything.” . . . A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.

When we recognize that we cannot save ourselves, that our goodness and morality and wealth have weighed us down like heavy armor until we are utterly exhausted, we may finally realize that freedom is found in weakness. The very first Beatitude, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, says that we experience heaven here and now only when we live in poverty of spirit, which is the acknowledgment of our own helplessness, coupled with complete trust in God’s strength.

Armor keeps God out. Like David, we have to be weak to know God’s strength.