One of the earliest heroes I discovered in Greek mythology was Antaeus. I’m not sure if it was Edith Hamilton or Bulfinch who introduced me to him, but Antaeus sounded like a pretty cool dude to a ten-year-old like me. Back in the fifties, we didn’t have Ironman or Spider Man like kids have now. Antaeus was a giant of person, the scion of two gods, Gaia (earth) and Poseidon. Antaeus, with his six pack über abs, loved to wrestle. But it was folly to challenge him or be challenged by him to a match. With every fall or blow he received, he would immediately spring back stronger than ever.  This made him virtually impossible to defeat whether he fought man or beast. It was his mother Gaia who kept him alive according to mythology, as her power present in the earth flowed to and through him, imbuing him with her strength whenever he was thrown to the ground. As long as he could keep his feet on the ground or land on the ground while fighting, he was invincible.  But even as Sampson in the Bible owed his strength to his uncut hair, and the only one who knew it betrayed and sheared him, Antaeus’ secret was not safe either.  One of Antaeus’ daughters married Hercules and may have told Hercules about her father and the secret of his success.¹

Hercules, as far as we know, had no intention of ever harming his father-in-law.  But one day, as Hercules was engaged in performing penance, known as The Twelve Labours, the two belligerents met. Hercules had killed his children in his sleep in a fit of temporary insanity,² Be that as it may, Hercules and Antaeus met and the battle began.  Hercules observed that whenever Antaeus became tired or worn out in the struggle, he’d fall to the ground, even when Hercules was a dozen feet away from him, only to jump up again invigorated.  When Hercules understood that Antaeus’s extraordinary strength came from the earth, Hercules wrapped his mighty arms around Antaeus keeping the giants feet from touching the ground and he crushed Antaeus to death.

But hold your tears. Antaeus wasn’t a hero by any means according to today’s standards. He roamed across present day Libya and Algeria and would stop travelers and provoke them to violence.  Afterwards, he beheaded them all, hundreds of them.

Yet, the notions that strength comes from weakness, or that victory can be plucked from the jaws of defeat, where hopelessness yields to hope are notions well-developed elsewhere. In the Bible, for example. So, with little more to say about Antaeus, I want to unpack this by looking at the relationship between strength and weakness.

Those of you who know Deena and I know that we are both currently challenged with significant health issues (Deena in particular.) Situations like this, or any sort of crisis can develop character and allow you to move on as a better person. But, the reverse is also true. A person might feel they are at a tipping point when an additional hardship pushes them over the edge and they fold. Without knowing at the moment how Deena and I will deal with the future, and what the future holds for us, is something a physicist might describe as a state of superposition:

Superposition is a quantum principle that refers to a system existing in multiple states at the same time. A system in superposition may exist in a combination of all possible states until it is measured.”

Because one cannot know an outcome of something in the future (e.g., success or failure), then in some sense both possibilities are currently and equally possible. Who will the next President be? Joe Biden or Donald Trump? They are currently neck and neck in the polls. Until the final votes are tallied next November, neither knows for sure who one, and Donald Trump’s propensity to declare victory before the results are complete does not make his victory any more certain, but instead just muddies the water as he intends it to.

In II Corinthians 12:10 St. Paul says “When I am weak (ἀσθενῶ), then I am strong (δυνατός).” The definition of the Greek word “ἀσθενῶ” is to be “physically weak,” “morally sick,” “ill” or “feeble.” The opposite adjective “Δυνατός,” or “strong” on the other hand means “power,” “powerful,” or “mighty.” The word “dynamite” comes from this Greek word root. Dynamite is powerful, explosive.

To some, this might seem like a contradiction. Which is it? Are you weak or are you strong? And can you be both at the same time and if so, in what way?

God can “turn on a dime.” In Psalm 30, David writes: “You have turned my mourning into dancing for me.” One minute you are grieving (as for a beloved but missing pet and then soon after, who do you hear outside scratching at your door? Someone living a morally sick life is trapped in that vicious cycle between guilt, shame, and an impotent will and then God’s grace immerses him (or her) like a cleansing rain. Deena shared a short video with me this evening about a guy with a ruptured intracranial aneurysm. One second her was fine, and the next second his head felt like it would explode. He experienced projectile vomiting while the sound of a gale force wind tore past his ears. Yet, he heard a voice inside his tormented mind saying “It’s not your time.” Was there really a voice and does it matter if there wasn’t one? No, because the important point here is that he believed he heard a voice, and that reassurance helped him navigate the hours, days, weeks and months that followed.

There are sometimes limits to what flesh and blood can achieve. For example brilliant scientists and researchers work hard trying to understand our world, but at some point they run out of ideas and solutions and hit a brick wall.

• In 1953, Dr. James Watson, one of the two scientists (the other being Francis Crick) who discovered DNA was exhausted trying to discover and understand the building blocks of life when he fell asleep and had dream in 1953. In his dream he saw spiral staircase. It was this spiral staircase in his dream that illustrated how the bases in DNA are arrayed. Thus, the double helix (See below.)
• In 1869, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev exhausted himself trying to design a way to conveniently list all the known elements, their symbols, atomic weights and so on. Finally, the solution came to him in a dream, where he saw what every school child sees today as the Periodic Table of the Elements.
• Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine could not figure out how to make fabric move in the process of sewing mechanically. The solution came to him when he had a dream that he was captured by cannibals. They were dancing around him with their spears moving up and down in the air like pistons. While Howe probably tried to forget about this dream after he awakened, he was inspired by the movement of the spears and he understood that it was the needle in his sewing device which must move, not the fabric.
• Even artists and musicians such as Paul Simon have their midnight epiphanies where things become crystal clear. Watson, Mendeleev, et al. were at their wit’s end. They weren’t sleeping right, eating healthy (if at all.) But suddenly when they were close to giving up, they had an eureka moment.

In II Corinthians 12:7-9, St. Paul writes about a personal problem he had. What it was is uncertain, but it seems to have been a health issue. For me personally, it was migraine headaches which I suffered for a great deal of my life. But I’m not sure what Paul’s issue was. Some think it might have been epilepsy, others say cataracts. Paul pleaded with God to remove this “thorn” but it was not removed. Instead, God told Paul “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The words “make perfect” is represented by the Greek word “τελεῖται.” This word means “complete,” “make perfect,” “fulfill,” “consummate,” and “bring to an end.” This passage is the only place in Scripture that τελεῖται appears, and the perfect tense of the verb indicates this was process of “being made perfect” was a continuous, day-by-day fact in St. Paul’s life.

People are often stubborn and thisin·transigence stiffles the Holy Spirit. In Numbers chapter 22, we read about Balaam and his donkey. Balaam was a mojo sort of Jew who was hired to curse some group or another that lived centuries B.C. But the day he planned to leave, nothing went right for him. As he gathered his kit and saddled his donkey the stars were no longer aligned. A few miles out of town, however, the donkey sat down on the road and refused to continue. Balaam jumps down and he’s tugging on the reins and kicking the poor and cursing it and the donkey starts yelling back at him, like Eddie Murphey who played the donkey in Shrek. Balaam is so ticked off by then that he answers it before he understands that the donkey is speaking Hebrew. Then, as Balaam turned, he saw an angel standing a few hundred feet down the road with its sword out. He understood then that the donkey had saved his life. Balaam was not to travel down that road no matter what!

So, sometimes we need to “let go” of whatever we are fixated on. We all need a helping hand. Nor do we give up. We are running a race. You as a parent may wish that your child could run a five minute mile, but most parents will love their child for just crossing the finish line; for not giving up when things get tough.

St Paul wrote a very beautiful passage (II Corinthians 4:8-12) about this:

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;

Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

So then death worketh in us, but life in you.”

The secret Antaeus knew that allowed him to prevail over and over again against his foes was his understanding of just where his power came from, and when to yield to a higher power. For Antaeus, his power came from below. The power we have comes from above.

These are just a few thoughts about perseverance. Living the Christian life is not about trying to stifle every cuss word or bad thought, but rather surrendering your life to God and letting the agency of the Holy Spirit do the work for you. Paul says “I die (ἀποθνῄσκω) daily” (I Corinthians 15:31.). His body is dying, decaying (both cell death and the death of one’s personality traits such as blind ambition, ruthlessness, narcissism and so on.) But as a consequence, sin in your life starts to wither away. One final example . . .

I was twenty and a Christian for only a year when I went to Vietnam. You quickly learned to survive in a war zone. What does an incoming rocket sound like? How does a mortar sound. How would you get your weapon? We would get rocketed maybe 9:30 p.m. and people would grab their flak vests. After the “all clear,” people doffed their vests and tried to sleep again. The next round would come in, maybe around 10:45. People would grab their vests again. Rinse and repeat.

Newly arrive soldiers were often terrified. Some seasoned soldiers, however, coped by convincing themselves that they had already been selected to die (in most cases that was not true) so they enjoyed a certain peace. That was not my personal defense mechanism, but it worked for them.

¹Others, though, credit Hercules and his power of observation.

²It was Pericles who introduced the term to Hercules saying “Circe has bewitched you” and this was the first use of this term as a defense in law. It would not be used again until 1840 A.D. when Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria.