Weak not only Survive, but Triumph over the Strong

An extraordinary insight from Eric Hoffer:

In contrast to the patterns which prevail in other forms of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. There's a sober realism in Paul's stilted words, 'God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.'

"The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable than those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence. Clearly, the intensity generated in the weak endows them, as it were, with a special fitness. Those like Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence, who see in the influence of the weak a taint that might lead to decadence and degeneration, are missing the point.

"It is precisely the peculiar role played by its weak that has given the human species its uniqueness. One should see the dominant role played by the weak in shaping man's fate not as a perversion of natural instincts and vital impulses but as a starting point of the deviation which led man to break away from and rise above nature - not as degeneration but as the generation of a new order of creation."

He writes this in his autobiography: A Truth Imagined - Page 53.

As a believer, it's the very weakness God is able to infect in us that results in that which is Him coming forth.

When talking about self-hatred above, I believe Hoffer meant it in a way similar to what Christians have of themselves: the flesh.

Only those that see themselves in the light of Christ will comprehend spiritually why weakness within is so important to be what we are meant to be as people of Christ.