God Uses Boneheads

I can tell you from observation and from personal experience that God uses boneheads to do his work. In fact, His options are pretty limited—we’re all boneheads. 

This is true not just in modern America but across the globe and throughout time. Just look at the sort of riffraff He used in the Bible! (With one significant Exception, of course.) As an example, let’s look at the life of one important patriarch: Abraham.

The O.G. Patriarch

Currently I’m re-reading the Bible from the beginning. The book of Genesis has loads of familiar stories and characters, one of the most recognizable being Abraham. Yes, Father Abraham. He’s a pretty big deal in the Bible, not just in Genesis but throughout the New Testament too. Slightly less famous but no less important is Abraham’s wife, Sarah. I’ve just been through their story again, and it got me thinking about the sort of people God chooses and uses. Spoiler: they’re all pretty messed up.

The Highlights

Of all the people in the world, God chose Abraham to be the father of the nation of Israel. God repeatedly promised to give him a son and, through that son, to make Abraham the predecessor of countless people who would come to know God. God chose barren Sarah to be the mother of this special child. This miracle would happen when Abraham and Sarah were well past their prime, even by Old Testament standards. 

Abraham is used as an example of faith in Hebrews, and Sarah is cited as a holy woman who showed submission to her husband. The whole of Scripture refers to God as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” It all started with Abraham and Sarah because, throughout their lives, they believed and obeyed God…kind of.

The First Lie

Well, technically, it all started with God choosing Abram and Sarai—their names before their lives got flipped, turned upside down by God. In Genesis 12, God calls Abram to move to another country away from his family, and then God heaps all kinds of blessings and promises on him. Abram would be great, blessed, protected, and honored. Why? Because God said so.

Abram obeys, and things go swimmingly for the first 9 verses. 

Then Abram makes his first bonehead choice: he lies about his wife. Afraid that the Egyptians will kill him so they can take Sarai for themselves, he makes her pretend to be his sister. God had promised to make Abram into a great nation, but in his fear Abram must have forgotten. God plagues Pharaoh and returns Sarai to her rightful husband. Things are back on track.

My Way or the Highway

Abram gets rich, heroically rescues his nephew Lot, gets an unexpected blessing from a priest who was also a foreshadowing of Christ, and gets another very clear promise of God’s favor and blessing. But then comes another bonehead move: Sarai tries to bring God’s promises to pass in her own way and time. 

She tells her husband to father an heir through her servant Hagar. The scheme works, the handmaid gets pregnant by Abram, and then things fall apart. Poor Hagar resents Sarai, unfair Sarai blames Abram for the way things have turned out, and cowardly Abram tells her to do whatever she wants with her slave. So Sarai mistreats Hagar, who runs away. Poor choice after poor choice for Abram and Sarai. 

Promises, Laughter, and More Lies

Thankfully, God protects Hagar and her baby, promising the little one an abundant future, and then things get quiet for 13 years. God breaks the silence by re-christening Abram and his wife. They are now Abraham and Sarah, and God is going to blow their minds—they’re about to become parents at long last. When God gives the promise this time, Abraham and Sarah both laugh. It was enough of a miracle that Abraham had fathered a child at the age of 90, but now he’s 100 and Sarah is 90. Surely their diaper-changing days are far behind them, right? 

To underscore their doubt, Abraham and Sarah pull the exact same stunt as in Egypt. They pretend to be siblings, and the unwitting king of the land falls for it. (By the by, how is Sarah still this enviable at the age of 90?? I want whatever she’s having.) Anyway, God spares the king and returns Sarah to Abraham again. 

Promises Fulfilled

Next thing you know, God fulfills his promise. The aged couple has a bouncing baby boy named Isaac. At a party for Isaac, Sarah still manages to feel spite toward Hagar’s son and sends them both away to die in the wilderness. God intervenes yet again, promising to bless and preserve the boy. Everyone lives happily ever after. 

…Except that Abraham’s grandsons, Jacob and Esau, act far more foolishly than Abraham ever did, and it was downhill for most of his descendants as well. 

Better Them Than Me

When I read a story like that, it really makes me think. First, I’m thankful that no one is writing down the stupid things I do and the self-preserving choices I make. If I were a character in the Bible, I’m sure my chapter would be pretty depressing, to say nothing of embarrassing. 

Second, Abraham and Sarah lived to be over 100 years old, so the handful of bonehead choices catalogued in Genesis is fairly small if you spread them out over that many years. I manage to make that many bad choices weekly.

Third, I’m thankful that, overarching and underpinning their choices (and ours) is God’s grace. One perk of His omniscience is that he’s never unpleasantly surprised by the foolish things we do. He didn’t choose Abraham in hopes that he would do everything right; instead, He redeemed what Abraham did wrong. That was the plan all along.

God Sees the Heart

And finally, I’m thankful that God cares most about our hearts. He goes to great lengths to show us our deepest desires, and it isn’t always pretty. But in Abraham’s case, even though he was a bonehead in many respects, he finally learned to trust and value God supremely. God already knew this, of course, but Abraham discovered it when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac.

After all the promises, waiting, and joy, God asked Abraham to kill Isaac on an alter as a sacrifice to God. I can’t even imagine what was going through Abraham’s mind. But of all the times I would have sympathized with a decision to disobey, Abraham chose to go through with it. Of course, God stopped him at the last moment, providing a ram and a beautiful picture of salvation all at the same time. But as for Abraham, he’d finally learned to trust God. He was a faithless bonehead no more.

The Gracious God of Boneheads

One final takeaway: if you’re tempted (like me) to roll your eyes at the poor choices of people in the Bible or real life, remember that you’re not much better off. We’re not all thoroughgoing nincompoops, but we’re all on the spectrum. And if you (also like me) are sometimes tempted to feel that God can’t use you because of the choices you’ve made, take heart. God knows, and He is more than able to bring beauty from ashes. That’s the kind of God he is: the gracious God of boneheads.