Just as ancient walls around a city protected its inhabitants, people have "walls", or boundaries, we use for protection. When skin is opened through a wound, infections can enter the body. When we are wounded relationally our protection is likewise damaged, and the enemy has easy access to our lives. He uses our wounds to infect us, to rule us, to keep us in trudging along as his good little slaves. He hates it when we rebuild, because if we succeed, he will not longer be able to breach our boundaries, and rule us. We will no longer be slaves, we will be free.
When we begin to rebuild, the enemy often attacks with words first. He attacks our strength. (See "Tales of the Restoration: Weakness") He also attacks our capability and spirituality.
When the Jews of Jerusalem began to rebuild their wall, their enemies, local leaders who enjoyed their de facto rule over Jerusalem, began taunting. "Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, 'What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will the finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?' Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, 'Yes what they are building--if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!' Nehemiah 4:1-3 ESV
When Nehemiah's enemies shouted their criticism of the capabilities of his building force, they were most likely telling the truth! The workers were a hodgepodge collection of people from every strata of society, goldsmiths, perfumers, merchants, rulers, temple servants, priests, and entire families including daughters. Not a single person was specifically identified as a stone mason! "Archaeological evidence confirms that the walls were indeed of inferior construction...By and large the work of God in the world is not done by experts." (Michael Riley, The Spiritual Formation Bible commentary on Nehemiah)
Nehemiah and his crew of non-professional builders threw up the city wall in record time. The fact that they were not qualified to do the work, did not keep Nehemiah from doing what God was calling him to do. What if Nehemiah had taken Sanballat's words to heart? What if he had said, "You know, he's right. Have you seen that section by the sheep gate? The stones aren't even straight. It won't be anything like Solomon's wall. We'd better back off and wait for real builders to do this." Fortunately Nehemiah did not allow the true, but malicious, criticism that he and his people were neither professionally nor spiritually qualified, to slow him down. He pressed on anyway.
I enjoy dabbling and have extensive experience doing a wide variety of things badly, so this idea doesn't bother me too much. On the other hand, "if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right" people will likely hate this thought. I stand by it. A good insistence on quality can be twisted into discouragement and an excuse to quit. Sometimes, in a season of restoration, God calls us to do things that are outside our training and skills, things we are not capable of doing as well as we would like. In the entire list of laborers in Nehemiah 3 only one group is criticized, the Tekoite nobles who "would not stoop to serve their Lord." (Nehemiah 3:5. ESV)
Blessings,
Beth
For background information about Nehemiah's story, see earlier blogs entitled Tales of the Restoration.
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