Our own stupidity - a reason for hope?

I am reading Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson. Today, it struck me that it is possible for us to find a reason for hope not in spite of our own (we humans’) tendency to mess things up but rather through that tendency.

Here’s what made me think that. Robinson wrote about the stories of Abraham, Noah, Isaac, and Jacob. In those stories, there is a lot of lying and trickery. And a lot of humans thinking that they can make God’s promises come true themselves when it appears God isn’t coming through. Think about it. Abraham tells other countries' leaders that Sarah is not his wife but his sister. Sarah encourages him to have a child with their servant Hagar when it seems like God’s not coming through with his promise that she (Sarah) will have children. Jacob and his mother Rebekah scheme to fool Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing that Isaac wanted to give to Jacob’s older brother Esau. Jacob’s father-in-law Laban tricks Jacob into marrying the older daughter Leah instead of Rachel, the one Jacob had worked seven years for.

Yet, God’s covenant (promise) is fulfilled, and often through what the people in the stories do while deceiving. Robinson writes of one example, Jacob’s marriage to Leah, the “wrong” sister:

Unfavored Leah will be the mother of most of Jacob’s children. She will be essential to the emergence of a Hebrew people and the unfolding of the covenant. Providence is active in all this, perhaps itself the ultimate trickster. It even drops the veil of misfortune from time to time to show an unexpected face. (page 149)

And in another place, Robinson writes of “the Jacob of indolence and guile…but the Lord was faithful to His promise to Abraham”

Odd words like feckless and hapless can be applied to Jacob, and then, in time, words like pitiable and tragic. And if it is bad feminism to say that Rebekah’s liveliness and vigor turned to resentment, scheming, and manipulation, her role in this seeming disaster was providential. The very mingled characters in Genesis, in the fact of their flaws and errors, should give hope to us all. (page 143, emphasis mine)

And even:

The covenant is much more the heritage of Jacob than it could ever be if he had had to deserve it. (page 147)

Reading all this gives me reason for hope. God’s covenant was fulfilled through the deceitful, trickster acts of people just as flawed, dishonest, and stupid as we still are. When I read the news and feel despair for mankind's future, I can remember that God works things out through the stupid things we do. His love will not fail.