My son is six years old and I have never had a conversation with him where he has used more than two or three words. William is developmentally disabled. He has a learning disability and a severe language disability. It can be like living with someone from another country who has very little ability to learn English. William’s disability is very manageable most of the time. Families with disabilities have a different definition of “normal” than most families. For example, much of my wife’s week is oriented around the different therapies and services that William receives. This is just the reality that we have come to accept and roll with. But even in the midst of “normal” life, every now and then we are reminded of just how difficult life with a disability can be. For example, when my wife and I went out of town for a conference last month, we were able to explain to William’s 4 year old sister that we would be gone for a few days and that Grandpa and Grandma would be staying with them while we were gone. We were unable to explain those details to William and so he did not realize that we were leaving until we started packing our suitcases in the car, and he did not know how long we would be gone. The tears streaming down William’s face as we were pulling out of the driveway that day were a painful reminder that no matter how manageable, William’s disability is very real and very sad.
It is likely that you personally know someone with a disability, and they may have much more severe disabilities than William does. How should we relate to those people? Should we treat them like everyone else, and ignore their disability? I recently heard a radio commercial that featured a deaf man declare that deafness was not a disability, that people treating deaf people differently was their only disability. Is that right? Should we just pretend that physical or mental disabilities are akin to people who have different hair color, or people who are short or tall? What does the Bible say about disability? How does the gospel inform our understanding of disability?
When God created the world, he looked at creation and said that it was “very good”. In the Garden of Eden, there was no disease and no disability because their was no sin. Ever since the Adam and Eve fell, death and decay have been at work in the human race. The effects of sin have corrupted God’s creation and as a result, disease, genetic disorders, and birth defects have become common in the world. The world has created an illusion of normality in which we can escape feeling the burden that our fallen experience brings. All we have to do is live long enough and either we or someone close to us will experience significant loss. We all experience the effects of the fall, we just all experience those effects differently. Some of us are born with allergies, and others are born with weak immune systems. Some of us are cursed with frequent migraines, while others are born with dramatically inferior intellectual capabilities. You see all of us in one way or another experience the effects of the fall. People with disabilities are no different, they just experience the effects of the fall to different degrees. Disability is normal because of the fall, but it is not a part of God’s original plan. When we meet someone with a disability, it should remind us that something is fundamentally wrong in the world. It is ok to be sad that someone is disabled.
But in saying that there is something fundamentally wrong, are we saying that a person with disability is less valuable as a person? Not all. Our value as a person is not a result of how “useful” we are, or what we can accomplish. Our value has a person is derived from the fact that were are all created in God’s image. We are all flawed because of sin and it’s effects, but we continue to find our worth in our original purpose as image-bearers and await the day of redemption when the “sons of God” will be revealed and we rise with resurrected bodies as flawless image-bearers once again. My son loves to watch “Thomas The Tank Engine” videos. I have a real problem with the underlying message of those stories. Time and time again, what is exalted as virtuous is that Thomas is a “really useful engine”. Well, what if because of a disability, I am unable to be “really useful”? Am I less valuable as a person? No! God bestows worth on us because we are a reflection of Him, not because of anything glorious we achieve.
So how should we relate to people with disabilities? Like everyone else who has been effected by the curse, we should love them and seek to be agents of Christ’s redemptive grace in their lives. We should not ignore, or minimize their disability, but we should not put them in a separate category either. We should mourn with them as they mourn the effects of their disability. We should rejoice with them as they experience victory in small and big ways over the disability. We should walk alongside them and encourage them in the long journey of faith that God has called them to. We should also pray for them to be healed.
It is right for us to pray for healing for people with disabilities. If you don’t believe that a persons worth and value are found in that they are divine image-bearers, then it can be difficult to pray for someone. You might feel that by praying for healing, you are somehow saying that you aren’t loving this person for “who they are”. But this is a fallacy. My love for my son is not based on his disability. Because I love my son, I can’t wait until he experiences relief from the effects of the brokenness of this fallen world. I believe God wants us to ask great things of Him, all the while trusting Him with the timing. In God’s wisdom, it may be necessary that William not be healed in this life, but I don’t know that, so I will continue to pray.
You see, in reality, all of us experience the effects of the fall. The only question is, to what degree? All of us share the most serious of special needs, we have been alienated to God because of our sin. So in the most significant way, we are all special needs children. Praise God that we have a Redeemer who will reverse the curse and who has met our most special need of all by dying on the cross and being the first born among many brothers into a disability free, resurrection life!
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:1-8
