Disability and The Gospel {To-Go Version P2}

I’m reviewing a challenging  book Disability and The Gospel in a short series.

Previously: Disability and the Gospel {To-Go Version P1}

When Calvin arrived with a head far smaller than normal and pieces of brain matter missing we had a real close intimate connection with the effects of sin and a broken world. And it was horrible (constant-nausea-insomnia-inducing horrible) with a good dose of terror and despair. It was the effect of evil in the world but somewhere in my mind I knew God was in control of this too. And it made me really angry. How could something so awful (like pieces of brain missing) happen to something precious and helpless? And how in the world did God put His stamp on it? How does brokenness and providence overlap? This book has helped me understand more fully about God’s involvement in disability.

Some of you have responded strongly to this series already and have picked up the book and are reading avidly. No doubt you too have been affected by disability in a very personal way; these are not simply philosophical discussions but the life and questions you are wrestling with everyday. This makes our focus just zero right on exactly how the pain of disability fits in with the hope of the gospel. I’ve summarized and expanded a bit on some of the ideas in the second section of the book. I hope it encourages you today.

Key Thoughts from Part 2 (continued from Part 1)

5.The disabled were a key part in Jesus’ ministry on earth. They served as a reminder to the rest of the put-together community that he was a healer of body and soul.  ”God in Christ used real, tangible disability to show his grace and mercy to the weak and outwardly broken as a sign of what he can also do inwardly to those who recognize their weak and broken spiritual condition.” And he didn’t only heal from a distance, he got close and had physical contact. He reached out and touched the leper (Mark 1:41) and “intentionally crossed social and even religious boundaries in order to encounter the broken and rejected.”

6. When disabled people are segregated the body of Christ is deprived of the gifts and blessings God intended for them to receive from the disabled. Disabled people not only need the community of believers, the community of believers NEEDS them, in different ways.  “God chooses and uses those the world least expects to achieve his ends and to bring glory to himself. This is counter-intuitive to our Western sensibilities but it’s a clear pattern of the Scriptures.” Go through the gospels and look where Jesus goes, meet the ones he goes to. Who receives his call? Who seeks after him? “God chooses weak things, lowly things, despised things to nullify the wise, the strong, the self-assured. He does this to drive home the point that there is no cause for human boasting.”

I often think of Calvin as “broken glass”. Physically broken but perhaps more able to reflect and shine the glory of God than the physically whole. Broken glass can catch and reflect light brilliantly.

7. You and I are as broken as the mute, immobile, cognitively-impaired person who has no control of his body and function. Shocking, I know, but true for every man and woman ever conceived (except Jesus). The celebration of strength and ability is always sought after (anyone else enjoying the Olympic games?) and in turn we shy away from the disabled. We mistakenly think they are just an unfortunate lot that really have nothing to do with us (and many of us only change our minds when God brings disability real close). It messes with our illusions of control, safety, and fairness. Physical disability is a mirror of our spiritual and emotional brokenness. We are just a shadow of what we made to be, marred by sin nearly beyond recognition.

This was so real to me tonight, I put Calvin to sleep and for a moment I let myself imagine him physically and mentally whole. I feel like we have just a piece of him and in many ways we are living with a shadow. Then I turn the mirror back to me and see my soul-brokenness so much more and together we groan, yearning for that full redemption.

8. The Church confesses with her mouth that she is broken but we live contrary to the reality of our sin and mortality. We work so hard to look so unbroken don’t we? Putting on happy faces while relationships disintegrate behind closed doors. Looking clean and healthy and wholesome. I know, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that but we convince ourselves that we are so unbroken that we become self-reliant instead of grace-reliant. If we don’t understand the extent of our brokenness we will ALWAYS give glory to ourselves instead of where it’s really due, to God. So many of us are just ‘good folk’, working hard and not depending on anyone. Good qualities perhaps but is this strength? “Pride, self-reliance, and harder work will not save. Strength is too often measured by self-reliance and independence…We need to find salvation in repentance and rest; we find strength, contrary to the wisdom of the world, not in human ability, but in quietness and trust in the God of Israel.”

“Our age is typified by death, mourning, crying, and pain. These signs of weakness and brokenness are not aberrations that protrude into our otherwise happy existence. They arethe essence of our days.”

And again, here’s another quote worth jumping off the couch about:

“The absence of people with disabilities in the church indicates that the church has not fully grasped deeply enough the essence of the gospel; and conversely, God’s people have drunk too deeply from the well of cultural ideology with regard to wholeness and brokenness.”