Our responsibility to people with disabilities
If you are a church member and you think of Persons With Disabilities (PWDs), maybe you think of curses, demons, healing, saliva, or noises. My challenge today is that we as the Church train ourselves instead to think of Jesus’s words in John 9 when confronted with questions about disability: “Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’”
There is a growing awareness and acceptance that disability typically resides in the society rather than in the person. It is often the attitudes of the society around the individual that are the disabling factor, hindering the individual’s full and effective participation. Unfortunately, this is just as true within the Church; we can feel uncomfortable when faced with noisy or dirty PWDs. We might say they need healing or deliverance from curses or demons, and if it doesn’t work, we say they do not have enough faith. All of these are ways that the Church effectively “disables” the PWDs in their society. How can we respond instead?
First, remember that people with disabilities are all created in God’s image. Even the most severely disabled child is created in a way that demonstrates God to those around him. Like all human beings, a PWD has feelings, creativity, reasoning, and needs all based in the image of God. He is designed to give glory to God and is created for relationship with God and with those around him. Just as with all human beings, this image is distorted by sin, and we all equally need this image to be corrected, which can only be done through submission to Christ. This need for wholeness through a right relationship with God is equally true for all human beings. Unfortunately, these things are often forgotten when we are interacting with a PWD who might not be able to demonstrate God’s image in the “normal” or expected way. However, we actually can learn unique things from PWDs within the Church that we cannot learn from the “normal” people.
What PWDs can teach us
We learn what it looks like to serve without getting anything in return. We learn to be fragile jars of clay where the light shining out from us is the light of Christ, and not our own abilities or good works. We learn what it means to be fully dependent on God. We learn that it is possible to have fullness of joy based in our “being” relationship with Christ rather than our circumstances or “doing”. First Corinthians 12 talks about the wholeness that comes in embracing each part of the Body, saying that the weaker parts are often the most indispensable. Without incorporating these “weaker” members, we are in fact often removing some of our greatest strengths.
Changing our ways
Many churches believe that they need special training, materials or immense financial resources in order to incorporate PWDs. These are not bad, but they are not necessary. The Head of the Church just calls us to “carry one another’s burdens”, “love your neighbour”, “mourn with those who mourn and laugh with those who laugh.” Using Jesus as an example, the Church can easily incorporate this precious part of the Body by being present. Visit a family at their home. Help transport them to the doctor, or be their doctor. Wash their laundry. Watch the child while the mother runs errands. Help them get to church, pushing the wheelchair or carrying the child to give his mother’s back a break. Include them, love them. Most of all, follow the model of Jesus and touch them. Hold them, hug them, pray with them, listen to them. These things show them and their families Jesus. Tell them about the freedom available to them in Jesus, even if you’re not sure how much they understand. The Spirit does not need the mind to demonstrate himself to those created in his image.
I challenge us, the Church, the Body of Christ, to strive toward the wholeness that incorporates each jar of clay. Only in this fullness of the Body can we experience and demonstrate the fullness of his glory.
-Thoughts from an experienced missionary therapist
