The theology of disability - a starter

Bob Brooke, a chaplain for people with learning disabilities, looks at disability in the light of three key Christian doctrines - being made in God's image, the incarnation and the body of Christ. 
From the 2009 Livability training day on disability and the church.

First I want to say thank you to Claire for sharing her story with us. (Read Claire's story)

I just want to pick out a number of things she said.

“People looked at me differently – sometimes I felt invisible, people don’t see the whole person, the real person.” And she talked about people using offensive language about her that is de-humanising, she said “they see me and treat me differently, people are often not at ease with me.” Claire talked a bit about the way she sees herself sometimes – her lack of confidence and self esteem, a feeling, for example, that nobody would want to marry her or be her friend and that she would be a burden to anyone who became close to her - a sense of being told and sometimes feeling herself as if she is not fully human.

Claire also talked about her sense of grief and loss at what had happened to her asking “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” and “Why has God made me feel so isolated, so vulnerable and alone, different and marginalised in society?” But also Claire talked about moving on from that sense of loss and grief and instead of asking “why” she started to ask “how” – “How am I going to live, what am I going to do with my life and the restrictions that my disability puts on it?” As with all experiences of grief and loss when you think you have moved on something happens, you have a bad day, somebody says something, you realise your difficulties and your limitations and you are plunged into the depths of grief again. But Claire also spoke about the opportunities that her disability had given her – a different career, a different way of life and how by beginning to accept her vulnerability she has become more aware of the vulnerability of others and of our need for and dependency on others and on God.

In reflecting theologically on Claire’s experience of disability I want to point to three fairly basic Christian doctrines that might help us as we try to think about a theology of disability. They are first the idea that every person is made in the image of God, second the incarnation – the belief that God took human flesh and blood in Jesus and became one of us and third the idea of the Christian church as the Body of Christ. The ideas and thoughts I will share with you are not just mine. In preparing for today I have dipped into various books and have been inspired and encouraged by a number of writers and I will say something about them later. One thing I think it is important to say at the beginning is that most theologians who have attempted to write a theology of disability in the process have changed their ideas and instead have tried to come up with a broader more inclusive, more embodied theology of what it means to be human.

Made in the image of God

The idea that every person is made in the image of God says something very important about the high degree of worth that God attributes to each human being regardless of race, religion, gender or ability. Disabled people are made in the image of God – they are not a distortion of that image or a lesser image than non-disabled people but each one is an equal and complete image of God. As Nancy Eisland, a theologian who herself lives with disability has said, “Our bodies participate in the imago Dei, not in spite of our impairments and disabilities but through them”. Disabled people are not incomplete examples of so called “normal” humanity but are complete persons before God. Their impairments and disabilities are part of their human identity. The idea that every person is created in the image of God is also an invitation for all of us to discover that image in each other – to treat other people as though they are made in the image of God rather than anything less and to expect other people to reveal something to us about the nature of God. God has called each one of us into being. None of us is a surprise or an accident or a mistake and certainly not an embarrassment to God. He has called us into being and each one of us has a vocation. 

The incarnation

Christianity is an incarnational religion which means that all of us whether we are disabled or not have to take our bodies seriously. At the centre of our Christian belief is the idea that God took our human flesh and blood in Jesus and came among us. God takes our flesh and blood seriously and he continues to be incarnate, to be present in the flesh and blood of those he has called into being. I have a little card on my bookshelf that somebody sent to me with a quotation from St Augustine: “You are to be taken, blessed, broken, distributed that the work of the incarnation may go forward”. If he is to be incarnate in the world today Christ needs to work through our flesh and blood. As Teresa of Avila says, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which is to look out Christ’s compassion to the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.”

By taking human flesh and blood God in Christ became disabled. A quote from a study guide produced by the Lutheran Church in the USA: “The incarnation involves God becoming human in Jesus of Nazareth. God assumes human form and thereby participates fully in humanness. Humanness means frailty, weaknesses, illnesses, accidents, impairments, ageing and many other marks of mortality”. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann has a brother with disabilities. He writes: “The eternal God took on not only the limited and mortal aspects of humanity..... He took on our disabilities and made them part of his eternal life. He takes on our tears and makes them an expression of his own pain”. Being nailed to a cross is certainly disabling. When the Risen Christ appears to his disciples his risen body still bears the marks of the nails.... in fact that is how he is recognised. The sign in BSL sign language for Jesus is this (do it), the marks of the nails in his hands. Those wounds are part of his identity as God incarnate. Our identities are as much established by our limitations as by our gifts. Living an abundant life means living with limitations as well as creatively using our God given abilities.

The body of Christ

St Paul describes the church as the Body of Christ. It is the risen but crucified and wounded Body of Christ and just as the risen body of Jesus bore the marks of the nails, of impairment, so also must the church if it is to be whole and complete in a broken world. The church as Christ’s body reminds us that all bodies are vulnerable. By accepting the brokenness of the church we may learn to realise that the brokenness of disabled people may also be gifts.

The church if it is to really be the Body of Christ has to be totally inclusive. A statement from the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network of the World Council of Churches (EDAN) says: “Members of EDAN believe that all persons with and without disabilities are created in the image of God and called to an inclusive community in which they are empowered to use their gifts. This inclusive community of all the people of God is holy in Christ irrespective of the physical state of their bodies and level of psychological functioning. Through the Holy Spirit, this inclusive community is called to repentance, transformation and renewal.” The WCC has also declared in a slightly more catchy phrase that when disabled people are missing from the church the whole church becomes disabled.

John Swinton is a Scottish theologian who has influenced and inspired me a great deal. He is a Church of Scotland minister and Professor of Practical Theology at Aberdeen University. His theology is very practical – before he was a theologian he worked as a nurse both in mental health and with people with learning disabilities. His theology is grounded in that experience. He wrote an article in the Journal of Pastoral Theology with the title “The Body of Christ has Down’s Syndrome”. I’ve not read the article but I like the title. In this booklet “Building a Church for Strangers” he tells the story of his friend Stephen. I want to end by sharing the story with you.

Stephen's story

Stephen is a young man with Down’s Syndrome. He spent much of his life in a long stay hospital. Stephen loves to worship God. In the hospital he would go regularly to the services in the chapel. He has very little speech – just a few words. He knows the word “Jee shus” – which is how he says it, and he would take great pleasure in shouting it out often during the quieter parts of the service.... but that was fine ..... in that worshipping community in the hospital there was a real sense of everyone belonging, everybody being accepted as themselves. For Stephen the hospital chapel and its worship provided a place where he could find acceptance, peace and a place to be with the friends of Jee shus. The hospital, however, was due to be closed and Stephen was to go and live in a small supported living project in the community. So one Sunday morning John Swinton took his friend Stephen to the morning service at the local church near to where he would be living. Several times during the service Stephen shouted out “Jee shus” as he tried to participate in the church service in a way that was natural for him. After this had happened three or four times a steward came and asked that they should either leave or alternatively John might like to take Stephen to the Sunday School where he would be less distracting for those who wanted to “worship in peace”.

I suspect we’ve all been there – we’ve all been distracted and got cross when children or other people have been noisy and made it difficult for us to worship or hear what is being said. We may also have had the experience of being a parent struggling to keep noisy and bored children quiet during a service, and I don’t want to be too critical of the people in that church who didn’t know Stephen and maybe his friend John needed to prepare the way a bit. However, John Swinton reflects on that experience of being asked to leave the local church with Stephen in the light of what St Paul says about the Body of Christ. Paul says “We are Christ’s body and each one of us a limb or organ of it”. He says “The head cannot say to the feet, I don’t need you! On the contrary those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable we treat with special honour, and the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty”. Paul goes on to say that if one part of the body suffers every part suffers with it. If each part shares in the suffering experience then disability is a shared experience. John Swinton concludes “Stephen doesn’t simply have Down’s Syndrome – the Body of Christ has Down’s Syndrome. When Stephen is excluded, stigmatised and misunderstood so also is the body of Christ. When society fails to see the beauty of those it sees as different, it fails to recognise the beauty of Christ. When Stephen is excluded from worship in the name of “peace” we cease to be the Body of Christ in any kind of meaningful sense. Instead Jesus finds himself sitting with Stephen outside the walls of the church as we continue to praise, oblivious of his absence”.

What healing might mean for disabled people

The stories of the healing miracles in the gospels present a problem for many disabled people because they seem to suggest that the attitude of Jesus to disability is to fix it, to get rid of disability. A number of disabled people I know have suffered at the hands of what I assume were well meaning people - Christians who felt they were called to lay hands on disabled people and to pray that God would take away their disabilities and sometimes they have hurt and exploited vulnerable disabled people by their action. It’s clear from the Gospel stories that Jesus welcomed disabled people and often they sought him out. In that culture at that time disabled people were unable to play any part in either the religious or economic life of the nation. They could only survive by begging or with help from their families. When Jesus heals people they are restored to their families and to the community. He declares that they are part of the Kingdom of God.

Alongside the stories of healing miracles in the gospels we need also to put the experience of St Paul. It seems that Paul had some sort of disability – he refers to it as the thorn in his flesh. He writes in the second letter to the Corinthians that three times he asked the Lord to take away this disability but the answer he got was, “My grace is sufficient to you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” and Paul goes on to say, “for when I am weak I am strong”. He is aware of his vulnerability and dependence on God and God can work through him.

It is important I think to distinguish between curing and healing. Curing means the removal of the condition and all its symptoms, healing implies being restored to wholeness, growing in spiritual well being so that someone can be healed while still living with the symptoms of a particular illness or condition. For some people healing might take place as they begin to move on from the sense of loss and grief they feel to an acceptance of the situation they find themselves in – moving from asking the question “why” to asking, "What does God want me to do with my life? How is he going to work through me with all the limitations that I have"?  All of us, disabled or non-disabled need healing. We all need to grow in the knowledge that we are loved by God, that we are his beloved sons and daughters, precious in his sight and called to love others in his name.

Canon Bob Brooke, Diocesan Chaplain for People with Learning Disabilities in the Diocese of Ripon & Leeds, Autumn 2009.

Booklist

• “Making a World of Difference” by Roy McCloughry and Wayne Morris,  SPCK 2002

• “Copious Hosting” by Jennie Weiss Block, Continuum 2002

• “Building a Church for Strangers” by John Swinton, Contact Pastoral Monograph No. 9 1999

• “A Gentle Touch” by David Pailin, SPCK 1992

• “Opening the Doors” – Guidelines and Introductory DVD – Ministry with people with learning disabilities and people on the autistic spectrum, the Archbishops, Council 2009. Available from Ministry Division, Church House, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3AZ price £7.50. Soon to be available on the Church of England website: www.cofe.anglican.org.