Monday, February 17, 2025
Happy Monday, my friends! I’ve become accustomed at this point to people coming up to me in coffee houses and elsewhere when they hear me speaking with others about being Queer and telling me and the people with me that if we only prayed harder, had more faith, or gave our lives to Jesus, we could, minimally, learn how to embrace a single life if not “come out of homosexuality.” I admit I find that logic quaint, even humorous, but I understand why these people feel that they have the permission, perhaps the need to approach me. They’ve been indoctrinated that it’s part of their Christian obligation to find the “lost,” call us to repentance, and bring us (back) to Christ. Even when our conversation is theological or about the church, these folks still see a missional need and opportunity. I don’t appreciate their intrusion into my conversation, but I understand where it originates.
In her book My Body is Not a Prayer Request,[1] Dr. Amy Kenny discusses what she has experienced as an all too common occurrence both in public and at church: people approaching her and telling her that if she only prayed more, had more faith, turned her life to God, or took some other spiritual action she could be “cured” of her disability. Kenny knows far more about these people and their reasons for speaking to her than they know about her, her identity as a disabled person,[2] and her faith. While both situations involve a high dose of audacity, I struggle to find the logic connecting disability, particularly physical disability, to a lack of faith.
I think many of us would assign connections between disability and sin and disability and a lack of faith to the past. We definitely see those connections play out in the Bible. We hear in John 9:1-3 (NRSVUE) a discussion of this topic: “As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’” There are several things going on in this passage. First, Jesus’ disciples see a man that they believe was born blind. We have no context for why they believe that to be true. Frankly, they might be making as bold an assumption as the people in Kenny’s account (they don’t bother to get his name). Second, the disciples ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” This question involves some temporal gymnastics but conveys the connection between sin and disability. Jesus turns their question on its head saying that the man was born blind ostensibly for this moment when his blindness can help reveal God’s works. While this explanation is also problematic because it means that a disability is used as an instrument of God’s plan, it nevertheless takes the idea of sin out of disability.
Disability is a human inevitability. Humans are only ever temporarily abled bodied. There is a vague line in human life and different for each person when, once crossed, the body declines in fascinating ways. Where sneezes, for instance, were once a small annoyance now become the cause of throwing out one’s back or where a night out at a bar once caused a hangover, now eating anything after 8pm causes the same feeling the next morning. That’s all to say nothing at all of many ways that even the most athletic bodies decline with age.
Do you connect sin with disability? How has disability shown up in your life as you’ve gotten older?
Let us pray: Gracious Jesus who experienced the fragility of human life, grant us the grace to disconnect our assumptions about disability, both in general and specific to one person, from the lived reality of a person’s experience of disability. Help free us of inattention to disability and the tendency to want to find cures or solutions. We ask this knowing that you are our liberator. Amen.
Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
Faithfully,
Ben
[1] Amy Kenny, My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice and the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022).
[2] Kenny notes that she prefers to use “disabled person” for herself. She acknowledges the ongoing debate between identity-first (“disabled person”) and person-first (“person living with a disability”) language.
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