DISABLED BODIES AND GOD'S GLORY

I’m currently reading a book called My Body is not a Prayer Request by Amy Kenny. In particular, I’m interested in her discussion of John 9. If you’re not familiar with John 9, it is the story in John’s gospel of the man born blind who is never given a name and whose story takes up the entire chapter. The disciples are out walking with Jesus when they meet the man born blind. They ask Jesus what who sinned, the man or his parents, that he was born blind. Jesus says neither it is to show the glory of God.

I have always thought that that was to show how great God is that he could cure people and heal people, in this case cure people of physical ailments. This interpretation is understandable because Jesus does in fact go on to cure the man of his blindness. However, this author makes a point that astonishes me and I hope it astonishes you. Actually, I hope it doesn’t astonish you because it points to ableism in our society and in ourselves, even in those of us who are in some way disabled.

Before I go any further if you don’t know what ableism is, it is the discrimination or unconscious bias against disabled people in our society. The point this author makes is that disabled bodies do in fact exhibit the glory of God every bit as much as abled bodies do. We don’t think of a dog or a cat or other animals that have what we could say defects, we don’t consider them less than and yet in our society we definitely consider disabled people as second class. In order to receive government assistance – which is difficult to get in the first place – they have to follow many rules. Rules against getting married, rules about how much they can own, rules about many, many things. It’s abominable.

But the point I want to focus on is this idea that disabled bodies reflect the glory of God. To quote Jesus quoting John, ““Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” That God’s works might be revealed in him doesn’t necessarily refer to God’s healing works. It could refer to the works that this man himself will perform or even just that all of us reveal the glory of God in our being. That astonishes me because I do have ableist thinking, because I was raised in a society full of ableist thinking and it’s difficult to get rid of some of it, even when I myself am a disabled person.

So, I’m going to sit with that this week as I continue to read this fantastic book, and I invite you to do the same. Let’s together think of ways that this statement that disabled bodies reflect the glory of God astonishes us, and why that astonishes us, and maybe even think of the ways that disabled bodies reflect God’s glory.

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