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From Luke’s Journal June 2018 | Vol. 23 No.2 | Disarming Disability

Disability prevalence is rising worldwide. The prevalence of chronic disease is increasing and now accounts for the majority of death and disability worldwide. And disability is, by definition, long-term or chronic. In Australia, 5.6 million people either have a disability, or care for a person with disability. On average, each of us in Australia will live for 20 years with a disability. 

Disability and Doctors

As doctors, we interact with disability on a daily basis in our practice. But as Christian doctors, many of us do not have a clear theology of disability. When have we thought about how our Christian faith affects our approach to disability in our patients? How well are we equipped to deal with disability in our personal lives, community and church?

Our profession is more comfortable with approaching physical conditions and impairments with curative solutions. By contrast, with disability, healing patients is, almost by definition, not an option. Early on in medical school we are taught to see disability as linked to disease that needs to be treated. This is consistent with the approach that is known in the disability sector as the medical model. Whilst medical interventions can add much to the life of a person with disability, an exclusively curative approach risks devaluing people who cannot be healed. In many ways, people with disability can be considered a medical failure. Christians are called to go well beyond a medical model. Disability presents an opportunity for the Christian doctor to apply a Biblical response of love, affirming value and embracing those with disability. 

In this article, I intend to outline not how we should treat people with disability, but how disability can treat us! We have much to learn from disability. After all, the Bible makes it clear that God uses the foolish things of this world to shame (or even treat) the powerful, wise and strong. The ‘foolish’, ‘weak’, ‘lowly and despised’ have an important role in breaking the strongholds of pride and conceit. I am sure we have witnessed some of these strongholds in our profession! And God loves to reveal His glory through those with disability, who in the world’s eyes are foolish, weak and lowly (John 9).

Disability: A Paradox 

As a preface to this article, we need to acknowledge that disability can be very painful. It likely is the experience of a good number reading this article. The disability rights movement might have us believe that disability is ‘good’ and that the problem lies with the environment – it doesn’t cater for disability. This is known as the social model in the disability sector. Whilst I subscribe to and even teach on the social model, we can’t paint over the very real element of pain and suffering associated with disability. We are created with DNA and genes coded for specific functions, but when they are disrupted or when we have an accident and break our back, we lose function. It is a real loss. I do not mean to belittle the pain and suffering that such disability can cause, and that many of you might be experiencing. I know that pain personally through my beautiful daughter who has a profound disability.

A verse that has been special to me in the midst of pain is Isaiah 45:3:
“I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness – secret riches. I will do this so you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.”

I believe that God has purposes, or ‘treasures’, in disability and, as such, redeems it for His glory. A paradox exists whereby at the same time as experiencing pain, we can rejoice in this knowledge. Paul aptly describes this mindset in 2 Corinthians 6:10 in our being “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”. The Bible does not teach us to pretend there is no pain, and we are not called to rejoice because we have pain. But we can rejoice in God at the same time. Through my daughter’s disability, I have been able to rejoice in understanding who He is and in seeing how He works in the midst of pain. 

I believe that God works powerfully in spite of disability, and even through disability.

Disability: Non-Performing Assets?

Valuing disability in this faith-based way is counter-cultural to the dominant western worldview, and indeed runs counter to the medical model dominant in the healthcare settings where we work. Our society tends to value people according to what they can do and how substantively they contribute. Society might value a person with disability if they win gold at the Commonwealth Games. At a policy level a person is valued in terms of economic value and output. Does this mean that people with disability are non-performing assets if they’re not economically productive or showing their ‘overcomer’ prowess in some impressive way? Interestingly, or sadly, our government policy implies as much! 

“Our society tends to value people according to what they can do and how substantively they contribute.”

I love (and personally benefit from) the NDIS, but the only way this policy could come into being was through an economic rationale. The NDIS came into being largely through an argument outlined by the productivity commission. The logic goes like this: if unproductive units (people with disability and their carers) are supported to enter the workforce they can contribute to GDP, netting us an 18-22 billion-dollar return. Such economic arguments can potentially dehumanise those people with disability by valuing them according to their economic productivity. 

At its worst, does this assessment risk reinforcing the idea that if a person is not productive, or not valued, then why shouldn’t they be euthanised? Just in case you think this is too far-fetched, this was the dominant thinking in the intelligentsia pre-World War II. It was an ideology that CS Lewis vigorously opposed. But why did these ideas not get much press after the 1940s? Well, when such a line of thought is taken to its rational endpoint then T4 becomes reasonable. T4 was a program in Nazi Germany whereby 200,000 individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped or mentally ill were eliminated over a five-year period.

“T4 was a program in Nazi Germany whereby 200,000 individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped or mentally ill were eliminated over a five-year period.”

Very sadly, the medical profession contributed and aided this heinous program. And before you think this couldn’t happen in our civilised society, tell me how many babies with Down syndrome does the medical profession contribute to eliminating for the sole reason that they have a disability? For Down’s alone, 200,000 babies were aborted in the last five years because they were seen as having no value and were not consistent with our definition of success and happiness. 

Disability in an upside-down Kingdom

Yet, I believe that society is a better place when we include people with disability. We are poorer without them. In order to value the contribution of disability, an alternative framework for understanding ‘success’ is required. When we apply a different measure of success we can see value in people with disability. I believe we should view disability through the lens of an Upside-Down Kingdom worldview. As Christian health professionals, we should not judge success on criteria such as productivity, pleasure, power or prestige. No, as Christians, success relates to our faithfulness. Loving God. Growing in Him. Helping others to do likewise. Ultimately bringing glory to God is our measure of success! 

Disability: A Severe Mercy for Successful Doctors 

It was here that my own experience of disability challenged my unhealthy definition of success. Disability dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the upside-down kingdom. In 2011, I was successful in the eyes of the world. Recipient of a prestigious scholarship, undertaking a second PhD, working as a clinician and a director of various Christian development charities. Slowly and insidiously, my identity and meaning were becoming wrapped up in what I was doing and achieving. Success was becoming an idol and displacing God in my life. Disability was my severe mercy.

When my daughter was born with a profound developmental disability it rocked my world and blew away my unhealthy ideas of success. When I applied to my daughter my definition of success, which had come to define me, then she was an ultimate failure and her life was meaningless. She would never achieve any of the things that had come to define me.

“When my daughter was born with a profound developmental disability, it rocked my world and blew away my unhealthy ideas of success.”

As I journeyed through the grief, I came to understand that my daughter has immense value and that I needed a new yardstick for success. Ultimately, that yardstick was the simple act of being faithful. This formed the title of a book I co-authored, entitled Faithful Is Successful. Disability made me live out what I once only professed: it’s not ‘doing’ things that makes us successful in God eyes. It is ‘being in Him’ and being faithful. I believe my faith journey and spiritual growth have been tremendously shaped by my experience of disability, just as, in some ways, Paul’s journey was shaped by and dependent on his thorn:

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” – 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 

Disability has so much to teach us medical professionals who, almost by definition of the strict entry requirements, are ‘successful’ in the world’s eyes. The real purpose of Paul’s thorn was to keep Paul from becoming conceited. I believe that God gave me chronic disability in my daughter as a form of ongoing protection from becoming conceited! 

Disability: A Qualification for Ministry

Disability can also be a powerful tool in shaping those involved in formal ministry. In India, powerful preachers are held in reverence, and even labelled God-men. God-man is a term used to describe a type of charismatic guru who has a high-profile presence and is capable of attracting attention and support from large sections of society. We have recently been working with a group of pastors in India who have disabilities. Interestingly, these pastors are protected from being hailed as God-men because their disability identifies them as imperfect. People look at the pastor and see physical brokenness. But through this fragile clay jar the light shines and people see God at work in this person. The disability points people to God, not the pastor. God is at work through the things that man considers foolish! 

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast in His presence.” – 1 Cor 1: 26-29

When one pastor had a daughter with profound disability, he thought he would no longer be able to be used by God. People would say, “Your God can’t even heal your daughter!” But others saw how the church and pastor loved and cared for this girl, and as a result his church grew – not despite the disability, but through it. The pastor commented that his own experience of disability and brokenness allowed him to speak powerfully into the lives of people who are suffering and meet them where they are. As in Corinthians 1:4, he was able to pass the comfort he received from God on to the people he was pastoring. 

Disability can be an upskilling in empathy. We know this as doctors. We are used to working in high-powered professions that are intolerant of people not keeping up. That is, until we have a crisis in own own lives. We make the best doctors when we have a personal experience of pain or illness. Perhaps we should see disability as a pastoral gifting or qualification.

Having heard many examples of how God works through those who have disabilities, I joined with several authors to write a book for the Lausanne Movement on People with Disability in Mission (not yet published). The Lausanne Movement has been progressive in recognising the role of people with disability in ministry.

“We encourage church and mission leaders to think not only of mission among those with a disability, but to recognise, affirm and facilitate the missional calling of believers with disabilities themselves as part of the Body of Christ.” 

There are many examples of God at work in disability in the forthcoming book: a boy with autism ministering to the marginalised in South Africa; a man with cerebral palsy ministering in Africa; and, the mother of a child with Down’s syndrome working in Indonesia. But you will have to wait until the book is released to read those stories!

Disability as a Blessing 

So how do these seemingly weak parts, those with disability, contribute to the body of Christ? I share three last examples, though there are many others.

Biblical Interdependence – In Australia, the endpoint for most disability-oriented programs is largely to promote independence and autonomy. These are important aims for the NDIS. But for my friends in South Asia, this autonomy and independence looks very similar to loneliness! I feel that the perspective of Biblical interdependence is more consistent with how we were created.

Disability and weakness should teach us interdependence in the body of Christ. That has been my experience as my wife and I have negotiated our ministry whilst living with disability.

1 Corinthians 12:12-26, with its concept of the interdependent Body of Christ, has become a defining Bible text for our journey. We are interdependent with friends, family and our church. 

A Compassion Catalyst 

In 1 Peter 4:10 we are told to use whatever gifts we have to serve others. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” How often do we allow others to serve us? We are too proud! But disability allows a natural (or should I say, unavoidable) space for us to best act as we were created: to serve and be served in love. I have given up on being proud when someone offers help. I now willingly accept offers of help as I know I just can’t do this life alone. What I have noticed is that not only is our daughter blessed but so is each of her care-givers. The Lord Jesus Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ My church has established a respite care program called indispensability, but I have decided to volunteer rather than take the respite. Why? Because I get blessed from serving these most beautiful kids and their grateful families. 

Removing pretension – People with disability in our midst can free us to be ourselves, warts and all. Hauerwas and Vanier describe it like this: 

“The mystery of people with disabilities is that they long for authentic and loving relationships more than for power. They are not obsessed with being well-situated in a group that offers acclaim and promotion. They are crying for what matters most: love. And God hears their cry because in some way they respond to the cry of God, which is to give love.” – Hauerwas & Vanier, 2008, p. 30

I think of Joel, a friend with Down’s. He is so genuine and not inhibited with worrying what others will think of him. He loves God and tells everyone the same. He hugs people and longs for loving relationships. He is totally unconcerned with power, acclaim and promotion. This is such a breath of fresh air compared to the cannibalistic dog-eat-dog world of academia that I inhabit. We need more Joels, not more academics in our church! Yet there is a tendency for us professionals to surround ourselves with intelligent professionals, like ourselves. Our fellowship is much poorer when we do so. Worryingly, there is a tendency for successful professionals (read ‘doctors’) to be selected as deacons and elders in churches even though their status may have been a result of unhealthy ambition, unaware of who they are in God’s image. 

Conclusion

In this article I have been building a Christian worldview of disability that is perhaps radical to the medical profession. It challenges our idea of success. It convicts a world that assigns value by what we do, how intelligent we are, how much we earn and what power we wield. Disability enters this context and equips us to serve in ministry. For doctors, the challenge is to move beyond understanding disability as a medical issue, to experience the richness of engaging with disability as a Christian. Disability helps us embrace a revolutionary upside-down worldview whereby the seemingly weaker parts are indispensable. 

Let me close with the story of Lawrence, a deacon of the early church in Rome, who clearly understood the value of people with disability. According to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, during the persecution of the early church Lawrence was ordered to bring the treasures of the church before the Emperor. He collected all the poor, sick, the lame, the elderly and disabled he could find from his church, and took them to the Emperor and said, “See, here are the treasures of the church!” It cost him his life, but he made his point. 

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