The Works of God

More than 13 years ago I wrote an email to Pastor John in which I said I thought it would have been better if Jesus hadn’t healed the man born blind in John 9.  His response was used by the Holy Spirit to point me to Jesus, and I am very grateful to this day for that email.

So imagine my surprise, as I was wandering through the journal Disability Studies Quarterly, “the first journal in the field of disability studies,” and found this in an article by Jennifer L. Koosed, Ph.D. and Darla Schumm, Ph.D. entitled, “Out of the Darkness: Examining the Rhetoric of Blindness in the Gospel of John.”

From her perspective working with people with disabilities and government agencies in Australia, Elizabeth Hastings writes:

…with all the respect due to the ten lepers, the various possessed, and the sundry blind, lame, and deaf faithful of scripture, I reckon people who have disabilities may have been better off for the last two thousand years if Our Lord had not created quite so many miraculous cures but occasionally said, “your life is perfect as it is given to you – go ye and find its purpose and meaning,” and to onlookers, “this disability is an ordinary part of human being, go ye and create the miracle of a world free of discrimination” (quoted in Calder, 2004, p. 12).

I understand perfectly why Elizabeth Hastings wrote that paragraph – I certainly remember thinking the same thing.  But that sentiment is neither biblical nor helpful and should be countered by biblical truth rather than used to extend assumptions about what God ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do with his creation.

For example, our Lord did heal, and God is intentional in creating some to live with disability (Exodus 4:11, John 9:1-3),  but not once did he say that anyone’s life was perfect.  Everyone, except the Son of God, was and is marked by sin.  And that is infinitely worse than any disability.

Jesus himself talked about disability being preferable to other eternal things, like hell:

And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ Mark 9:43-48

I hope you would agree this is pretty strong language!  Jesus also disconnects disability and sin in Mark 2 and John 9 and John 5.  Sin is ALWAYS much worse than disability.

And Paul gave God credit for giving him a very bad thing – and agreed it was for a very good purpose:

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  2 Corinthians 12:7-10

We don’t know what Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ was, but it was bad.  And in God’s sovereignty, God’s power is made perfect in Paul’s weakness – so we as well should not value independence above dependence, nor strength above weakness.

That assumes, of course, that we believe that God is to be valued above all things, including our own comfort.  Because, in fact, our future comfort and eternal happiness is assured, if we hope solely him and not call his character or his intentions or his power or his word or the necessary work of the Son into question.