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Archive for November, 2010

We are blind to the reality surrounding us – until we are given sight!

Posted in Scripture on November 9, 2010| 1 Comment »

This is the ‘amazing things’ I mentioned yesterday.

In 2 Kings 6, the Syrian king sends an army to surround the little city of Dothan to capture Elisha.  Elisha’s servant, from his point of view, has every right to be anxious.

Elisha prayed that this young man would see reality:

He (Elisha) said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 2 Kings 6:16-17

Not a few – a mountain-full, more numerous than the army that surrounded Dothan!  I imagine the young man was no longer anxious.

Matthew Henry talks about it this way:

He (Elisha) saw himself safe, and wished no more than that his servant might see what he saw (emphasis mine), a guard of angels round about him; such as were his master’s convoy to the gates of heaven were his protectors against the gates of hell—chariots of fire, and horses of fire. Fire is both dreadful and devouring; that power which was engaged for Elisha’s protection could both terrify and consume the assailants.

Are we not in the same position as Elisha?  We should have the desire to help others see what we see – the great reality and heinous depravity of our own sin, that Christ is beautiful beyond compare, that God is powerful beyond comprehension, “and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).”  Even things like disability.

There is also another part to this – we deserve all the terror and wrath that God could rightly pour out on us.  Only because of Jesus and his righteousness being freely extended to us do we have any hope.  What a hope it is!

Yet, only because God opens our eyes to this reality do we get to see and feel and understand this hope.  Just like Elisha’s young man.

Until Elisha prayed and God granted him vision, this young man thought that what he saw was real: an invading army that looked mightier than anything the little city of Dothan could withstand.  But then he saw reality.

God didn’t even use the horses and chariots of fire, but answered Elisha’s prayer for the Syrian army to be struck with blindness.

So, God grants eyes to see for one young man, and then blinds an entire army.  And everybody goes home.

As opposed to the Assyrian army with leaders who defied God and taunted the people of Israel.  Their encounter with God was very different:

And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 2 Kings 19:35

One angel, not a multitude!

And our one Savior Jesus opens our eyes to him, covers our sins.  It is truly amazing that any of us get to see the precious reality of how sinful we are and how Jesus’ righteousness covers it all, to the praise and worship of our glorious God.

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When blindness was kindness

Posted in Scripture on November 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

2 Kings is an amazing book of the Bible.  All the books of the Bible are amazing, of course, but disability keeps showing up in different ways in 2 Kings.

In 2 Kings 6, the Syrian king knows that Elisha is frustrating his plans for military conquest.  So he sends an army to surround the little city of Dothan.  Amazing things are revealed (I’ll linger over that later, Lord willing).

Then Elisha asked for a very strange thing:

And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha. 2 Kings 6:18

Elisha could have asked for a lot of things – like kill them all, Lord!  God had certainly demonstrated that kind of power before.  But Elisha didn’t ask for that.

God blinded them, and Elisha led them straight into the stronghold of the King of Israel.  The powerful had become the powerless.

Elisha prays again that the Lord would let them regain their sight – and this mighty army can clearly see they are now completely surrounded, helpless just like Elisha had appeared to be when the Syrian army surrounded the city of Dothan.

The King of Israel is very excited at what God has done!  The next course of action is clear:

As soon as the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “My father, shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down?” 2 Kings 6:21

A great victory has been handed to them!  Elisha tells him instead, feed them and send them home.  The King wisely follows this advice.

This is another example of God being free to do whatever pleases him.  Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel are spared in miraculous ways – armies are destroyed or armies are frightened away.  And there are times when God uses foreign armies to punish the people of Israel for their sins.

But in this case, God did a ‘monstrous’ thing in striking that entire Syrian army blind, making them completely helpless before their enemies.  And then sparing them.

Nobody died that day.  On either side.  Two hostile armies meet, and the end result is a huge dinner.

And, I imagine, more than one Syrian soldier walked home that day saying exactly what Naaman had said in 2 Kings 5:15b:

Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. . .

We should be very careful before calling anything God does as ‘monstrous’ or as a ‘curse.’

As one who used to see my son’s disabilities in those terms, I am very grateful for the patience God showed to me in those days.  And even more grateful today that he extended grace for me to see the extraordinary gift this boy is who God intentionally created for his glory.

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Pray for the unreached deaf peoples of the world

Posted in News, Prayer Requests on November 7, 2010| 3 Comments »

On Friday at Desiring God we heard an incredible report of what God is doing through the global church.  Several staff had travelled to the Lausanne Congress a couple of weeks ago, and we finally had the chance to hear from a few of them.

Included in their report was a list of the 632 unengaged, unreached people groups with populations over 50,000.  “Unengaged” means these people groups have NO full-time workers involved in evangelism and church planting.

If I counted correctly, 52 of those groups represent deaf people in various parts of the world.  Regardless of whether deafness is considered a disability or a culture, please pray that God would raise up workers for the millions of deaf people around the world who currently have no access to the gospel.

You can read more about all the unreached people groups at Finishing the Task.

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An opportunity to speak to the next generation of leaders

Posted in Prayer Requests, Special Events on November 6, 2010| 2 Comments »

One of my great joys at Bethlehem is getting to do almost anything with Pastor David Michael, the pastoral overseer of the disability ministry in his role as the Pastor for Parenting and Family Discipleship.  He’s a wonderful, God-honoring, wise, thoughtful, persistent leader who loves our children with disabilities and has worked very hard on behalf of this ministry BECAUSE he loves the Bible and its clear articulation of the sovereignty of God in all things.  God is very kind to give us men like David Michael!

He has asked me to join him on Monday, November 8, as he brings his vision of family discipleship to the first-year seminary students at The Bethlehem Seminary.  He wants me to talk about the sovereignty of God and disability.

Would you pray for both of us as we prepare?

My goal is not to convince them that they should care about disability through statistics or specific examples.

But in loving God and soaking in God’s word they would love God’s sovereignty over all things and cling to all his promises for them SO THAT when disability enters their lives – in their churches, their mission agencies, their seminaries or their own families – they will boldly and confidently and lovingly, with great anticipation and ‘as sorrowful yet always rejoicing’ rush to welcome families like ours, to serve these precious families he has given as gifts to them with the strength God provides with the wisdom he provides with the resources he provides.

And not just to serve those with disabilities, but to be served by those the world and the culture considers expendable, weak, and worthless.  To actually long for and seek out fellowship with those who are daily being destroyed and discounted because of disability.  To understand and enjoy and soak in the reality of God’s purposes: On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22).

I have about 30 minutes with them, and want to use the time well.  Your prayers are greatly appreciated!

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Special $10 Book Offer from Desiring God!

Posted in News on November 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I just learned of this myself on Wednesday – Desiring God is offering four books (including Just the Way I Am) for $10!  Not each; $10 for all four!

The four books are:

It is listed as Bargain Set 1 on the Christmas Sale page for Desiring God.

There are other specials as well – DVDs for $10, sets of books especially for students and the like.

And shipping is free for orders of more than $25.00 (in the United States).

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Moms: register by November 5 for the gathering of mothers!

Posted in News on November 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Mary Horning is speaking!

A panel of mothers speaking!

You will be encouraged!

More information can be found here!

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Should length of time impact how we think about God’s sovereignty over disability?

Posted in commentary on November 4, 2010| 2 Comments »

When we talk about disability on this blog, we generally mean the kind of disabling conditions that last a lifetime.

In his article on John 9, Dr. Poirier suggests that time is one reason why we should not think God intentionally created the man born blind:

The old punctuation presents us with the monstrous thesis that God struck a man with disability from birth just for the sake of allowing Jesus to make a public display of God’s healing power at an obscenely later time in his life.   (Poirier, “Another Look at the ‘Man Born Blind’ in John 9“, Journal of Religion, Disability and Health, January 2010, v. 14, p. 62.)

We know he was a ‘man born blind’ so we can guess he had lived, and been blind for, decades by the time Jesus and he had their encounter.  Yes, that feels like a long time.

But is ‘obscenely’ an accurate descriptor of something God has chosen to do?

There are times I am still tempted to think time is one indicator of God’s care:  if God answers quickly (and in the right way), he cares; if he waits a long time, he doesn’t.

Of course a Biblical understanding of the character of God demonstrates that God has both full authority to do whatever he wants with his creation AND he perfectly loves and cares for us.  God knows how we think about time and the impact that experiencing something over a long period of time will have.  And he is sovereign over it for our good:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

There is also the problem of definition.  At what point does something become ‘obscenely long’?  Is a difficult thing we experience for a day acceptable but for a year it is ‘obscenely long’?

Does any part of God’s creation even have the ability, let alone the authority, to determine when something is too long?

Sometimes the Bible talks about hard things that last a long time:

One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. John 5:5

When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. Luke 8:27

And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. Luke 8:43

Even the saints with God wonder about how long things are taking:

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. Revelation 6:9-11

But suffering doesn’t need to be measured in years for it to feel overwhelming.  My Paul’s seizures last less than a minute – and feel like hours as I watch him struggle.

Frequently I find it difficult to believe that my son is 15 years old.  If anyone had said when he was days old that we would have even survived everything we’ve gone through with him – let alone found peace in God – I would have called them crazy, or at least ignorant.  Daily, God helps us and those days add up.

But one minute or 15 years, or 38 years or however many years the man born blind lived with his disability is NOTHING compared to eternity.  And God seems to care a great deal about eternity.

About 15 years ago, Pastor John included this in a letter to us many of you have already read:

It seems to me that this life is a proving ground for the kingdom to come. Some are asked to devote forty or fifty years to caring for a handicapped child instead of breezing through life without pain. Others are asked to be blind all their lives…

But only in this life – ONLY in this life. I want to be the kind person who makes that “ONLY” what it really is – very short. Prelude to the infinity of joy, joy, joy. But not yet. Not entirely.

Pastor John gets that from the Bible.  Paul, for example, lived constantly with very hard things: beatings, imprisonment, slander, shipwreck, heart-ache to name a few.  And he calls it a ‘light momentary affliction!’  How is that possible, except that it is in comparison to something much greater than his suffering!

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Disability is hard.  On our own, our human reserves will disappear.  Human systems – church, medicine, schools, social workers – will fail us. Doubt and dispair are natural outcomes.  I am tempted to discouragement all the time, and frequently fail.

Yet, God has promised to supply our every need and to help us.

Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation. Psalm 68:19

He confirms his promises based on the obedient life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The promises of God are anchored in God himself!

It really is the perfect combination – God has told us he has created some to live with disability for his glory, he has promised to help us, and there is an eternity of joy that makes these present difficulties look small by comparison.  There is hope in this God. Let us remind each other regularly.

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Interesting arguments that are hard to take seriously

Posted in commentary, Scripture on November 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

First of all, I’ve found a link for free access to The Journal of Religion, Disability and Health!  I don’t know if this is a new development or if I just missed it in the past. As I have written before, having easy access increases the opportunity for us to reason together, even when we disagree.

In the January edition, Dr. John Poirier of Kingswell Theological Seminary presented “Another Look at the ‘Man Born Blind’ in John 9.”  Dr. Poirier asserts that a change in punctuation could change the meaning of the verse.

Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to read this argument based solely on the merits of his argument about punctuation.  While I believe he has affections for God and his word, and that he wants to provide a helpful way to read the scriptures, he demonstrates a clear bias on how he thinks about God and God’s sovereignty:

The old punctuation presents us with the monstrous thesis that God struck a man with disability from birth just for the sake of allowing Jesus to make a public display of God’s healing power at an obscenely later time in his life.  Although we should not suppose that the writer of the Fourth Gospel shares our modern sensibilities, we should, I think, extend the benefit of a doubt when a particular reading makes God out to be so capricious. (Poirier, “Another Look at the ‘Man Born Blind’ in John 9“, Journal of Religion, Disability and Health, January 2010, v. 14, p. 62.)

Monstrous?  Obscenely?  Capricious?  If you are familiar with my story, those are all words I have thought myself about God – before God revealed himself to me and my standing before him without Jesus.  These words reflect a man-centered, experiential view of God’s word rather than how God presents himself.

Using the Bible alone, we can reasonably ask why Dr. Poirier would use the words ‘monstrous,’ ‘obscenely,’ and ‘capricious’ so freely in the space of only two sentences.

First, from Paul and Isaiah on God’s sovereignty over his creation:

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”  Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? Romans 9:20-21

But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8

Second, on the specific issue of God’s creating human beings, God takes credit for who and how he creates them:

Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” Exodus 4:11

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:13-16

Third, earlier in the book of John we see God giving Jesus all authority over everything made:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-5

So, it becomes difficult to take the rest of Dr. Poirier’s argument seriously when he simply dismisses God’s word based only on how he (and he assumes we) view what is right and just in the world.  Why should we even care how one verse is punctuated if the rest of the Bible can be so easily ignored?

Of course disability is hard.  Anyone experiencing disability knows that.

But God brings glory to his name all the time through very hard things.

Like the obedient life, death and resurrection of his own son:

From all these prophecies, we know that God foresaw and did not prevent and therefore included in his plan that his Son would be rejected, hated, abandoned, betrayed, denied, condemned, spit upon, flogged, mocked, pierced, and killed. All these were explicitly in God’s mind before they actually happened as things that he planned would happen to Jesus. These things did not just happen. They were foretold in God’s word. God knew they would happen and could have planned to stop them, but didn’t. So they hap- pened according to his sovereign will. His plan.

And all of them were evil. They were sin. It is surpassingly sinful to reject, hate, abandon, betray, deny, condemn, spit upon, flog, mock, pierce, and kill the morally perfect, infinitely worthy, divine Son of God. And yet the Bible is explicit and clear that God himself planned these things. This is explicit not only in all the prophetic texts we have seen, but also in passages that say even more plainly that God ordained that these things come to pass. (Piper, Spectacular Sins, pp. 102-103)

This act of murdering the sinless son of God, the most heinous crime ever committed in all of history, was part of God’s spectacular plan to bring greater glory to his name and fulfill the righteous requirement of the law on behalf of those who do not deserve forgiveness, could never earn it, and would rightly be judged for eternity for every offense made against our perfect, holy and righteous God.

No, God is not monstrous, though some things are hard for us to comprehend.  We should be far more amazed that God is so patient with US rather than that he created one man to live with a disability for a few decades.

More later.

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When the great ones get it wrong – Matthew Henry and Martin Luther

Posted in Book Commentary, commentary, Scripture on November 2, 2010| 3 Comments »

There are too many examples of theologians and pastors misusing the Bible as they talk about God and disability, making God into a small, controllable ‘force’ rather than the awesome creator and sustainer of the universe that he is.

But even the ones who identify God as sovereign and have deep regard for God’s word occasionally get it wrong.

For example, Matthew Henry, in his commentary on John 9, includes this statement about one of the benefits of Jesus healing the man born blind:

The cure of this blind man was a kindness to the public,enabling him to work for his living who before was a charge and burden to the neighbourhood. It is noble, and generous, and Christ-like, to be willing to serve the public, even when we are slighted and disobliged by them, or think ourselves so.

First of all, there is nothing in the account about Jesus doing this for the benefit of the community.  The point was ‘that the works of God might be displayed in him’ (John 9:3).

Secondly, the man born blind in this accounting is a man who is articulate, bold and logical.  He was a ‘burden’ not because he wasn’t capable of learning and applying a skill; he wasn’t allowed to learn a trade because of his blindness.  In this case, the community created its own burden based on how it looked at disability.  Matthew Henry got it almost entirely backwards in this statement.

Martin Luther takes that to an entirely different level when writing about a boy he observed in Dessau.  From the description, this boy had significant disabilities – but Luther identified this boy as a changling, or a being Satan has placed in what otherwise would have been a ‘normal’ child.  That is just one of many possible definitions of changeling; regardless, a changeling was considered something other than or less than human.  Upon identifying this boy as a changeling, Luther is reported to have written:

So I said to the Prince of Anhalt: “If I were the Prince, I should take the child to the Moldau River whichflows near Dessau and drown him.”

Obviously, if you have read this blog for any time, we take the murder of people with disabilities very seriously.  And that is exactly what Luther is advocating.

So why do I (mostly) give Matthew Henry and Martin Luther a ‘pass’ on these statements?

First, the entire body of their work demonstrates a dependency on God, belief in the scriptures as God’s word, and desire for people to know and trust this God as sovereign.  Luther, in particular, is problematic on other issues as well.  But his essay, On Christian Freedom, is remarkable in what it says about God, freedom, and serving the neighbor.  Plus, he may not have actually written that statement above; there is some dispute about it, though it is frequently quoted and attributed to him.

Second, the Bible alone is the inspired word of God.  Both men are brilliant, but their writings are not of equal value to scripture.

Third, it says something important to me about how easily culture and experience can become the framework for interpreting a situation, rather than God and his word.  Both of these men were soaked in scripture in ways I can only imagine – yet Matthew Henry let that sentence about ‘burden’ slip into his commentary (rather than 1 Corinthians 12:22).  And Luther seems to have forgotten Exodus 4:11, Psalm 139, the entire book of Job and John 9, among others, in talking about a changeling (if he wrote it at all).

I makes me wonder, how frequently do I let my culture and experience shape my thoughts and writings, rather than scripture?  I expect more frequently than I would guess.

And it is another warning to me that when confronting bad, illogical or evil arguments, the emphasis should be on addressing the argument and not making final judgments about the people making the argument.  God alone knows the heart and what he has planned for the future of that person.  After all, we are all entirely evil without Jesus calling us out of darkness and the Spirit helping us.

But, if I read something where the writer has no affections for God, finds the Bible unreliable, or advocates something entirely contrary to the Word, that needs to be addressed as well.  This standard feels like a very fine line in which I could err in either direction!

I know I will be putting that standard for myself to the test in the coming days, as there is a ‘new’ argument about the interpretation of John 9 that I would like to address.

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God prepared Matt Chandler for suffering

Posted in News on November 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

If you haven’t already seen this post on Justin Taylor’s blog, One Year Later: An Interview with Matt Chandler, please take a few minutes to do so.

Here is an excerpt:

I’m not sure how men and women without a strong view of God’s sovereignty and authority over all things handle things like this.

There were at least 3 meetings with my doctors early on where I felt like I got punched in the soul. In those moments when I was discombobulated and things felt like they were spinning out of control, my theology and the Spirit were there to remind me that “He is good and He does good”—to remind me that God has a plan for His glory and my joy that He is working. I was reminded that this cancer wasn’t punitive but somehow redemptive (Romans 8).

 

 

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