The Works of God

Disability causes many to question the goodness of God. I know I once did.

But there is also a way to think of disability in terms of how it protects us from passively accepting everything the culture wants us to believe – like ‘good people’ (which we are told we are even in light of all the evidence to the contrary) only deserve ‘good’ things in our lives.

We know that life includes hard things – we simply can’t avoid it if disability has entered our family.  So we read the Scriptures with that in mind, and understand the sovereignty of God as being over all things, including hard things.

Of course, not everyone has that advantage like we have.  And when I see pastors warning their people to fight against being sucked into unbiblical ways to view the world, I realize how much grace God has given to me through my son’s disabilities and my wife’s cancer.

For example, D.A. Carson, in How Long, Oh Lord, warns against Christians assuming ‘we ought to be immune from such evil and suffering.’  And he also offers a good solution!

We remember the wonderful triumphs of Joseph, Gideon, and David; we meditate continuously on the miraculous healing of the man born blind, or on the resurrection of Lazarus. We are less inclined to think through the sufferings of Jeremiah, the constant ailments of Timothy, the illness of Trophimus, or the thorn in Paul’s flesh. A righteous man like Naboth perishes under trumped up charges (1 Kings 21). The “good guys” do not always win. .  . we may be infected by a pious version of the raw triumphalism that prevails in much of the surrounding culture because we have not taken care to follow the balance of Scripture.  Carson, p. 25.

Yes, the whole Bible is good for us to know!  It protects us from thinking, and behaving, in ways that are not God-honoring or helpful to other people!

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).

I learned that lesson because God brought disability and disease into my home.