The Works of God

Tim Challies recently stated on a podcast that when he sees a child with Down syndrome, he assumes the family is Christian.  Why?  Because so many children with Down syndrome are not allowed to be born.

Al Mohler wrote yesterday (scroll down almost to the bottom) on two recent articles that Dr. Peter Singer wrote, one for the New York Times and one for the Guardian.  I agree with Dr. Mohler’s opinion about Dr. Singer:

Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer is one of the most reprehensible intellectual forces alive today.

And yesterday I read that scientists have found a genetic link for autism.  Even if it does explain only 3% of autism diagnoses, it is a beginning to unraveling the mystery that is autism.  I’m all for unraveling mysteries and helping more kids.  But one significant result of better knowledge about Down syndrome is that more kids with Down syndrome are being killed before they are born.

What you believe about God matters a lot here.

Much more comes to mind with all the above news, especially about Peter Singer’s new idea (mostly tongue-in-cheek and simply meant to provoke, I’m guessing) that this generation of human beings be the last generation.

But this one thought kept coming to mind as these articles swirled around in my head:

Is the church ready for what’s coming concerning our children with disabilities?  Is the church preparing people right now for the suffering they will experience when a child is diagnosed with a disability?

In one sense, yes.  University professors like Dr. Singer have been mocking the notion of a transcendent, sovereign God for centuries.  Our most recent murderous decades with abortion were preceded by the murderous eugenics movement by almost a century.  The church is still here, and God continues to call some to stand against such evils and some to live with disability in their families.

But it seems like it is coming faster and sooner than before.  Prenatal diagnoses of increasing numbers and types of disabilities are becoming more common.  Rates of abortion for children with disabilities are at stunning levels.  Men and women can take tests to determine the likelihood of their conceiving a child with certain disabilities, with the assumption that this is not to prepare them to raise a child, but to help them avoid having such children.

We need the church to help their people now, before the diagnosis comes.  What we believe about God and other people and how we spend our lives is at stake:

The ultimate purpose of the universe is to display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God. The highest, clearest, surest display of that glory is in the suffering of the best Person in the universe for millions of undeserving sinners.Therefore, the ultimate reason that suffering exists in the universe is so that Christ might display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God by suffering in himself to overcome our suffering and bring about the praise of the glory of the grace of God.

O Christian, remember what Carl Ellis and David Powlison and Mark Talbot and Steve Saint and Joni Eareckson Tada said: they all, in their own way, said that whether we are able or disabled, enduring loss or delighting in friends, suffering pain or savoring pleasure, all of us who believe in Christ are immeasurably rich in him and have so much to live for. Don’t waste your life. Savor the riches that you have in Christ and spend yourself no matter the cost to spread your riches to this desperate world.

Pastor John Piper, from The Suffering of Christ and the Sovereignty of God at the 2005 Desiring God National Conference.

I was looking for the article by Dorothy Wertz I referenced yesterday, and found this quote from Dr. Adrienne Asch in the article, “Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion: A Challenge to Practice and Policy” from the November 1999 edition of American Journal of Public Health:

If professionals and parents believed that children with disabilities could indeed provide their parents many of the same satisfactions as any other child in terms of stimulation, love, companionship, pride, and pleasure in influencing the growth and development of another, they might reexamine their belief that in psychological, material, and social terms, the burdens of raising disabled children outweigh the benefits.

A vast array of literature, both parental narrative and social science quantitative and qualitative research, powerfully testifies to the rewards-typical and atypical-of raising children with many of the conditions for which prenatal testing is considered de rigeur and abortion is expected (Down syndrome, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, to name only some). Yet bioethics, public health, and genetics remain woefully-scandalously–oblivious, ignorant, or dismissive of any information that challenges the conviction that disability dooms families.

In other words, though we can frequently provide evidence to the benefits of raising our children with disabilities, the belief system of people who are supposed to be serving us leads them to dismiss that evidence.  The only evidence they will consider are the burdens.  Thus, the only right answer for them is to abort our babies with disabilities.

I am grateful when researchers like Dr. Asch point out that it isn’t just the ‘reality’ of burdens that leads to higher rates of abortion.  We are also fighting an evil belief system that automatically assigns lower value to a baby with certain genetic characteristics.  Sort of like we used to do with children born with dark skin in this country.

But given the statistics on abortion of African-American children, maybe I am too quick to say ‘used to.’

I found the chapter written by Dr. Dorothy Wertz, “How Parents of Affected Children View Selective Abortion,” from the book, Issues in Reproductive Technology: An Anthology, edited by Helen Holmes.

I now wished I hadn’t.  I am horrified at what she found in her research.

Here is one of Dr. Wertz’s conclusions:

Since individuals rather than governments are making these decisions (selective abortion of children with disabilities), they are not considered eugenic.  Yet, individuals can practice eugenics, perhaps more effectively than governments.  Informal social pressure is a very effective measure of coercion.  Once tests are offered, to reject them is a rejection of modern faith in science and also a rejection of our belief that we should do everything possible for the health of the future child.  To bear, knowingly, a less than perfect child affronts the mores of many social circles.  The sharp reduction in incidents of certain birth defects, such as Tay-Sachs in the United States and spina bifida in Britain, suggests that families are making what amount to eugenic decisions (all bold emphases mine).

There is good news in this.  If individuals are behaving as though there is a sanctioned eugenics movement in the United States, then individuals can be encouraged to make different decisions.

This is where the church and those of us with children with disabilities can engage in loving ways to turn the tide away from eugenics, one couple and one child at a time.

Parents, let us live like our children with disabilities matter and that we trust God to supply all our needs.  There is no reason to minimize our hardships – they are real, and people assume them anyway.  But there is more – God’s promises are real and we have been given a special opportunity to make much of him and testify to his promises through how we live our lives.

People simply do not talk about abortion as an option around me or my son, and I talk all the time about how glad I am to have this boy.  There’s two blows against aborting children with disabilities right there.

For churches, many had pro-life or sanctity of life Sunday services this past January.  Take that extra step – find ways to serve and welcome that family with a disabled family member.  Let all your people know you care about every person who crosses your doors, and that you WANT every one who crosses your doors, as an overflow of your affections for God who has done everything for you.

Will it be hard?  No.  It is impossible.  At Bethlehem we struggle most of the time – some disabilities are really, really hard, we frequently don’t know if we are doing the right things in serving a child or family, we make mistakes that discourage people, we never seem to have enough volunteers, and just when things seem to stabilize, another issue comes up that’s even more complicated than the last.

That is why we anchor everything in prayerful dependence, because only through God’s help will anything happen.

Think – pastor, or elder, or small group leader, or Sunday school teacher, or volunteer, or friend – how will you feel someday if a dad or mom comes up to YOU and says, “because of what I saw in what you did, we chose to have our baby with (terribly difficult disabling condition).”   And what sort of reward will there be from the Father for faithfully serving the most vulnerable of his human creation?

I don’t know.  But I want to find out.