1. Introduction
Hermeneutics in a Disabled World
This is a personal reflection focusing on some of the issues that the Bible has thrown up since I have engaged with it through the lens of disability. I of course will hardly scratch the surface in this paper regarding all that can and should be said concerning the Bible’s relationship with disabled people. I am aware that I am not an academic theologian, so I apologise in advance for any failings that I may have in putting across my opinions clearly on the written page. I am also mindful of my own profound inability to do justice for those with differing impairments and experiences to my own.
My use of the term ‘disabled’ in this paper will refer to those who live with impairment and who have been disempowered by society and have been held back from fully flourishing through the actions of others. Given that I wish to stress that disability is much more about social attitudes and prejudices than it is about physical or mental impairment, I will also use the term ‘enabled’ to highlight the fact that just as some people are ‘disabled’ by society, some are also ‘enabled’ by society.
My primary hope is that this paper may encourage us individually and as a church to be alongside disabled people and they alongside us as we listen and learn from each other for the benefit of Christ’s church. Historically the church has had a mainly one-way relationship with disabled people, happy to welcome them in but not to fully participate. That this legacy has been maintained is primarily down to how scripture has traditionally been understood. The Theology of Disability alongside the other liberation theologies of
the 20th century challenge many of these traditional understandings as a means of
liberating those who have been oppressed for far too long and truly look forward to drawing all into the coming of God’s Kingdom. As a result my hope is that through a positive engagement with the Theology of Disability the church may celebrate and nurture the giftedness of all, disabled and enabled.
My own life experience that I bring to bear on this subject is significant in how I have come to engage with scripture. When I was six I was diagnosed with a bone condition called Hereditary Multiple Exostoses (HME) which is a rare medical condition in which multiple bony spurs or lumps (also known as exostoses, or osteochondromas) develop on the bones of a child. This meant that I spent much of my childhood in and out of hospital having the bony lumps removed. Thus I had various periods of time physically well and fully mobile; other times on crutches or in a wheel chair. I experienced at
firsthand how differently people projected themselves on to me when I was well and mobile compared to when I was ill and immobile, and how differently I projected myself onto others as to what physical state I was in.
Once I arrived at adulthood and had stopped physically growing I had a long period of good health until I was twenty six. After very frightening symptoms of gradual paralysis I was diagnosed with a spinal tumor that had grown from one of these bony lumps from my top rib. The cartilage had grown cancerous and a dumbbell tumor had formed growing one way through my neck and into my spine and the other way down into my lungs. Post operatively I was left paralyzed from my chest downwards. After a considerable spell in hospital and rehabilitation I recovered both sensation and mobility in my legs, but I have never recovered mobility in my hips, which is why I permanently rely on crutches today. I also live with scaring in my lungs caused through the excising of the tumor back in 1996. I have thus spent the last twenty years living with these impairments and the challenges and opportunities afforded to me as a disabled person.
2. Why a Theology of Disability?
My journey back to faith post tumor has also been a journey into exploring disability through a theological context. Many passages within scripture have disturbed and unsettled my own sense of self and questions, such as my own sense of worth in the eyes of God, have surfaced whilst exploring scripture. During this process I became aware of my real unease and discomfort at the manner in which disabled people are engaged with, in the scriptures. The process has informed me not just of biblical passages which confront understandings of my own physical impairment including, for example, the many references to the lame and the paralysed, but also to the texts that challenge those with other impairments unlike my own, including blind people, people with hearing impairment and hidden impairments such as autism, epilepsy and those with learning difficulties of varying natures. I began to wonder where the disabled person finds solace in religious texts that question their very sense of self and align them with sin, unbelief and lack of faith.
The language of metaphor became a particular focus for me, especially the use of impairments, such as blindness, as a metaphor of sin, unbelief and lack of faith. For example we read that the inhabitants of Sodom were struck down with blindness1 and in
1 Genesis 19:11
Zephaniah we read that the people of Israel were warned that because of their sins they would “walk like the blind”2. In Isaiah we discover that “We grope like blind men along a wall, feeling our way like those whose sight has gone3.”
Neither does it improve when we approach the New Testament. In the Acts of the Apostles, we find Elymas, who opposed the gospel, is punished with blindness4 and the question and answer, “How can the blind lead the blind? They would both fall into a ditch!” that we find quoted in St Matthew’s Gospel5. Particularly distressing though is Matthew 23 where Jesus is reported to have used expressions such as blind guides, blind Pharisees and blind fools6. The final example is particularly pertinent. It leads me to wonder if we should not translate the text as ‘stupid fools’ or ‘ridiculous fools’ or ‘silly
fools’ rather than to have Jesus use the term ‘blind fools’ which turns a particular impairment into a term of abuse.
The Theology of Disability came into being as a response against the alignment of disability with sin, unbelief and lack of faith. It is a liberation theology to be placed alongside the feminist and black liberation theologies of the second half of the 20th
century and truly found its voice in response to the demand by many in society that those who returned home mentally and physically shattered by the ravages of two world wars were not hidden from view in institutions, but fully integrated and welcomed back totally into society.
Thus over the intervening seventy years or so the hermeneutical approaches of Western theologians, rooted in an economically and socially dominant culture, have come to be challenged by feminist theologians, black theologians and disability theologians regarding the West’s engagement with scripture from a primarily Western patriarchal affluent viewpoint. The concern being that through this dominant viewpoint disabled people have come to be viewed as less valued, less important and less worthy in the eyes of the church than those who are viewed as able; something we also see emphasised in the poorly thought through theologies of healing that result, where churches and evangelists desire to cure disabled people in the often misguided understanding that disabled people are less than perfect in God’s eyes. This particular
2 Zephaniah 1:17
3 Isaiah 59:10
4 Acts 13:6-11
5 Matthew 15:14
6 Matthew 23: 16, 17, 24 and 26
theology of healing articulates a distorted image of God as tyrant, picking and choosing who is cursed and who is cured based either on the power of prayer, the sin, the lack of faith or unbelief of the particular individual, or the overriding will of God.
I believe that the challenges facing disabled people are on a par with the challenges that people faced and still face regarding economic oppression, racism, sexism and homophobia. As a result disability becomes a valid and vital perspective from which to interpret scripture for the benefit of all. After all is said and done, the experience of disability is a profoundly human experience that can affect any one at any time, transcending as it does categories of gender, race, sexuality, economic class or cultural background. Anyone who is intending to work within the pastoral sphere will need be aware of, understand and be sensitive to the experiences of disabled people; hence the need for a theology of disability to help guide us through the challenges of engaging with scripture from this perspective.
I wish therefore to proceed by particularly focusing on two hermeneutical challenges that may be found within the Biblical texts; that of cultural experience and the possible inbuilt scriptural prejudice that results from one’s cultural experience and use both the creation of community and the healing narratives of the Gospels as the prisms through which light may be shone on these areas.
3. Theology of Disability and the building of the Kingdom
The creation and nurturing of community is a major theme in all scripture, from the narratives around Abraham and Moses through to the letters of St Paul. Experiences of disability have significant links to the deepest streams of biblical thought around issues surrounding community, both for disabled people and the communities to which they belong. For disability touches on issues around community identity; the meaning of redemption and transformation and most importantly on the very image that we have of God and what it means to be human beings, made in the image and likeness of God.
Jesus’ ministry confronts the major issues of exclusion and access, which are at the heart of community building. I am not just focusing on the physical obstacles that are so much part of daily life for disabled people - obstacles that exclude, such as steps, narrow doors, lack of Braille or BSL interpreters, poor public transport; but also obstacles of attitude such as fear, ignorance, patronisation and prejudice which prevent many disabled people from taking their rightful place at the community table. The ability to
participate in one’s community freely also touches on issues of justice and dignity, of equity and equality. Conversely the barriers to full participation in community can induce acute suffering and erode a person’s sense of identity and well being.
These categories of inclusion and equity sit at the heart of our biblical understanding of justice and right relationship, ones that promotes equality and harmony within community. They find their roots in the concept of Shalom, found in Isaiah 65, which views the eschatological Israel as one in which death is defeated and all are at peace.
4. The Theology of Disability and the Healing Narratives.
The healing narratives of Jesus that we find in the Gospels are an understandable challenge to disabled people, though I am happy to concur that through each healing narrative the messianic power of Jesus to heal is revealed and therefore each healing narrative of Jesus has an intrinsic Christological understanding. What is particularly interesting and Gerd Theissen7 focuses on this in his excellent book, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition, is the particular focus, prevalent in all Jesus’ healing narratives, on ‘boundary crossing’. Jesus’ healing narratives draw people from beyond the margins of community life - the outcast, the rejected, the abandoned, - and invites them back into the centre to take their entitled place within the community. Therefore
Jesus touching the skin of the leper in St Mark’s Gospel8 represents not only healing, but
more importantly an act of solidarity, bridging for all time the boundary between life and death that is so clearly stated in the 13th chapter of Leviticus9. There are countless other examples of ‘boundary crossing’: the healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s daughter10, the healing of the centurion’s servant11 and the liberation of the woman bent double in Luke 13 to name but three.12
The inherent inclusive thrust of Jesus’ healing ministry is confirmed by the fact that the same context of drawing people back into community from the margins is revealed through incidents of dynamic reconciliation and inclusion that involve no healing or physical transformation. One only needs to read Jesus’ inaugural preaching in the
7 Theissen, G., 1983. The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition, Philadelphia: Fortress
8 Mark 1:41
9 Leviticus 13: 2-17
10 Mark 7: 24-30
11 Matthew 8: 5-13
12 Luke 13: 10-17
synagogue in Nazareth found in Luke 413 or Jesus’ calling of Levi in Mark 214 to observe healing being used as a metaphor for the inclusion of disabled people, the Gentile and the tax collector into the Kingdom of God. Thus Jesus’ healing narratives become acts of transformation, of solidarity and inclusion. This is profound Good News for disabled people for whom many are still forced to live on the margins of society.
The Christological message of the healing narratives found in the synoptic gospels and even more in John suggests that they are primarily revealing the fundamental reality of God’s relationship to humanity. We experience examples of Christ’s compassion, his commitment to justice, his attentiveness to all who find themselves on the margins of communities. The healing narratives draw together particularly those deemed diminished amongst the children of Israel as a revelation not just about values and nature of Jesus, but ultimately about God. Thus in John’s Gospel the healing stories become ‘signs’ of the incarnate God in the word Jesus.