Saturday, March 30, 2013

Reconciling Two Different Models of Disability
Rick Eastin
February 2013

To start out, I’d like to give you a little bit of my background. I myself am a person with Cerebral Palsy. For me it has been a life-long disability. As a result of this, I started to attend a Special Education School for persons with disabilities in the early 1960s, in Oakland, California. While I was at that school, I did not have a whole lot of interaction with students who were developmentally delayed until the last year when I was age 14. Through a series of circumstances, I got to know a young adult and that began to introduce me into the world of people with developmental delays. Upon further reflection, I then understood that I had more exposure to persons with developmental delays that I previously realized. Right across the street from my school was a place for students with severe and profound disabilities.

At age 17, God drew me back to Himself. As I began to walk with Jesus, I began a process of trying to understand my time at the Special Education school. It was a time of reconciling how God was at work in my life during that timeframe. I started to understand that even in the most difficult of situations God is always at work, even though there are seldom “nice and easy” answers.

Also at age 17, I began to study the field of intellectual disabilities. This study continues to be a life-long pursuit of mine. I eventually attended California State University-Fresno where I earned a BA degree in Social Work. Also, from 1987 to 2002, I founded and directed a program at my local Church that dealt primarily with adults having intellectual disabilities.

In addition, a personal blessing to me came about through the reestablishment in 1986 of the friendship relationship with the young adult mentioned above whom I had befriended at my original school in Oakland. I had many opportunities to be of encouragement to her for the next 22 years.

The 1970s were times of great transition in the field of intellectual disabilities. A consensus started to emerge that, because people with intellectual disabilities had been so badly mistreated and under-represented in society, that there needed to be a great effort to try as much as possible to begin to right some of the wrongs that had been done.

A new paradigm began to emerge that said “intellectual disability often causes people who had this disability to behave in ways that the broader society does not find rewarding. Therefore, we need to work hard at attempting to get such people to behave in ways that the dominant culture would find rewarding”. The desired end result would be that people with disabilities would be treated in a better manner.

Although this approach has the noblest of intentions in that its anticipated outcomes include the improvement of the treatment of people affected by disabilities, too often this philosophy ends up overlooking the very nature of the disability itself. By this I mean that in our contemporary society we often end up painting an overly optimistic picture that is simply not based in reality.

Now I want to turn your attention to what Scriptures says about disabilities. In order to do this, I will be looking at this topic through the three categories of the Creation, the Fall, and Redemption. To start with, Scripture informs us that when God first created Adam and Eve there was complete and total bliss. But we find that once Adam and Eve disobeyed God, that resulted in pain and suffering being injected into God’s Creation. Part of the judgment that God issued because of the Fall was telling Adam that there would be thorns and thistles that would now be a part of his life, thereby extending to all humanity. The ‘thorns and thistles’ represent the many varied ways in which life is either hard and/or works against us.

Disabilities are one of the many manifestations of the Fall with which we have to contend.

God promises according to Romans 8:28 that He will work all things together for our good, for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. This means that even though disabilities can be very painful as they affect the individual, the family, and society as a whole, God will work through these difficult circumstances to reveal Himself. This also means that in every life, even though we may experience great difficulties as a result of disabilities, nothing is ever wasted; God can redeem it all.

Now I want to look at what I call God’s Redemptive Design of disability. I want to set this within the context of Exodus 4:10-11, and Job 2:10. Both of these Scriptures inform us that God is in control, even when He appears to withhold resources from us that we think we need. This is what happens when we encounter or are faced with disability. It appears that we lack the needed resources to be able to have a good life. But evidently, based on these two Scriptures, God sees things differently. God gives us individually exactly what we need; it is our job to partner with Him in the process of trying to ‘unpack’ the design He has for us.

When we apply these truths to persons with intellectual disabilities, we must come to the conclusion that God has a plan for these individuals as well. At times, that plan often goes against what our current culture thinks is ‘the good life’.

God has created us all in such a way that every one of us goes through what is known as ‘developmental stages’. Typically, persons without disabilities follow a very predictable progression through these stages. However, people with intellectual disabilities often get ‘stuck’ at a development stage from which they do not advance. This is what makes their life experience so different from people without intellectual disabilities. But in the field of intellectual disabilities, the culture evidently has decided that it does not like this way of dealing with disabilities, not because it’s not based in reality, but many simply do not like, or feel comfortable with, the results it yields.

I want to examine disability from two perspectives; on one hand, we are called by God to attempt to make things better and not simply accept things as they are. The classic illustration of this is in the Parable of Good Samaritan. The person who helped the individual in need surely did not leave things as they were. In the same way, we are called to attempt to help all people develop to their fullest. As St. Irenaeus said in the Second Century, “The Glory of God is Man fully alive”.

On the other hand, we need to also, not only accept, but embrace the limitations that God in His providence gives to us. What this means to people with developmental delays is that yes, we are to challenge them as we would all people to develop to their fullest potential, while at the same time embracing the limitations that come with intellectual disability.

In the field of intellectual disability, there is a great push to have non-disabled people to have good social perceptions of these persons. The reasoning behind this is that it is believed that if people have a good mental image of these individuals they will be treated better by their non-disabled counterparts. But we have to be very careful about how we proceed down this path of reasoning. It comes down to what I call “truth in advertising”; if God designed us with a disability, it just stands to reason that it is not His intention that we would spend so much energy on trying to prevent others to perceive us as not having the disability!

God has given people with intellectual disabilities a platform by which he or she is a facet of who God is. But often this platform comes in the form of two socially devalued roles. One of these roles is that of being perceived as a child or child-like, even though one is of an adult age chronologically. The other role is that of an object of pity. It is a fact, whether we like it or not, that often adults with intellectual disabilities remain do at a child’s level intellectually and that cannot be changed. Also, as a person with a disability myself, I know what it is like to have people be overly sympathetic to the point where it is just “too much”. However, that does not mean we should ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’. God has created us in such a way that when we encounter the brokenness of a disability, especially the more severe it is, we feel pity for that person. This is a God-given response to what we see.

In our service to people who are intellectually disabled, we need to actively pursue how God has designed such persons to function in His world in a redemptive manner.

I would like to now highlight three different places that work with people with intellectual disabilities where they are embracing people according to God’s design for them. The results are truly remarkable.

First is Break the Barriers which is headquartered in Fresno, California. This is an amazing program where people with and without disabilities engage in gymnastics together. The results at that program are nothing short of remarkable. They have performed at local half-times for various sporting events, traveled to Washington DC to showcase their talents, as well as even doing some international travel. They have been to South Africa, Romania, and China to date.

The next program I am highlighting is Central California Mennonite Residential Services. This is a program that provides supportive live-in services for adults with developmental disability. In this community, the abled and disabled share life together. Individuals affected by disabilities also receive the needed support from the staff, helping all residents meet their own personal needs and achieve their own goals. Jen Foster, the Executive Director, has a favorite saying; “We are better together than alone”. This reflects an attitude not of independence, but rather interdependence.

The third organization I would like to highlight is called Shepherd’s Ministries, located in Wisconsin. They are a residential ministry for people with developmental delays, and I must admit I have only read about them online. Nevertheless, I am truly impressed with what I have read. They have a concept that I believe is rather unique to them, called ‘appropriate independence’. There is a rather lengthy article that is available online about this approach. Shepherd’s Ministries have shown much original thinking about how to apply God’s Truth while serving the everyday lives of people with disabilities.

As Christians, we have been called by God, not only to be reconciled to Himself through Jesus Christ, but we have also been given the ministry of reconciliation. What this means is, that as Christians, we need to seek on a continuing basis how to bring God’s Truth to bear in the realm of how we live with people with intellectual disabilities in God’s sin-marred world. We are called to be salt and light in this arena as was our Lord.
 
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And we knthat in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28
# Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?—Exodus 4:10-11
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He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[
a] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. – Job 2:10ow that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28
# Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?—Exodus 4:10-11
# He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[
a] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. – Job 2:10

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