BIBLICAL
TEACHING ON PHYSICAL DISABILITIES
“Go
out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the
poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Luke 14:21)
(Investigator
165, 2015 November)
INTRODUCTION
In past
centuries physical disability was considered divine punishment and the
afflicted often treated cruelly, but biblical teaching led to a more
merciful world.
DEAFNESS
AND OTHER AFFLICTIONS
Isaiah 43:8 uses
the concepts of deafness and blindness figuratively of people who
refuse God's guidance. Isaiah 35, however, seems literal and
describes the future when God rules humankind:
Then the eyes of
the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the
lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for
joy. (35:5-7)
Jesus reportedly
healed the blind, deaf, paralyzed, deformed and speechless. His
miracles introduced the "Kingdom of God" and illustrated the future
when healing goes worldwide:
Very truly, I
say to you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do
and, in fact, will do greater works than these… (John 14:12)
Before
discussing Christianity's role in healing let's consider the past:
THE
PAST
Julie Smart
(2001) says:
Bickenbach (1993)
wrote a very powerful description of two strongly held ideas about
disability: (1) the individual (or his or her parents or ancestors) is
responsible for the disability, and (2) because the individual with a
disability is evil, it is “our duty” to isolate that individual. He
added “In a nutshell, primitive retributivism is the view that people
who are manifestly defective are living out a just punishment for sins,
vices, or other moral faults, known or unknown, that have been
inflicted by some powerful moral force. At most, in this view, these
manifest sinners are entitled to our pity; but it is our duty to
dissociate ourselves from them”…
Today,
in some cultures, the idea that disabilities are somehow “God-ordained”
still persists and attempts to treat the disability or reduce its
effects are resisted because it is believed that if God ordains the
disability, God would not approve of any human attempt to alleviate
it… (pp 103-104)
Early 20th
century American eugenic "science" promoted the legalized sterilization
of the "unfit" including the deaf. In Germany Hitler passed his Eugenic
Sterilisation Act (1933) and 320,000 people were sterilized by 1939
including 17,000 deaf people. 1600 deaf people also died in
concentration camps.
In the Roman
Empire and other societies, infants were often deliberately mutilated.
The idea was that deformed children would get more money as beggars
because people would feel pity.
Deliberate
imposition of disability still occurs. 150 million currently living
Muslim females have suffered female genital mutilation ("female
circumcision") which often leads to life-long health problems.
The New York Daily News reported:
Five albino children
from Tanzania, who had their arms and hands chopped off due to
superstitions, will receive new limbs at Shriners Hospital with help
from the Global [Medical] Relief Fund…
The
five victims of the horrific attacks are being fitted for new arms and
hands after "witch doctors" in the East African country forcibly hacked
them off, believing a superstition that the body parts bring luck and
wealth. (Melissa Chan, June 19, 2015)
Many parents
impose disabilities on unborn children through use of alcohol and drugs.
DEAFNESS
DISABILITY
Smart (2001)
writes:
Most people would be
surprised to learn that the expectant parents who are deaf want their
baby to be deaf. Rather than viewing deafness as a tragic flaw, they
see deafness as part of their identity… (pp 109-110)
And Nowak (2006):
Deaf people argue
that they use a different language, and with it comes a different
culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs
fixing…
Tsavdaridis
& Hailstone (2002) report:
A DEAF lesbian couple
has sparked an ethical storm by deliberately producing a baby that
shares their disability.
The
American couple called on a male friend, who has five generations of
deafness in his family, as the sperm donor for their second child…
The biblical
position is that deafness is not desirable but a defective condition as
surely as blindness and paralysis.
THEOLOGY
OF DISABILITY
Exodus 4 tells
how Moses tried to avoid becoming leader of Israel:
But Moses said to the
LORD, "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent… I am slow of speech and
slow of tongue."
Then
the LORD said to him, "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute
or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I the LORD?"
John 9 tells of
Jesus healing a blind man:
His disciples asked
him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he
was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."
Some understand
these verses as teaching that God causes disability by miraculously
interfering at conception to inflict defects. But this interpretation
ignores other verses.
Job (in the book
of "Job") suffers calamity after calamity. His assets are destroyed,
his sons die, and "loathsome sores" cover him. The cause according to
Chapters 1-2 is "Satan" who works his evil subject to limitations
imposed by God:
The LORD said to
Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life." (Job 1-2)
Chapters 3-37
feature a debate wherein three "friends" of Job argue that innocent
people don't suffer (4:7) and therefore Job must be evil. Job argues
that he is blameless and God is treating him unjustly.
However, we have
already learned the answer in Chapters 1-2. "Satan" — a supernatural
enemy of God — is the one who imposed Job's misery. God's
responsibility is that he let it happen but imposed limits.
A similar
principle of God letting things happen applies to the natural world.
God as creator got the Universe started, but thereafter most events
proceed naturally without supernatural intervention. Many Bible
passages imply this view of things. For example:
A generation goes,
and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises
and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The
wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round
goes the wind… All streams runs to the sea but the sea is not full…
(Ecclesiastes 1:4-7; 3:1-8)
…time
and chance happen to them all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12)
Although God
sometimes acts on the natural world — what we call "miracles" — mostly
He just lets things happen. (Luke: 13:1-5) Consistent with this view is
the book of "Proverbs" which teaches that human knowledge, wisdom,
ethics and decisions are what ruin our lives or enhance them.
These principles
also apply to disabilities in humans:
Genesis
indicates that humans were created to live forever but required fruit
from the "tree of life" to avoid death. (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:22) They
would also die if they rebelled and disobeyed God:
…but you must not eat
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it
you will surely die. (Genesis 2:17)
Therefore,
just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,
and so death spread to all… (Romans 5:12)
For
I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can
will what is right, but I cannot do it. (Romans 7:18)
Not only death
and the inability to do right but also proneness to physical disability
and sickness would have "spread to all".
Today we can
interpret this scientifically and argue that rebellion against God and
eating from the wrong tree changed the genetic makeup or genome of
previously perfect humans. Continued deterioration over successive
generations multiplied the defects.
Is there proof
that humans were once physically perfect? Genesis 11:6 predicts that
"nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." This
implies that everything God can do, humans can also do. Therefore, if
future science, perhaps by gene-manipulation and nanotechnology,
produces physically perfect humans, that will confirm our once perfect
origin.
Stated
concisely, physical disabilities are genetic consequence of human
rebellion against God. Not willed or caused by God in each instance,
but natural consequences. God "makes them mute or deaf, seeing or
blind" by having created humans whose genome could deteriorate and
letting them choose to initiate its deterioration.
Consistent with
the above is the biblical teaching that God will judge everyone "by
what they have done" i.e. by their conduct and their ethics, not by
disabilities inherited before birth or acquired through accidents. (II
Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 20:13)
The Bible,
therefore, opposes the attitude, prevalent throughout history, that
physically defective people "are living out a just punishment for
sins". If the rebellion of the first humans against God is what led to
defective genes and inherited defects, then people born blind or deaf
are suffering the physical/natural consequences and not any "just
punishment" for crimes they personally committed.
There is still
the question, "Why did God allow humans to choose a history of
self-harm and suffering?" For an answer read "God, Tsunamis and Evil"
in Investigator 104.
THE
DISABLED HELPED
Mephibosheth,
grandson son of King Saul, was lame but King David arranged for his
care. (II Samuel 9) Some actions of David and other biblical characters
were wrong and the lesson is, don't do what they did. (I Corinthians
10:6-11). But other actions were right such as the care of Mephibosheth
and worthy of imitation. (Hebrews 11)
The Law of Moses
had clauses to help the disadvantaged such as:
When you reap the
harvest of your land, do not reap the very edges of your field or
gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the
alien. (Leviticus 23:22)
The "poor" would
include people with disabilities that prevented normal work loads.
Leviticus 19:14
commanded against cursing the deaf or tripping the blind. John Calvin
(1509-1564) in Commentaries on the
Four Last Books of Moses commented:
LEVITICUS 19:14 Thou
shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind,
but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord.
Since
the Law comprehends under the word murder, all the wrongs whereby men
are unjustly injured, that cruelty was especially to be condemned by
which those wretched persons are afflicted, whose calamity ought rather
to conciliate our compassion. For, if any particle of humanity exists
in us, when we meet a blind man we shall be solicitous lest he should
stumble or fall, and, if he goes astray, we shall stretch out our hands
to him and try to bring him back into the way; we shall also spare the
deaf... It is, therefore, gross brutality to increase the ills of those
whom our natural sense impels us to relieve, and who are already
troubled more than enough. Let us, then, learn from these words, that
the weaker people are, the more secure ought they to be from all
oppression or injury…
Organized
education for deaf people began with two Catholic priests. Mirzoeff
(1992) writes:
The establishment of
the Institute for the Deaf was the culmination of thirty years work by
two Catholic priests, the Abbe Charles-Michel de I'Epee (1712-1789) and
the Abbe Roch-Ambroise Sicard (1742-1822), who had developed a
methodical sign language based on the native sign languages used by the
deaf themselves…
Other
teaching/training centers followed for the deaf, blind and
disadvantaged. Louis Braille (1809-1852), the blind inventor of
Braille lettering, was a Catholic.
Many people look
at evils done in the name of religion as excuses to oppose everything
Christian. The Bible warns that many apparent believers would betray
the faith by their wrongful conduct (II Peter 2:2) but others would do
"greater works" than Jesus. (John 14:12) Everyone must decide whether
to look at traitors for excuses or at "great works" for inspiration.
"Bionic ears"
were invented by a Christian doctor with a deaf father. Graeme Clark
(b.1935) was an ear, nose and throat surgeon who at age 30 switched to
academic research. At 34 he headed the otolaryngology department at the
University of Melbourne. This allowed him to research his idea for an
electrical device to stimulate auditory nerves. (Worthing 2015; Ross
2015)
Cochlear-implants
began at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne in 1978
and have gone worldwide. The
Advertiser reported:
Mrs Dunn, 55, of
Toorak Gardens, is SA’s first recipient of a “bionic ear.”
The
device, which she had implanted in Melbourne last month, has restored
the hearing she lost when she was 20…
The
“bionic ear” or cochlear implant is suitable for people who are not
deaf from birth and who have extreme nerve deafness…
Mrs
Dunn’s four-hour operation was done by a Melbourne University team led
by Graeme Clark. (June 22, 1985, p. 3)
The Hear and Say
Centre in Queensland teaches hearing-impaired infants to listen and
speak through a program called "auditory-verbal therapy" which begins
with a cochlear implant at age 6 months. (Nogrady 2009)
GENE
THERAPY
The 1920 USA
Census attributed deafness in 35,026 deaf people to hereditary or
pre-natal 38.6%, scarlet fever 17.6%, and meningitis or other "brain
fever" 23.9%. (Pintner, Eisenson & Stanton 1941)
In medieval
Europe causes of deafness included genetic, accidents, and illness such
as measles, meningitis, mumps, smallpox and scarlet fever.
Gene therapy may
one day eradicate deafness. Thomson (2014) reports:
…a group of
profoundly deaf people … who lost their hearing through damage or
disease, will get an injection of a harmless virus containing a gene
that should trigger the regrowth of the sensory receptors in the ear.
Michael Tennesen
(2008) examines the potential for regenerating the auditory hair cells
in the inner ear. Once damaged these cells do not recover and this is a
major cause of hearing loss. Tennesen says that 278 million people
worldwide have hearing loss and 100,000 use cochlear implants. Bony
fish, some amphibians and deafened chickens grow new auditory hair
cells and researchers are studying the genes involved and looking for
ways to achieve recovery in humans.
BLINDNESS
Christianity
fights blindness by charity, teaching of skills, and performing
millions of cataract surgeries. The Christian Blind Mission reports
that in 2014, "Over 570,000 people received the Miracle Gift of Sight."
The brochure says: "For over 100 years, CBM has striven to follow the
teachings and example of Jesus Christ through our work."
Today bionic
eyes are being developed. The Bionics Institute in Melbourne emerged
from Graeme Clark's work and implanted a proto-type into a woman in
2012.
Macular
degeneration affects 1 person in 15. New
Scientist reports that treatment with human embryonic stem cells
had reversed macular degeneration and produced improved eyesight. (18
October, 2014, p. 6) And Lewis (2014) reports: "the experimental
procedure for placing healthy genes wherever they are needed in the
body has restored sight in about 40 people with a hereditary form of
blindness."
This raises the
question of how modern science began. Universities first began in
Western Europe in the 13th century (Haskins 1957); and many founders of
various branches of science were inspired by the Bible. This is part of
the fulfillment of the promise almost 4000 years ago that through
Abraham's descendants God would "bless all the nations of the earth."
(Genesis 18:18; Acts 3:25-26)
SUMMARY
Societies that
equated inherited disability with personal sin and ostracized
sufferers, and people who intentionally disable or mutilate others, are
evil and deluded. They demonstrate the truth of the biblical teaching
that the entire world is deceived by "Satan the Devil". (Revelation
12:9)
Physical defects
inherited at conception began with human rebellion against God which
ruined the perfect genes of our original parents. Bible prophecy
foretold that under the Kingdom of God — which began with Jesus —
physical defects, sickness, and pain would be conquered; and medical
science indicates that Bible prophecy can become reality.
REFERENCES:
Bickenbach, J.E.
1993 Physical disability and social
policy, University of Toronto
Christian Blind
Mission 2015 Welcome to CBM,
cbm.org
Crouch, B. It’s
hear, hear, for Jeanette, Sunday Mail,
November 6, 2006, 27
Haskins, C.H.
1957 The Rise of Universities,
Cornel Paperbacks
Lewis, R. Scientific American, March 2014,
37-41
Mirzoeff, N. The
Silent Mind Learning From Deafness, History
Today, July 1992, 19-25
Nogrady, B. This
sound barrier can be broken, The
Weekend Australian, Health Weekend, January 10-11, 2009, 13
Nowak, R. Ear
implant sparks culture war, New
Scientist, November 25, 2006, 16-17
Pintner, R.
Eisenson, J. & Stanton, M. 1941 The
Psychology of the Physically Handicapped, Crofts
Ross, J. Ringing
tribute to dedication, The Weekend
Australian Review, August 22-23, 2015, 19
Smart, J. 2001 Disability, Society and the Individual,
Aspen
Tennesen, M.
Gone today, hear tomorrow, New
Scientist, 10 March, 2007, 42-45.
Thomson, H. Let
there be sound, New Scientist,
26 April, 2014, 8
Tsavdaridis, N.
& Hailstone, B. 2002 Disabled baby boy a wish come true, The Advertiser, April 13, 2002, 34
Worthing, M.
2015 Graeme Clark: The Man Who
Invented the Bionic Ear, Allen & Unwin
(Anonymous)
Comparing the Bible with beliefs opposed to it, on this
website: