COLUMN: Grey Matters – God, disabilities, and the questions to ask

“[Christ] who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.” Philippians 3:21a

We are taught, many times without realizing it, to value strength, speed, independence, perfection. If we were to ask who has a strong body we might list athletes, but if we were to ask the Scriptures it would say we all have lowly bodies (see verse above)! God’s way is not our way. God looks not at efficiency or outward ability, but at the heart. And in the hearts of those with disabilities, we often find something the world struggles to cultivate: a resilience that blooms without fanfare and a profound capacity for presence.

This past week I officiated at a funeral for a woman who lived with Down Syndrome. She had a quiet courage in living each day with challenges others did not see or understand. Her courage was not loud or boastful. It did not demand recognition. It simply endured – and in that endurance, it became sacred. Those who walk this path remind us that life is not about mastering everything, but about receiving each moment with trust.

In times of suffering, we sometimes ask open-ended ‘why’ questions. ‘Why did God make me like this?’ ‘Why did God allow a child to be born with disabilities?’ While these questions stir from our soul, they will never be fully answered in this fallen world. Questions are good for faith, but maybe we are asking the wrong questions because of how our society has trained us to perceive. What follows are questions that will get us some actual answers. However, first we need to be in the right frame of mind to benefit from these questions. Do we have the right perspective to ask from and a curious heart?

Kate Bowler is a fellow Manitoban and now Duke Divinity professor who has had to deal with a lot of suffering and disappointment in her personal life. She helps us set the stage for our questions:

“North America culture values choice above all. People who choose are masters of their own destiny. They are the greatest of all mythical creatures: self-made. By contrast, people with fewer choices – less independence, more dependence – might begin to feel the sting of distinct kind of shame… The hard truth is that the most basic aspect of our humanity is not our determination, our talents, or whatever we accomplished during last year’s resolutions. We are united by our fragility. We all need shelter because we are soft and mushy and irritable in the elements – and we will need so much more…”

Here is our first set of questions: Why do we have trouble accepting and living alongside people with disabilities? Would these divisions and all our labels even exist if our society valued cooperation more than competition and ambition? If we valued interdependence more than independence?

Stanley Hauerwas, a professor emeritus from Duke Divinity school and mentor to Kate Bowler adds terrific depth to this conversation in his book ‘Suffering Presence’. He agrees that we misjudge a lot because of valuing competition and ambition over cooperation, he writes: “In viewing our life narrowly as a matter of purposes and accomplishments, we may miss our actual need for suffering, even apparently purposeless or counter-purposeful suffering. The issue is not whether disabled children can serve a human good, but whether we should be the kind of people, the kind of parents and community, that can receive, even welcome, them into our midst in a matter that allows them to flourish.” There’s another good question in there!

Second set of questions: Why do we suffer, and do we miss something when we try to avoid suffering at all costs as a society? Hauerwas again: “In the very attempt to escape suffering, do we not lose something of our humanity? We rightly try to avoid unnecessary suffering, but it also seems that we are never quite what we should be until we recognize the necessity and inevitability of suffering in our lives.”

Kate Bowler would add that we suffer because we are incomplete beings who need to depend on one another for existence. Not only do we depend upon others for our survival but also for identity and meaning! Suffering has a lot to teach us if we are open.

Hauerwas continues: “…we ‘naturally’ disdain those who do not or cannot cover up their neediness. Prophetlike, the disabled only remind us of the insecurity hidden in our false sense of self-possession.”

Third set of questions: Don’t we all have limits and disabilities? Don’t strengths in one area mean a weakness in another area? The people I have known with Down Syndrome, often have something eminently beautiful that most of us don’t. A natural grace to be free from the guilt and regret most of us feel in our neediness.

I hope we are starting to see how asking thoughtful questions can help us go further than ‘why me’ questions.

Gary Dyck is a chaplain and spiritual care provider at a hospital and personal care home in the Southeast.