Disability, vulnerability and God


 
[This blog post was originally written by me, Jenny Rowbory, within an informal email exchange with Tanya Marlow (writer and Friend Extraordinaire) in response to her asking for my thoughts on her studies for her forthcoming academic essay (to be published as a chapter in a book) about the vulnerability of God from the perspective of disability theology. She has asked me to publish my response here so that it can be referenced in her essay. I am more than happy to oblige!]

As humans we experience both bodily vulnerability and emotional vulnerability. We are never guaranteed bodily safety; we are always vulnerable to injury, illness and death. It is our souls that are safe with God; in that eternal sense we are always safe.

God is vulnerable emotionally, but not bodily. His eternal soul/spirit is not in danger of dying. He is not vulnerable to being snuffed out of existence. He is safe. However, he did experience physical bodily vulnerability for a fixed amount of time in Jesus. For the most part though, it is emotionally that he is vulnerable, in terms of feeling pain, grief and sorrow. He technically has the power to change things but he created the forces and laws of the universe, the scientific principles that govern the created world. If he were to change things and exert his power, the world would no longer be the same. I assume that’s what will happen in the end, when God decides it is finally time and everything will be made new. Therefore technically he has the power but won’t yet use it to change things, in order not to interfere with free will or with the physical forces and laws of the universe that he created.

I slightly disagree with you about Jesus in Gethsemane [this comment is in response to Tanya Marlow’s thought that ‘Jesus was vulnerable in Gethsemane, yet with dignity and power’]. Jesus was in such extreme distress in Gethsemane; there is not much dignity in that, when you are that desperate and that scared of what is about to happen. If he wanted to do what was necessary, and to complete what he came to do, he could not use his power to stop it or call down all of heaven’s power to get out of it. I imagine that must have felt pretty powerless, even though technically he knew that the power was there. He was powerless to avoid the physical and spiritual agony if he wanted to accomplish the cross.

In disability, there is the vulnerability to not being treated equally to able-bodied people. In order to access certain things, whether they be crucial to our survival or whether they be activities that abled people get to enjoy without a thought to needing certain conditions or adjustments, disability means that we have to ask for help from others, we have to ask for certain adjustments that give us access to things that others take for granted. 

We, as disabled people, are vulnerable in terms of:

• being refused the medical help or personal care to keep us alive
• being refused the adjustments that would give us equal opportunities and access
• abusive people who would hurt someone who was powerless (due to a disability) against them
• being gaslighted
• being viewed as difficult and unreasonable by people who are reluctant to help and who disbelieve us or are incredulous of our disability, who think that our asking for essential adjustments is unreasonable, unnecessary or dictatorial
• being misunderstood and misrepresented
• others’ ignorance about our conditions, which in turn endangers us
• always having to receive help instead of give help, which creates a power imbalance and can lead to the receiver feeling inferior to the much-lauded “superior” giver of help

God is vulnerable in a few similar ways:

• God often doesn’t receive enough help on this Earth: Matthew 9:37 says ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.’ He is refused enough human helpers and co-workers against the backdrop of the infinite need of the world. He sees his loved ones suffering and cannot aid them all without human helpers choosing to do so out of love. He is not given the help that he needs
• God is vulnerable in terms of reputation, like disabled people are. There are many people who, whether deliberately or inadvertently, misrepresent God and who he is. Many people malign the reputation of the disabled too (“lazy”, “scrounger”, “waste of space”, “fraud” etc.)
• being misunderstood
• God loves us and dearly loves being loved back. This makes him vulnerable to the rejection of people hating him, because he gives us free will, the freedom to hate him. When bad things happen (suffering, injustice etc.) and people pour out their pain and blame at God, when they feel that he has failed them, God experiences the immeasurable pain and sorrow of having his loved ones hate him, which is isolating. He risks losing those he loves when he does not give them what they want or the help that they need. Disabled and chronically ill people often experience this same pain of their loved ones turning against them and hating them due to things beyond their control; often their able-bodied families get fed up with the ill/disabled person and ostracise them, lie about them or disown them. God is regularly lied about, defamed, ostracised and disowned, so there are similarities there.

The giving and receiving of love within the Trinity in their inter-relational dance must be the joy that is foundational to God’s strength. This generosity and abundance of love, given and received, is our template for how to live. If the giving and receiving of love was practised by everyone in the world, it would lead to everyone treating others as they themselves would wish to be treated in the same position. A natural byproduct of this would be social justice and relational justice between people. Able-bodied people would imagine themselves in the shoes of the disabled, and want the best for them, thus giving the help that they need, without them even having to ask for it.

God not only aligns himself with the hungry, thirsty, needy, sick, and imprisoned (Matthew 25:35-36 says ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me’), he also becomes us, suffering as one with us in those ways, because he lives inside us. Therefore what you do to others, how you treat others, at the same time you are doing the same thing to God; you are treating God that way. Matthew 25:40 says ‘The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”’ And then crucially in verse 45 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
It then follows that Christians would naturally want to treat the sick and disabled in the same way and with the same respect, honour, generosity and abundance that they would treat God. They will also receive back that same love, respect and honour because God is in them too. There is no superior or inferior; the able-bodied and the disabled both give and receive love. There is no power imbalance.

In this world, people are generally valued for what they do, not for who they are. Many regard the segment of the disabled population who aren’t able to do anything as worthless, instead of treasured and valued for who they are. Similarly, lots of Christians treat God as only valuable for what he can do for them, not treasured for who he is, for his nature. Disabled people and God are vulnerable in that same way; will we both still be loved when we don’t do anything but just are?

A final random thought: is being in human form the ultimate disability? With freedom and full ability coming to fruition upon leaving our human form?