Description
Towards a Theology of Disability
Preface
It began with reading Nancy Eiesland’s book The Disabled God. There are many good things in it but there was something about her approach to making sense of disability in relation to believing in God which I found hard to accept. She approaches it from the insights of liberation theology, a movement which has spread far from its origins in Latin America. It seems to embrace the dialectic of the Liberation Front, which can mean simply exchanging one slavery for another. The argument seems to run that all my problems are the result of the oppression of someone else. All I need to do is identify who my oppressor is and engage in solidarity with everyone else who shares my oppression. So, the theory goes, as a disabled person, my oppressor is the conspiracy of the able-bodied who, by their attitudes, seek to turn my disability into a handicap. The defining fact, according to Eiesland, is that I am disabled, the task is to identify with other disabled people in our common oppression, and the inspiration is that even God is on our side, especially in Christ, nailed to the Cross who there allowed Himself to become entirely disabled.
But I don’t consider my disability to be the defining fact of my existence. In terms of making sense of faith, which is what I understand theology to be, I have more in common with able-bodied people who share my faith than with many disabled people who do not. One significant factor is that my disability has been acquired gradually. For those of us who have been able-bodied and become disabled there is a different agenda than for those who have been disabled from birth or early childhood. For me, it is learning how to let go of the things I can no longer do without giving up altogether, thinking I can now do nothing. For others, perhaps (they must speak for themselves; I would not presume to do so) it is persuading their carers to allow them to grow up and not be trapped by their disability in a life-long infancy.
So, wondering what to do, I thought about writing a review of Nancy Eiesland’s book, but decided against that. Instead, I began to write my own theology of disability, trying to make sense of the facts that I believe in God and I am disabled. What follows was shared with different friends, both able-bodied and disabled, in particular Peter Cousins and Wayne Morris, to whose helpful suggestions and corrections I am indebted and with whose encouragement I offer this to a wider readership.
A Slight, Momentary Affliction
‘This slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.’ St Paul to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 4:17)
I was quite surprised when the neurologist told me “You probably have multiple sclerosis.” It wasn’t the diagnosis I was expecting. When the ‘pins and needles’ down my left side had become more than a mere nuisance, I thought it was just one of those unnamed viruses which seem to float around these days. In some medical circles, I believe they’re known as TLA: “Tharza Lotovit Abowt!” But mine wasn’t TLA but a well-known condition which affects one person in 800, as well as, indirectly, their families. The reservation “probably” was because MS can only be diagnosed by a process of elimination of all other explanations of the symptoms. Modern technology, especially Magnetic Resonance Imaging, has made the task much easier, but the only conclusive test would be a post-mortem examination of my brain, and I’m not quite ready for that yet.
In a way, I was almost relieved. It wasn’t that I was afraid of a life-threatening disease. My father had died from cancer of the colon only two months previously, having been, until the last three months, remarkably fit for his 84 years. My grieving mother’s fear was that she might lose her only son in the same way. No, it wasn’t cancer or heart disease. My relief, though, that it was a recognised condition stemmed from a painful experience nearly twenty years previously. In my student days, I’d experienced a rag-bag of odd symptoms - aches in my limbs, knee-joints giving way under me, ‘lazy’ feet - which I attributed to ‘rheumatism’. But sensible people who knew me well, including one who was a trained nurse, urged me to ‘get it checked out’. My course of training as a Methodist Minister included the question whether, at the end of the course, I was willing to serve in an overseas appointment. I was more than willing, and was particularly drawn to the French-speaking Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa.
As part of the selection process for overseas service, I was sent for a medical. This, I thought, was my opportunity. There was a slight niggle in the back of my mind, no more than that, that possibly my aches and pains were the beginnings of a major systemic illness. So I decided to put all my cards on the table before this doctor, a local general practitioner whom I had never met before. He said very little but a few weeks later I received a letter with an appointment for me to see a clinical psychiatrist. I went quite happily, assuming this was a normal part of the medical screening (“You must be mad to want to go to Africa!” etc.), but was quite taken aback by the ‘third degree’ examination. The psychiatrist pronounced me fit but revealed that the first doctor had thought me ‘excessively concerned about my health’. I came away wishing I’d never said anything. The last thing I wanted was a question mark against my name about my mental attitude. Was it just plumbopendulism, the condition of swinging the lead, or was I a malingering hypochondriac? I was to learn later that such fears were quite common among people with MS prior to diagnosis, as it is a condition which often takes decades to develop to a point where a diagnosis is possible. Though it was devastating at the time, I can now reflect that if my MS had been diagnosed in my mid-20s, I probably would not have been allowed to travel abroad, possibly would never have married and had a family, and my life would have been impoverished beyond measure. We patients expect our doctors to be infallible, using their great learning to put our odd symptoms together and always get the right diagnosis and always prescribe the correct remedy. But because they are as human and fallible as their patients, all we can reasonably expect is that they collectively learn from their mistakes, seek to improve their practice, and make every effort to put right anything that does go wrong.
Continues…