Desegregating disability

Joni Eareckson Tada was paralysed from the neck down in a diving accident when just 17 years old.

Each year the Biblical Counselling Coalition holds a leaders’ summit – the most recent focussed on the issue of counselling and disability. Joni was this year’s guest speaker. She has written about her struggle to hold on to faith in the face of such a life-changing injury and has gone on to establish an extensive ministry focussed on disability. Several things struck me on the retreat.

Language is powerful

First, how we refer to disability matters because language is powerful. ‘We have a ministry to the disabled’ makes it sound as if disability is the only thing worth saying about a person. Similarly, ‘Susan is Down’s’ suggests Down’s Syndrome defines Susan. ‘Susan suffers from Down’s Syndrome’ isn’t much better. Person-first language encourages us to start with the person: ‘Susan is a person who has Down’s Syndrome’.

But there is more to this than language. The Bible identifies all sorts of things we cannot do. We are not able to save ourselves (Romans 5.6). We are not able to tame the tongue (James 3.8). We are not, according to Paul, even able to choose to do good: ‘I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out’ (Romans 7.18, emphasis added). All of us, then, are people with disabilities. At a theological level, we do well to see ourselves in terms of limitations and disabilities for every one of us is much, much less than God intended us to be. Drawing distinctions between the ‘normal’ and the ‘disabled’ doesn’t help us hold on to that truth.

When people with disabilities are well integrated into our churches, we will be stronger as a result. It is, sadly, easy for churches to want to give the impression that ‘all is well’ and that we are problem free. It is, of course, a delusion. We are fallen people in a fallen world. The presence of more obvious forms of disability helpfully reminds us of the needs and limitations that we all have. It discourages the ‘I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine’ pretence that stops people being honest with one another. When people with disabilities are encouraged to use the gifts God has given them, we will be reminded that every part of the body of Christ matters and that the body grows ‘as each part does its work’ (Ephesians 4.16).

There are huge differences between being reactive and proactive in this area. Our church has responded reasonably well, I think, to the children in our church family with additional needs. We have recruited extra helpers and provided one-to-one input where needed. But that kind of reactive help is very different from being proactive in ministry. We could, for example, decide to make it possible for those with significant hearing loss to be involved in our church. We might begin by reaching out to groups who work in this area to get their advice. We might pay for people in our church to learn British Sign Language. And then, once we had adequate resources in place, we might approach people with hearing loss to tell them what we had available and invite them to come along. That is very different to merely responding to a need if it happens to come along. People with significant hearing loss won’t just turn up hoping we have reserved a seat near the front from where they can lip read or in case we have someone signing. And because someone with that need doesn’t appear, we never react. We need to be much more on the front foot.

And what has this got to do with counselling? Well, after knowing our gospel, the next most important thing in one-to-one ministry is knowing the person we are talking to. We need to know and understand people with disabilities if we are to love them well. I suspect many of our churches have a long way to go.