Free from appearances
considering the rule of conduct laid down by James
The reversed world
Differentiating between people, in the sense of making one group inferior to another, lies outside the order of Christianity. The churches from high to low and from north to south may learn this from the apostle James. To protect people against such wounding belittling James formulated his rule of conduct regarding respect: 'My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons'1 (2:1). And with his colourful story of the rich and the poor in the congregation he portrayed the reversed world of evangelism. It has taken long for Christians to comprehend the deep significance in James' argument. The church has learned only slowly and with great difficulty, by trial and error and over a long period of time to bring into practice the reversal of values implied. This has been due to her human, her all too human character. People constitute the church, after all, in just the same way that they live: differently in town than village, in feudal era than in democracy, in north than south. And the strange rules of the Christian congregation may for very long and very often be frustrated by the hard rules of society. Indeed, only in the last century, the twentieth, did the churches learn more or less to conduct their affairs according to the rule laid down by James: '... have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.' It is only so recently that, at least in theory, those within the church have wished no longer to differentiate between rich and poor, black and white, employer and worker. Even more remarkable is the fact that this fate has continued to befall those with a disability. Differentiation continued to be made between people with and people without a disability. It was as if those who were disabled must always be cared for, as if they themselves were incapable of caring for others! And this deeply hurtful discrimination has never really been fully discussed and exposed for the misconception that it is. Differentiation that occurs at the cost of human dignity must be unmasked. But there is no human society which of itself will hear or see this. The comparison used by James (2:1-6a) about the rich and poor might easily now be told like this: 'People, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For imagine there comes into your midst a splendidly-built man, ablaze with health and energy, and there comes in also a crippled man in a wheelchair and you should look up at the man who glows with health and say to him: "Take your place here in this commission and in this administration", but to the wheelchair user you should say, "What a shame; you may take that place still free there, tucked away just in front of the pulpit, and later you will receive a basket of fruit!" would you not then be differentiating between yourselves and setting yourselves up as judges misled by wrong considerations? Listen, my beloved brethren! Has not God chosen the disabled of the world to be strong in faith and to inherit the Kingdom promised by Him to those who love Him? Yet you have treated them with scorn!'
Ambivalence
It is their concept of mankind which determines peoples' attitude towards those with a disability. This is also true within the churches. And here may be detected some ambivalence. Following the Old and New Testaments, attention is paid within the church to human relations, in particular to relations with the socially vulnerable neighbour. In Israel, after all, the idea of fellow-feeling, of a shared lot, was paramount for together they formed God's people. Therefore one was responsible for another, therefore was daily conduct to be determined charitably according to the law of a just God of Israel. The commandment 'Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind' of Leviticus 19:14 is directly followed by the stipulation in verse 15 'do no unrighteousness in judgement'. Justice and charity do not stand next to one another as two desirable virtues but rather they move forward together, keeping one another on the right path. Together they simultaneously characterise one and the same attitude toward life. This eminently Jewish vision of the conduct of human relations - no differentiation, no preferential treatment, no going on appearances - is sung in Psalm 82: 'Defend the poor and the fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy, Deliver the poor and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked.' Jewish as he was, Jesus preached the story of the law of God by being charitable. The background to the evangelists' stories of healing is Jewish. Jewish too is Paul's plea on behalf of 'the more feeble...and those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable' ( I Corinthians 12: 22 and 23) to be allowed their own, full participation. Indeed, amongst the first congregations of the apostolic era mutual help and service was a matter of course: only in this mode could people be Christian. Later in the history of Europe the monasteries gave succour and shelter to those who through sickness or disability found themselves cast out of society. Nuns and monks laid the basis for present health care delivery systems. But immediately juxtaposed with this came the other development within the church, one which had its origins in honouring of the beautiful and the balanced, and in the primacy of reason and intellect. For many, the idiom of Iuvenalis (approx. 100 AD): "Mens sana in corpore sano" - "a healthy mind in a healthy body" - has attained the status of supreme truth! More now, perhaps, than ever before: in order to count you must be healthy and strong and young and attractive. Consider also how after the first centuries AD the church gained so much in influence that it began to identify itself with the interests of the most powerful members of the community. The church became rich, a political power, began to take sides in disputes. The result was that the church declared its solidarity with those in ownership and authority, with law and order. And then occurred that which was forbidden by evangelism: the church lost her attention for the weak and those who had fallen behind. The consequence was that for centuries the care of the sick and people with a disability rested with the monasteries and convents and not with the official church. This state of affairs did not really change even after the Reformation in Europe: it was not the ordinary congregations which responded to the lot of the deprived, in the widest sense of the word, but individuals, the pioneers of revivalist movements such as pietism in England and Germany and the Réveil in the Netherlands.
Caring for...
The combination of a concept of mankind within which care for one another has an important place and one in which the supremacy of the strong and healthy person prevails has set the tone for the attitude of the church towards those who live with a handicap or chronic illness. Here too an 'opposition' remains apparent: we on one side and they on the other, normal as opposed to abnormal, people without as opposed to those with a disability, helpers as opposed to helped, strong as opposed to weak, the knows as opposed to the don't-knows. And then it seems as if everything is laid down, as if the rules are clear. The predictable order has then taken over and so long as nobody says or does anything about it nothing will ever change. It cannot be denied: there is a great deal of loving care for those with a disability; all sorts of things are organised and set up for them. Voluntary organisations both within and outside the churches are legion. The discovery and production of aids for the disabled has become a flourishing industry. And the possibilities of government subsidies are, at least in rich lands, great. What is more, the year 2003 has been proclaimed a new 'European Year for People with a Disability"! But of course, we can not, with all these goodies in mind, turn to the paralysed in the electric wheelchair and the blind with laptop computer upon knee and say: "Dear souls, what more could you possibly want??" The rule of conduct laid down by James continues to recall us to another order, to that of respectful appreciation. For by what right are those with a disability judged only in the light of their disability and thus called 'deaf', 'blind', 'lame' or 'aids-patient'? By what right are those that must live as disabled not asked for their opinion? By what right are discrimination and differentiation still made by those in charge? It has reached the point at which their stooped attitude, like that of the Good Samaritan of Luke 10 and II Chronicles 28, is experienced by those with a disability as condescending; justice and charity have become dissociated. This dividing in two on grounds of appearances has disrupted and overwhelmed the inhabitants of the church. For they that live together world-wide in one universal church, the message is far more dynamic than static, much more renewing than confirming. The questions are levelled at everybody, at those with and without disability in equal measure: who cares for whom? where are we going? how do we share? what are we teaching one another? in what way can the one help the other further?
Differently capable
Someone with a disability truly knows what it is like to live with limitations. And the non-disabled who spends time attentively with such a person learns too just how much this has to be reckoned with. And more often than not, pooling their skills and inventiveness they discover how undreamed of possibilities emerge from their observant contact. They complement each other, need each other and dare also to say of one another that they are "differently capable". Once people spoke of 'the handicapped'; later it was preferred to change this term to 'people with a disability', for each of us is in the first place a human being. And developments continue: now one may read here and there of 'people with differing possibilities'. On the same trajectory, the World Council of Churches in its Interim Statement of 1997 distanced itself from the designation 'people with a disability' because the word 'disability' unequivocally draws attention to limitation. Thus at this moment it is preferred to speak of 'differently abled', because in this way the emphasis comes to lie upon those possibilities that lie within reach. The one distinction which has a right to exist - there are people with and without disability! - would seem to be extremely fruitful: acceptance of one another as we each are also means having respect for each others' possibilities and limitations. Real changes cost a great deal of time; this is true in the churches too, and also in the World Council. In 1975 in Nairobi they persuasively declared of people with a disability: "The unity of the family of God is disabled where these brothers and sisters are treated as objects of condescending charity". And during the sixth assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver in 1983 people with a disability were once more emphatically addressed as a group in Report 3, the subject of which was rights of participation in the congregation. Back then we had sadly to confirm that "their acceptance and integration is not complete". Now, in the year 2003, we bravely spin out yet further the red thread running through this story with the use of better and, to our own ears, more appropriate wording. The rule of conduct touches on the heart of the matter But paper is patient. Once again there arises the danger that we attempt to bridge with words that which in practice seems to us insurmountable. Everyone knows that pain and difficulty are not removed by using other words for them, but only by finding the real words. The heart of the matter must become subject for discussion and the dignity of the individual should be fully recognised by the other: we must make no disparaging distinction, no inferior differentiation. 'Dear Brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect to persons' wrote James, having behind him the whole of the Old testament, for he took the evangelism of his great brother Jesus seriously. Jesus chose unconditionally for the reversed world of the God of Israel. Thus was Jesus consistently to be found in the company of those in vulnerable or disadvantaged situations. He did not patronise them, but asked them instead what they required of Him. He was not there in order to manipulate them towards a position which we might call 'normal', but simply to be near them, to be one of them. Not as a call for praiseworthy good deeds, but that justice and charity might find concrete expression in daily life did he say: "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink..." (Matthew 25: 35). And we remain true to the reality of evangelism if we add: "I was a mongol and you had respect for Me..."
1 The citations come from the King James Revised Version of the Holy Bible.
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