Is God Disabled?
Gramps49
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
Just received the new issue of The Christian Century yesterday. It's lead article was on Disability Theology. Basically, it is the study of God through the eyes of a disabled person. At its core, its leading theologian, Nancy Eisland points to the resurrection saying Jesus resurrected body is not perfect, it still had the wounds in the hands, feet and sides. Even before the crucifixion, though, we can find instances of Jesus dealing with limitations. Examples would be how did he acquire carpentry skills and his interaction with the e
I take it Disability Theology does not see a disability as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a lens through which we experience God in different ways, like how feminine theology has allowed us to find the feminine side of God. As such, it reinterprets a number of the healing miracles.
The discipline is not new. It started up in the 80s from what I can see.
Many of us have admitted some of the barriers we have. Some of them are medical. Others are social, but, but, ultimately, we all have limitations. For me, the question is not how do we reach perfection, but how God uses our imperfections for his ultimate good?
This is something I am wanting to explore more. I hope this can be an interesting exploration for everyone too.
https://joniandfriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/BYS-01-A-Theological-Introduction-to-Disability.pdf
https://www.christiancentury.org/books/when-ableism-and-racism-intertwine
The article I was reading is not yet online. But these two links do give you a taste for what Disability Theology is like.
I take it Disability Theology does not see a disability as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a lens through which we experience God in different ways, like how feminine theology has allowed us to find the feminine side of God. As such, it reinterprets a number of the healing miracles.
The discipline is not new. It started up in the 80s from what I can see.
Many of us have admitted some of the barriers we have. Some of them are medical. Others are social, but, but, ultimately, we all have limitations. For me, the question is not how do we reach perfection, but how God uses our imperfections for his ultimate good?
This is something I am wanting to explore more. I hope this can be an interesting exploration for everyone too.
https://joniandfriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/BYS-01-A-Theological-Introduction-to-Disability.pdf
https://www.christiancentury.org/books/when-ableism-and-racism-intertwine
The article I was reading is not yet online. But these two links do give you a taste for what Disability Theology is like.
Comments
The most recent episode dropped just after Easter, and is described this way on the website: They talked about Jesus’s resurrected body not being “perfect” or “whole.” They also talked about other stories or figures that speak to them, like Jacob’s limp and Moses’s apparent speech impediment (or at least reluctance to speak).
I highly recommend the podcast.
I'm not sure how the acquiring of carpentry skills is a 'limitation' unless we would expect Christ as God Incarnate to create things out of wood 'ex nihilo'.
It's about 'kenosis' or self-emptying of course.
There's also something missing from what you were typing, @Gramps49. It says interaction with the e ...'
Elders?
I think more positive attitudes to 'differently abled' as I've heard 'disability ' referred to is a good thing.
Sooner or later even the most 'able bodied' to use that phrase, will because less 'able' for one reason or another.
This girl gave a talk at a Christian festival in which she referenced Daniel 7 where the throne of the Ancient of Days is described as having wheels.
She concluded that if God could choose to use a wheelchair then the Church might benefit from looking more closely at how we include people with disabilities!
Yes, I know the Biblical language is figurative and not to be taken literally.
For all that, the picture painted in Daniel had a profound impact on this girl and gave her confidence to speak out about something that needs addressing.
Just an FYI: using the phrase "differently abled" around disabled people is best avoided; being run over by a power chair or getting a crutch to the temple often offends.
When I tell Christians that I consider my bipolar disorder to be a gift from God they are sometimes shocked; people seem to assume I want prayer for healing. Please don’t make assumptions about what disabled people want. And don’t approach them as if they only thing you see in them is their disability; see them as the people they are.
I can also recommend ‘Touching the rock: an experience of blindness’ by theologian John Hull on what it is like to go blind, and his follow up book ‘In the beginning there was darkness’ on references to light and dark in the bible.
I think the reaction is because they've never seen such an obviously weak presenter in the spotlight before--and so they come and tell me about their own disabilities, and we talk about how God works in/with/in spite of things like chronic pain and so on.
* I use a fancied-up broomstick instead of a traditional cane, as my wrist is unstable and leaning on it would probably cause a dislocation. I'm much safer "hanging" on a staff that goes up my full height.
I was talking about how the incarnate Jesus had his own limitations. Learning carpentry skills, like any other person, and then his interaction with the Syrophoenician woman where she schooled him on gentiles needing the grace of God as well--she was pleading for Jesus to heal her daughter as you recall.
But still, while I have never been assessed officially, I do wonder if I am on the Spectrum for autism. Just certain behaviors both my wife and I have noticed over the year.
I think my struggles growing up helped me to develop a particular sensitivity to difficulties other people may have. Many people who have come into contact with me say they find me quite compassionate. And, I think God enters my disability for the betterment of other people.
Good point. Been thinking about that too.
I was only quoting what I'd heard said, and many years ago now. It's not a phrase I would use in conversation with anyone with a disability.
One image from the book that sticks to me, hard, is one of heaven in which everyone has to haul around an oxygen tank just to get to the grocery store. How awful, you say? Well, if that was the baseline human experience, nobody would think less of it, any less than we'd think ourselves disabled for being unable to fly. That's my recollection of one of many excellent points the book made.
He died shortly after it was finished, but I'm still grateful for its insight. I grew up with a disabled parent and have long struggled with the sense that I will never know her apart from her disabilities and traumas, and wondered if I ever knew her properly. It is a hard thing for me, in a time of many hard things.
In my own case, I am trusting that my own physical problems and health issues, and all sorts of things, will indeed be healed in the resurrection.
But fwiw, they weren’t really talking about what I’d call health issues as such, which is why I put “healed” in quotation marks. For lack of a better way to put it, they were talking about those conditions others might assume the person with the condition wants to be healed or freed from, but that person actually considers the condition an intrinsic and valued part of who they are, as @Heavenlyannie described above.
I wonder if we might be suprised at what glorification does to our impairments.
Yes. My ADHD is so much a part of me. I was diagnosed age 50 and tried the medication. It took away too much of who I am. The spontaneity, the creativity, the quick wit, the fun.
I tried for long enough to know it wasn't for me. So to be 'healed' will be unwelcome in heaven. But I'm sure God has it in hand and that she's good at this sort of thing.
The arthritis? She can take all that away!
You might know the story of St. Cenydd of Wales. According to the older version of his story, he was born of an incestuous relationship, and as a result, one of his legs was twisted up and unusable. He became a hermit, and was highly regarded by all, not least by St. David of Wales. At one point in his life, St. David and his entourage stopped by St. Cenydd's hut for food and rest on their way to a council. They wanted St. Cenydd to join them. St. Cenydd pointed out that, with his bad leg, the council would be long over before he could ever get there. So St. David prayed and asked God to heal St. Cenydd's leg and make it straight and strong. Which God did immediately. And St. Cenydd was horrified - he believed that his bad leg was not a punishment for his father's incest, but rather a divine gift. He asked God to put it back the way it had been since he was born. Which God also did.
Meanwhile my ADHD is highly disabling for me, especially executive dysfunction and rejection-sensitive dysphoria. I do have the ADHD triad of ADHD/dyscalculia/dyspraxia though, so it really impacted my academic experience in a very negative way. Like with most of my other disabilities, I'm grateful for the experience in terms of knowing how it feels to be in those shoes - but I would welcome a cure (for me personally I mean, not a cure being available generally). But then my autism is so not an issue for me as an adult (childhood was a different situation) that I don't regard it as a disability, because it isn't disabling - my hayfever is more disabling for me than autism is.
My experience of disability is that it makes life so exhausting that frankly the idea of eternal life doesn't seem very appealing. I don't mean that I have any kind of suicidal ideation or anything like that, but the idea of finally dying at the end of a good long life and then having to go on living sounds exhausting to me.
When I think of what comes next, I tend to think of being made whole instead of being “healed” (except for healing in terms of sin). What being made whole looks like for each person is, I suspect, different, but I also anticipate that God indeed knows each of us and has it in hand.
One of the thoughts offered in the podcast I mentioned above that found thought-provoking was this: “if heaven is perfectly accessible, which I do think is a reasonable hope, what are the things that you struggle with
now that will not be the same?” I thought that was worth thinking about—disabilities that are problematic not because they themselves are a problem, but because this world treats them as a problem and is, in some way, hostile to them. And heaven as a place/state where room is made for what this world sees as a problem.
I think that part of the difficulty in trying to find one unified theory of disability is how broad the category is to begin with.