The Disabled God
The most powerful discussion of God to arise from within disability studies comes from Nancy Eiesland’s proposal of the Disabled God, in the book by the same title…. Eiesland identifies herself as “a woman with disabilities, a sociologist of religion, and a professor at a seminary in the United States”…. These three elements come together in her theology, which centers on what she calls “the mixed blessing of the body,” especially as these relate to the lived experience of disability.… She writes: “My own body composed as it is of metal and plastic, as well as bone and flesh, is my starting point for talking about ‘bones and braces bodies’ as a norm of embodiment”…. Her proposal is a model of God that makes sense of her “normal” experience of embodiment, as well as one that supports and participates in the struggle for liberation of all people with disabilities.
Eiesland argues that traditional images of God, especially those that lead to views of disability as either a blessing or a curse, are inadequate. Within her own experience, she wondered whether such a God could even understand disability, let alone be meaningful to her. While working at a rehabilitation hospital, she asked the residents one day what they thought:
After a long silence, a young
African-American man said, “If God was in a sip-puff, maybe He would
understand.” I was overwhelmed by this image: God in a sip-puff
wheelchair, the kind used by many quadriplegics that enables them to
manoeuvre the chair by blowing and sucking on a straw-like device. Not
an omnipotent, self-sufficient God, but neither a pitiable, suffering
servant. This was an image of God as a survivor, as one of those whom
society would label “not feasible,”“unemployable,” with “questionable
quality of life”.
Eiesland made a connection between this image and the resurrection
story in which Jesus appears to his followers and reveals his injured
hands and feet (Luke 24:36-39). She notes “This wasn’t exactly God in a
sip-puff, but here was the resurrected Christ making good on the promise
that God would be with us, embodied, as we are — disabled and divine.
In this passage, I recognized a part of my hidden history as a
Christian”…. Eiesland suggests that Jesus reveals the Disabled God, and
shows that divinity (as well as humanity) is fully compatible with
experiences of disability. The imago Dei includes pierced hands
and feet and side. According to Eiesland, this Disabled God is part of
the “hidden history” of Christianity, because seldom is the resurrected
Christ recognized as a deity whose hands, feet, and side bear the marks
of profound physical impairment. As Rebecca Chopp notes in the
introduction to this work, “The most astonishing fact is, of course,
that Christians do not have an able-bodied God as their primal image.
Rather, the Disabled God promising grace through a broken body is at the
center of piety, prayer, practice, and mission.”
From Disability Studies Quarterly (2006)
No comments:
Post a Comment