Where Does My Disability Come From?

I have shared with you in the past my bouts with depression and anxiety. I suppose according to the DSM-IV this means I have a mental disorder. That’s kind of a hard pill to swallow. Pastor’s aren’t supposed to be in that situation. This is what a nurse practitioner told me a few months ago when I went in for a routine check up. When I told her I was a pastor she said, “you aren’t supposed to be hurting, you are supposed to be helping people who are hurting.”

That hurt.

Part of me wants to hide behind the fact that if one uses DSM-IV standards everybody has some sort of mental disorder. But I won’t hide there. I’ll own up to the fact that I’m broken and being redeemed—ever so slowly it seems at times—by Jesus.

Here is my question. Is God the source of my mental disorder? (And frankly, I’m still not quite comfortable with that designation, but I’ll pick it up here for the sake of argument). And what if I extend my question out a bit further and ask if God is the source of physical and emotional disabilities as well?

I read something the other day that was supposed to be helpful. The author was encouraging his readers with the fact that every person is created in the image of God, and that we are all created with a purpose and plan. He was making the always powerful point that nobody is an accident. Then he said the head-scratcher. “We should not imply from this though, that God is the source of physical, mental, and emotional disabilities.”

I get what the author was trying to do there. But think with me about this a little further. Think about it emotionally before we look at it scripturally. Consider a person with Down Syndrome. Which statement is more affirming of their person: “Your down syndrome is not from God” or “you are fearfully and wonderfully made just as you are”?

I realize I’m walking out onto some thin ice here, but I’m convinced we have to stop viewing disabilities as if they are outside the realm of God’s sovereign care. If I said, “God is the source of physical, mental, and emotional disabilities” what Scripture would I be in danger of contradicting? We know that God is not the author of evil. We know that he is the source of every good and perfect gift. But aren’t we making a bit of a jump to say that physical, mental, and emotional disabilities are evil and cannot be from the hand of God?

Think about this with me. Scripture declares that every good and perfect gift comes from God. Do you know what that means? If it’s truly good, then it cannot come from the hand of anyone/anything but God. So follow the logic here. If a physical disability is not from God then it cannot be a good gift. This means that a child’s Down Syndrome—which gives physical and mental disbilities—cannot be a gift from God. Yet, I have heard from many parents of children with such disabilities that they now view their child’s Down Syndrome as a gift from God.

I appreciate the way John Knight uses Psalm 139 to make a similar point:

For you formed my inward parts with Down syndrome;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb without eyes.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made with cognitive challenges.
Wonderful are your works in creating me without limbs;
my soul knows it very well though my ears will never hear a sound.
My frame was not hidden from you as you made me with Apert syndrome,
when I was being made in secret with autism,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth without Hexosaminidase A.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance with spina bifida;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me with cerebral palsy,
when as yet there was none of them.

I understand there are theological implications to saying that God is the source of disability. And I know it raises questions about whether or not we would say that these things are a result of the Fall or not. Will disabilities be in heaven? Would we have had blindness or depression or Down Syndrome had the fall not have happened? And so I understand the complexity of what I’m saying here. But is it possible that disabilities can be a result of the fall but find their purpose in a different corner? Rather than seeing disability from a naturalistic (almost Deistic) perspective, wouldn’t it be better for us to believe that God has a very good purpose in these things? And not just that he makes something good out of them but that he is actively doing something good in them?

Consider this. If God isn’t the source of disability who or what is? Is it the fall? Is it human sin? Is it merely our finitude? In the first century they had a great answer. Disability was the direct result of sin—either your sin or the sin of the parents. Did they come to this theological position in order to protect God from being the source of disability? Either way Jesus gives us the answer. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

I will close with telling you my motivation for saying these things. I believe our view of suffering often puts us in the position of helpless victims. I think we even put God in the position of a helpless victim who would love for things like disability to not be present but that’s just the way it is. Of course he can make something good out of it, but we leave him powerless to have stopped it. I don’t find help in this. I find help in believing that God is actively doing something in and through any disability we might have. I also know that God is working towards full redemption in a world where disability won’t be present. But in the meantime His goodness is so unfathomable that we are able to walk through disability and somehow kiss this cross because it makes us more like Christ. God is fully in control and that gives me comfort. Though at times I cannot see His goodness it doesn’t mean He isn’t good.

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