Sermon Illustrations on Handicap

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Mark 2

In the summer of 1989, Mark Wellman, a paraplegic, gained national recognition by climbing the sheer granite face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. On the seventh and final day of his climb, the headlines of The Fresno Bee read SHOWING A WILL OF GRANITE. Accompanying the headline was a photo of Wellman being carried on the shoulders of his climbing companion Mike Corbett. A subtitle said, PARAPLEGIC AND PARTNER PROVE NO WALL IS TOO HIGH TO SCALE.

What many people did not know is that Mike Corbett scaled the face of El Capitan three times in order to help Mark Wellman pull himself up once.

Everybody Can Do Something

John 9:1

Roger Crawford had everything he needed to play tennis – except two hands and a leg.

When Roger’s parents saw their son for the first time, they saw a baby with a thumb-like projection extended directly out of his right forearm and a thumb and one finger stuck out of his left forearm. He had no palms. The baby’s arms and legs were shortened, and he had only three toes on his shrunken right foot and a withered left leg, which would later be amputated.

The doctor said Roger suffered from ectrodactylism, a rare birth defect affecting only one out of 90,000 children born in the United States. The doctor said Roger would probably never walk or care for himself.

Fortunately Roger’s parents didn’t believe the doctor.

“My parents always taught me that I was only as handicapped as I wanted to be,” said Roger. “They never allowed me to feel sorry for myself or take advantage of people because of my handicap. Once I got into trouble because my school papers were continually late,” explained Roger who had to hold his pencil with both “hands” to write slowly. “I asked Dad to write a note to my teachers, asking for a two-day extension on my assignments. Instead Dad made me start writing my paper two days early!”

Roger’s father always encouraged him to get involved in sports, teaching Roger to catch and throw a volleyball, and play backyard football after school. At age 12, Roger managed to win a spot on the school football team.

Before every game, Roger would visualize his dream of scoring a touchdown. Then one day he got his chance. The ball landed in his arms and off he ran as fast as he could on his artificial leg toward the goal line, his coach and teammates cheering wildly. But at the ten-yard line, a guy from the other team caught up with Roger, grabbing his left ankle. Roger tried to pull his artificial leg free, but instead it ended up being pulled off.

“I was still standing up,” recalls Roger. “I didn’t know what else to do so I started hopping towards the goal line. The referee ran over and threw his hands into the air. Touchdown! You know, even better than the six points was the look on the face of the other kid who was holding my artificial leg.”

Roger’s love of sports grew and so did his self-confidence. But not every obstacle gave way to Roger’s determination. Eating in the lunchroom with the other kids watching him fumble with his food proved very painful to Roger, as did his repeated failure in typing class. “I learned a very good lesson from typing class,” said Roger. “You can’t do everything — it’s better to concentrate on what you can do.”

One thing Roger could do was swing a tennis racket. Unfortunately, when he swung it hard, his weak grip usually launched it into space. By luck, Roger stumbled upon an odd-looking tennis racket in a sports shop and accidentally wedged his finger between its double-barred handle when he picked it up. The snug fit made it possible for Roger to swing, serve and volley like an able- bodied player. He practiced every day and was soon playing – and losing – matches.

But Roger persisted. He practiced and practiced and played and played. Surgery on the two fingers of his left hand enabled Roger to grip his special racket better, greatly improving his game. Although he had no role models to guide him, Roger became obsessed with tennis and in time he started to win.

Roger went on to play college tennis, finishing his tennis career with 22 wins and 11 losses. He later became the first physically handicapped tennis player to be certified as a teaching professional by the United States Professional Tennis Association. Roger now tours the country, speaking to groups about what it takes to be a winner, no matter who you are.

“The only difference between you and me is that you can see my handicap, but I can’t see yours. We all have them. When people ask me how I’ve been able to overcome my physical handicaps, I tell them that I haven’t overcome anything. I’ve simply learned what I can’t do – such as play the piano or eat with chopsticks – but more importantly, I’ve learned what I can do. Then I do what I can with all my heart and soul.”

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#1601

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Is Death A Right?

Job 3:20

What begins as a right can soon become an obligation.

A recent court decision has vindicated the suicide-rights movement and thus put in jeopardy the lives of the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. On March 6 of this year the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the state of Washington's ban on physician-assisted suicide. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for the majority, declared there is a constitutional right for the "competent, terminally ill" to take their lives with a physician's help.

This momentous court decision makes expansive use of the Supreme Court's abortion rulings to establish a constitutional right for some citizens to have themselves killed. It effectively reduced the terminally ill to the same legal status that Roe imposed on the unborn. Thus the poison of legalized abortion continues to seep through the body politic as inexorably as Dr. Jack Kevorkian's carbon monoxide.

The majority opinion for this case abounds with cavalier and arrogant assertions. Notably, it dismisses the importance of the crucial ethical distinction between direct killing and actions that allow people to die, such as withdrawal of treatment. It reversed a previous appeals-court decision that wisely declared that the state has a valid interest "in not having physicians in the role of killers of their patients."

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was not perturbed by the Dutch practice of assisted suicide and euthanasia that has widened to include a large number of nonconsenting clients. This is not really surprising. Though the decision claimed to vindicate the "liberty interest" of "terminally ill, competent adults who wish to hasten their own deaths," it explicitly envisions making "assisted suicide [sic]" available to noncompetent persons.

In his dissenting opinion, Judge Robert Beezer hit the nail on the head: "If physician-assisted suicide for mentally competent, terminally ill adults is made a constitutional right, voluntary euthanasia for weaker patients, unable to self-terminate, will soon follow. After voluntary euthanasia, it is but a short step to a 'substituted judgment' or 'best interests' analysis for terminally ill patients who have not yet expressed their constitutionally sanctioned desire to be dispatched from this world. This is the sure and inevitable path, as the Dutch experience has amply demonstrated. It is not a path I would start down." Tragically, the Reinhardt majority concluded otherwise. And in a similar case a month later, the Second Court of Appeals struck down a New York State law that proscribed physician-assisted suicide.

Two tacit assumptions drive the suicide-rights movement: (1) that the individual's autonomy is paramount, to the exclusion of other important values; and (2) that suffering is a purely negative experience to be avoided by any means.

RIGHT TO CHOOSE, RIGHT TO DIE

The first hidden engine that drives the assisted-suicide cause is embedded in the ambiguous expressions "right to choose" and "right to die." This latter slogan first won currency in the legal debate over the patient's right to refuse unwanted treatment. But now the assisted-suicide movement uses "right to die" language to include active measures to terminate life. Underlying these catch phrases is the assumption that the individual's self- determination is sovereign, severed from the realities of truth and responsibility.

Valuing the worth of the individual is a supreme achievement of Western culture influenced by the Greek philosophical and Judeo-Christian traditions. The human person, created in God's image, has an incomparable dignity that gives rise to rights and responsibilities. Safeguarding these rights and promoting corresponding responsibilities are the hallmarks of a just society.

However, as Mary Ann Glendon, professor of law at Harvard, has pointed out in "Rights Talk," a hyper-rights rhetoric has taken hold in our society, leading to a radical individualism crowding out other fundamental values: that humans are essentially social, and that as individuals we have responsibilities to others. American rights rhetoric renders "extraordinary homage to independence and self-sufficiency, based on an image of the rights-bearer as a self-determining, unencumbered individual, a being connected to others only by choice" (p. 48). Our rights-talk recognizes the immediate and "personal dimensions of a problem, while it regularly neglects the moral, the long-term, and the social implications" (p. 171).

The ideal of total self-sufficiency, a radical version of individual autonomy, has become normative. Dependency is implicitly viewed as something to be avoided in oneself and disdained in others. Professor Glendon remarks: "By exalting autonomy to the degree we do, we systematically slight the very young, the severely ill or disabled, the frail elderly, as well as those who care for them" (p. 74).

The modern tradition of natural rights has repudiated the idea of the human person as "naturally" situated within and constituted through relationships of care and dependency. John Stuart Mill extended the domain of individual sovereignty, and he did so by virtue of a right: "the independence of the individual is, of right, absolute." Mill considered that interference with individual freedom was justified only to prevent harm to others. This principle has had a major impact on American jurisprudence, evolving into the right to privacy that served as the basis for Roe v. Wade. It also powers the suicide-rights movement.

This notion of the isolated, self-sufficient individual endowed with the right to privacy is a fiction. The radical rights rhetoric promotes an ethical relativism that destroys the common bonds necessary for maintaining human dignity and social order. Human beings are not isolated monads. We urgently need to retrieve in our rights discourse a sense of the person situated within, and partially constituted by, relationship with others. The movement to legalize assisted suicide plays on the pernicious separation between private and public morality that corrodes our society. Physician- assisted suicide is presented as a private affair between two consenting adults. Proponents thus artificially isolate assisted suicide from the social context in which physician and patient operate. But the taking of life is never simply a private affair.

Radical autonomy is a deadly deception. Proponents of mercy killing argue for the right of mentally competent, terminally ill adults to receive a physician's assistance to commit suicide. The reality is that such autonomous requests will be subtly or not so subtly influenced by others.

A telling example of how easily the right to die can change into the duty to die appeared in a letter published in the Santa Rosa (Calif.) "Press Democrat" (Sept. 14, 1993) from an 84-year-old woman who had been living with her daughter for 20 years. "Everything went fine for many years," the woman wrote, "but when I started to lose my hearing about three years ago, it irritated my daughter.... She began to question me about my financial matters and apparently feels I won't leave much of an estate for her.... She became very rude to me.... Then suddenly, one evening, my daughter said very cautiously she thought it was o.k. for older people to commit suicide if they cannot take care of themselves." After recounting the ways her daughter reinforced this message, the woman commented: "So here I sit, day after day, knowing what I am expected to do when I need a little help."

IT'S A SIN TO SUFFER

The second hidden engine that drives the suicide-rights movement is embedded in the catch phrase "the right not to have to suffer." Implicit is the unexamined estimation that suffering is an unmitigated evil to be avoided at all costs.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross drew attention to the denial of death in her book about the stages of death and dying. But there has been at work in our society a more pervasive and portentous avoidance of the distinctly human experience of suffering. Amid cultural uncertainty about good and evil, suffering has come to be viewed as a secular equivalent of sin, from which we need to be saved.

There is an important distinction to be made in the use of the terms suffering and pain. Pain typically refers to a bodily sensation. Pain results from physical symptoms that usually have an objective basis, and it serves as a useful signal system.

The undertreatment of pain is a widespread failure of current medical practice, and there is clearly a need to enhance relief for the chronically and terminally ill. Sheer physical pain, however, seems not to be the primary reason people seek mercy killing. There is a high correlation between depression and the wish to commit suicide. Contrary to what many believe, the vast majority of individuals who are terminally ill or facing severe pain or disability are not suicidal. When the terminally ill receive appropriate treatment for depression, they usually abandon the wish to commit suicide. Perhaps the real issue is not pain, but our attitude toward suffering.

In contrast to pain, suffering refers to a more deeply personal experience that may or may not be concomitant with physical pain. French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel's observation is useful here: suffering is a mystery and not merely a problem. It has physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. Ultimately, the suffering in each of our lives is intensely personal, the depths of which we have trouble articulating or fully understanding. Eric Cassell expresses it succinctly: "Suffering is a consequence of personhood -- bodies do not suffer, persons do."

Our society has found any sort of suffering increasingly difficult to bear, since it imperils our ideal of self-mastery and control, our pretense of self-sufficiency. However, the flights from suffering only intensify the private anguish. Suffering individuals feel isolated and stigmatized. The message in our society is that if you aren't "up," if you don't feel good, then you are an embarrassment and should have the decency to remove yourself.

In the last century, utilitarian philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham formulated what has now become an operational understanding of human beings in consumer society. He held that people are basically motivated to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Media images of human life that emanate from Hollywood studios and Madison Avenue typically perform a spiritual lobotomy on their human representations. This materialist and hedonist view of life views the experience of suffering in purely negative terms. In this climate, assisted suicide is seen as a quick fix to eliminate suffering.

Christian faith responds to the universal human experience of pain and suffering in a twofold manner. First, there is a humanitarian, and Christian, imperative to relieve pain and console the suffering. Second, there is the conviction that suffering assumes redemptive and intercessory value in the light of the saving mystery of Christ's cross and resurrection. In the Cross Christ has won salvation for sinful humanity through his atoning death. In following Christ's injunction to "take up [your] cross daily and follow me," our own personal and corporate sufferings are transformed.

Christians echo the prayer of Paul: "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Phil. 3:10, RSV). The Letter to the Hebrews teaches us that Christ was made "perfect through sufferings," and that "because [Jesus] himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested" (Heb. 2:10, 18, NRSV). Christian faith gives meaning to our sufferings and strength to endure them and turn them into a source of spiritual good. The conviction that suffering can assume redemptive value needs to be preached and taught and, above all, witnessed to.

The suicide-rights movement poses a challenge to Christian faith and witness. Christians are called to practice a renewed art of dying. This art will find a middle way between the extremes of a technologically driven dying process and the preemptory termination of life by assisted suicide. In retrieving a communal, palliative, and spiritual approach, we will humanize death and witness to "the hope that is within us."

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Peter J. Bernardi is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. This article was adapted from an earlier version published in "America" (May 6, 1995).

#3984

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Life In the Balance: Are We Targeting the Weak?

Zechariah 2

A young man named Doug made a startling announcement to a friend. “When I get married,” he said, “I hope that my wife and I will have a child with Down syndrome.”

The woman Doug told this to-Joni Eareckson Tada-chalked it up to youthful idealism. But as she writes in her new book, Life in the Balance, Doug meant every word. He’d spent a lot of time with children with Down Syndrome, and witnessed “an unusual joy and guilelessness” in them. And it was clear that these children were a blessing to their parents.

And yet, children with Down Syndrome are among the most “at-risk” when it comes to survival-not from their chromosomal abnormalities, but from doctors and scientists who are determined to wipe them out.

As Joni recalls, the National Council on Disability was shocked when NIH suggested in 1988 that abortion of Down Syndrome children be considered a “disability prevention strategy.”

The Disability Council sent the report back to NIH for revision. But here we are 22 years later, and this “strategy” has been fully embraced. In 2007, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists began recommending that ALL pregnant women, not just older ones, have their babies tested for Down Syndrome-you know what that meant.

Strategies like this come out of a worldview that embraces eugenics, a word that means “good genes.” It’s a view that says humans are not acceptable unless they are perfect -- healthy, smart, and beautiful.

We saw the extreme result of this movement in Nazi Germany, where the mentally ill and disabled were murdered in order to “cleanse” society of those liable to be a burden.

But the Bible gives us a different view of so-called “defective” people. Here, we learn, as Joni writes, that all humans are created in the image of God, with intrinsic value. In fact, she says, “the image of God is especially mirrored in the weak” and disabled.

Remember the story in Genesis of Jacob wrestling with the man of God, and wrenching his hip out of its socket? We are told that limped away because of his hip injury. In effect, he became disabled.

This physical wound was “meant to remind Jacob of his spiritual brokenness,” Joni writes. “He could no longer feign moral strength as he limped through life with his new physical disability.”

God intentionally brings brokenness and weakness to those he loves, using them for his sovereign purposes, Joni says. “Broken, weak people display the image of God most convincingly when they lean on him for strength moment by moment.”

As for those who would harm the disabled, the weak, or the elderly-or weed them out-verses like Zechariah 2: 8 and 9 have a warning for them: “Whoever touches [the afflicted’ touches the apple of [my] eye, and I will surely raise my hand against them.”

I hope you’ll read Joni’s wonderful new book, Life in the Balance, We’ve got it for you at our bookstore at BreakPoint.org. And while you’re there, pick up a copy of my daughter’s book Dancing with Max, the wonderful story of her autistic son.

You’ll learn more from these books about how to make sense of modern debates about life. Joni will teach you how to fight on behalf of those who are quietly being targeted for extermination. I recommend it highly.

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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

Medic!

Luke 13:11

Sgt. Frank Smith, a medic in the Rangers in World War II, noticed something that also struck other medics: "During training it was not uncommon to hear one say, 'If I lose a leg (or arm or whatever) please shoot me. I don't want to go home a cripple.' Never, in combat, did I, or anyone I know, hear this, no matter how bad the wound."

Your Pot -- His Power

Some years ago Billy Graham’s Decision magazine printed a wonderful testimony. You can’t tell if it comes from a man or a woman because only the initials of the writer were published:

“For a long time I had been bitter about life. It seemed to have dealt me a dirty blow, for since I was 12 years old I have been waiting for death to close in on me. It was at that time I learned I had muscular dystrophy. I fought hard against this disease and exercised hard, but to no avail. I only grew weaker.

All I could see was what I had missed. My friends went away to college, then got married and started having families of their own. When I lay in bed at night thinking, despair would creep from the dark corners to haunt me. Life was meaningless.

In March of last year my mother brought home from our public library Billy Graham’s book “World Aflame.” I started reading it, and as I read I realized that I wanted God. I wanted there to be a meaning to life. I wanted to receive this deep faith and peace.

All I know is that now my life has changed and I now have joy in living. No longer is the universe chaotic. No longer does life have no goal. No longer is there no hope. There is instead “God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

I continue to grow weaker. I am close to being totally helpless and am in pain most of the time. But sometimes I am so glad I am alive that it is hard to keep myself from bursting at the seams. I can see for the first time the beauty all around me, and I realize how very lucky I am. Despair is such a waste of time when there is joy; and lack of faith is such a waste of time when there is God.”

Paulus Infirmus: the Pauline Concept of Weakness

The classical Pauline passage on illness (2 Cor 12:7-10) is in this respect

most striking of all, in that Paul's "thorn in the flesh" remained with the

apostle despite even the most intensive prayer for its removal. Paul states

three reasons for its existence:

To keep him from becoming proud due of his revelations and visions (v 7);

To enable him to experience the power of Christ (v 9);

To teach him the true purpose of hardships, persecutions, and personal

difficulties (v 10).

Indeed, the entire passage is more concerned with the power and grace of the

Lord than with the weakness of the apostle. Physical infirmity is evidence

that the body "is sown in weakness" (1 Cor 15:43) and is a cogent reminder of

the creature's dependence upon the Creator.

In this respect, the case of Paul is remarkably like that of Jacob, who

learned to depend totally upon God only after he had been inflicted with a

physical injury (Gen 32:24-32). These instances of illness suggest that the

real issue in the matter of human suffering is man's relationship to God

rather than his own physical condition, as painful as that may be.

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The Day I Finally Cried

I didn't cry when I learned that I was the parent of a mentally handicapped child. I just sat still and didn't say anything while my husband and I were informed that two-year-old Kristi was - as we suspected - retarded.

"Go ahead and cry," the doctor advised kindly. "Helps prevent serious emotional difficulties."

Serious difficulties not withstanding, I couldn't cry then nor during the months that followed.

When Kristi was old enough to attend school, we enrolled her in our neighborhood kindergarten at age seven.

It would have been comforting to cry that day I left her in that room full of self-assured, eager, alert five-year-olds. Kristi had spent hours upon hours playing by herself, but this moment, when she was the different child among twenty, was probably the loneliest she had ever known.

However, positive things began to happen to Kristi in her school and to her schoolmates too. When boasting of their own accomplishments, Kristi's classmates always took pains to praise her as well: "Kristi got all her spelling words right today." No one bothered to add that her spelling list was easier then anyone else's.

During Kristi's second year in school, she faced a very traumatic experience. The big public event of the term was a competition based on a culmination of the year's music and physical education activities. Kristi was way behind in both music and motor coordination. My husband and I dreaded the day as well.

On the day of the program, Kristi pretended to be sick. Desperately I wanted to keep her home. Why let Kristi fail in a gymnasium filled with parents, students and teachers? What a simple solution it would be just to let my child stay home. Surely missing one program couldn't matter. But my conscience wouldn't let me off that easily. So I practically shoved a pale, reluctant Kristi onto the school bus and proceeded to be sick myself.

Just as I had forced my daughter to go to school, now I forced myself to go to the program. It seemed that it would never be time for Kristi's group to perform. When at last they did, I knew why Kristi had been worried. Her class was divided into relay teams. With her limp and slow, clumsy reactions, she would surely hold up her team.

The performance went surprising well, though, until it was time for the gunnysack race. Now each child had to climb into the sack from a standing position, hop to a goal line, return and climb out of the sack.

I watched Kristi standing near the end of her line of players, looking frantic.

But as Kristi's turn to practice neared, a change took place in her team. The tallest boy in the line stepped behind Kristi and placed his hands on her waist. Two other boys stood a little ahead of her. The moment the player in front of Kristi stepped for the sack, those two boys grabbed the sack and held it open while the tall boy lifted Kristi and dropped her neatly into it. A girl in front of Kristi took her hand and supported her briefly until Kristi gained her balance. Then off she hopped, smiling and proud.

Amid the cheers of teachers, schoolmates and parents, I crept off by myself to thank God for the warm, understanding people in life who make it possible for my disabled daughter to be like her fellow human beings.

Then I finally cried.

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Did the Earth Move For You?

Mark 11:22

DID THE EARTH MOVE FOR YOU?

Eleven-year-old Angela was stricken with a debilitating disease involving her nervous system. She was unable to talk, and the doctors did not hold out much hope of her ever recovering. The little girl was undaunted. There, lying in her hospital bed, she would vow to anyone who'd listen that she was definitely going to be walking again someday.

She was transferred to a specialized rehabilitation hospital in the San Francisco Bay area. The therapists were charmed by her undefeatable spirit. They taught her about imaging - about seeing herself walking. If it would do nothing else, it would at least give her hope and something positive to do in the long waking hours in her bed. Angela would work as hard as possible in physical therapy, in whirlpools and in exercise sessions. But she worked just as hard lying there faithfully doing her imaging, visualizing herself moving, moving, moving!

One day, as she was straining with all her might to imagine her legs moving again, it seemed as though a miracle happened: The bed moved! It began to move around the room! She screamed out, "Look what I'm doing! Look! Look! I moved, I moved!"

Of course, at this very moment everyone else in the hospital was screaming, too, and running for cover. People were screaming, equipment was falling, and glass was breaking. You see, it was an earthquake. But don't tell that to Angela. She's convinced that she did it. And now, only a few years later, she's back in school. On her own two legs. No crutches, no wheelchair. You see, anyone who can shake the earth between San Francisco and Oakland can conquer a piddling little disease, can't they?

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Doing Church

During Vacation Bible School last week a pastor's wife had an experience with her primary class that she says she will never forget. Her class was interrupted on Wednesday about an hour before dismissal when a new student was brought in. The little boy had one arm missing, and since the class was almost over, she had no opportunity to learn any of the details about the cause or his state of adjustment. She was very nervous and afraid that one of the other children would comment on his handicap and embarrass him. There was no opportunity to caution them, so she proceeded as carefully as possible.

As the class time came to a close, she began to relax. She asked the class to join her in their usual closing ceremony. "Let's make our churches," she said. "Here's the church and here's the steeple, open the doors and there's..." The awful truth of her own actions struck her. The very thing she had feared that the children would do, she had done. As she stood there speechless, the little girl sitting next to the boy reached over with her left hand and placed it up to his right hand and said, "Davey, let's make the church together."

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Paralyzed Ex-officer Finds Answers, Hope

ROCKAWAY TWP., NJ - Nobody would have blamed Steven McDonald for holding a grudge. But the former New York City detective chose to forgive the teenager whose bullets left him paralyzed.

July 12, 1986, was supposed to be just another day of police work. McDonald, then 29, was investigating a series of bicycle thefts in Central Park. Within minutes of confronting three teenage suspects, three bullets fired by a 15-year-old boy knocked him into a pool of blood.

"I was confused, very confused," McDonald said. "I began feeling numbness. I thought I was dreaming. I said this couldn't be happening. Then I heard my partner scream into the radio 10-13, 10-13, and I knew I was in trouble."

Yesterday afternoon, McDonald, 43, bowed his head in prayer with parishioners at St. Clement's Church and spoke to them about faith and forgiveness. He addressed the audience from his wheelchair, on the back of which a New York Police Department emblem and American flag were affixed.

"In losing everything I found profound reason to continue," McDonald told the audience. "I had to free myself from the difficult emotions, the wasted emotions I was feeling and return to my wife and my child."

Eight months before the shooting, McDonald had married Patti Ann Norris. When she received news that her husband had been shot, the then 23-year-old woman was three months pregnant with their first and only child. Connor Patrick McDonald was born January 29, 1987, to a 29-year-old quadriplegic father. McDonald's wife and son were not present yesterday.

Instead of focusing attention on the fact that he was unable to hold his son, McDonald said be thanked God because he lived to see him being born.

"Life is not always easy," he said, smiling. "I needed to look inside myself. I had always struggled with good and evil and I knew I needed forgiveness for my sins. It was hard to ask for forgiveness without first forgiving.

"I learned a lot about prayer. I learned that prayer is something we do in our own time and the answers come in God's time."

The 15-year-old who shot McDonald was convicted of attempted murder and served 10 years in jail. Upon his release, he called McDonald and asked for forgiveness. A few days later, the man was killed in a motorcycle accident in New York City.

In addition to losing his physical abilities, McDonald regrets being unable to complete his career as a police officer. When he was sworn into the police department in December 1984, he became the eighth member of his family to serve the City of New York.

"Together with my grandfather, my father and my uncles we have served the city for a combined 200 years," he said, often pausing to take a breath of oxygen.

"My younger brother is still a detective. At the time I was shot I was a hard-charging police officer who wanted to clean up the streets of New York and couldn't do it fast enough."

McDonald credits God for the power to live and continue on.

"It took a great act of wickedness to help me realize that the world didn't have more to offer than heaven does," McDonald said.

McDonald was invited to the church by parishioners Bob and Eileen Morton of Rockaway Township. The couple had read the officer's autobiography and were inspired at hearing him tell his story about two years ago.

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Clementina Pope can be reached at (973) 428-6633 or cpope@morristo.gannett.com

A Breached Baby

Luke 7:22

Some years ago Dr. Frederic Loomis, an obstetrician, faced one of the greatest challenges of his life. One of his patients, a fragile young woman, was carrying her first child. As best he could, he sought to help her as she struggled to keep her emotional and nervous reactions under control.

One month before the baby was due, a routine examination showed that the baby was in a breach position. That is, instead of coming into the world head first (which is the safest way for a baby to be born), the baby comes feet or seat first. The danger with these births is that the umbilical cord can get compressed between the baby’s head and the mother’s bony pelvis cutting off the tiny infant’s supply of oxygen – without which the baby will die in a few short minutes. Time is of the greatest essence in these births.

This particular case was a "complete" breach – the baby’s legs and feet being folded under it, tailor-fashion. As the baby was ready to be born, Dr. Loomis gently drew down on one little foot. Next he drew on the other foot, but it didn’t respond. As the baby’s body moved down, he noticed that it was a girl. And then, only he saw that the entire thigh from the hip to the knee was missing. Quickly he wrapped the warm towel – readied to keep the baby’s body warm while struggling to be born – around the baby’s one leg.

Then followed the greatest struggle Dr. Loomis ever faced. He envisioned a girl growing up different from her peers, sitting alone, being gawked at, unable to participate in any kind of athletic activities, never being invited out on dates – lonely, insecure and forlorn.

He could also "see" the agony of this young mother with such a burden to carry. "Don’t bring this suffering upon them," he reasoned to himself. "This baby has never taken a breath – don’t let her ever take one."

He glanced at the clock. Three of the allotted seven or eight minutes had passed. Nobody in the room knew of his struggle and intention. He would slow the birth. Nobody else would ever know. In a few short minutes it would all end. The mother would grieve but would be greatly relieved that she didn’t have the responsibility of bringing up such a handicapped child.

Right then the baby’s good foot popped out from beneath the towel and pressed against the doctor’s hand. Then her body heaved with a surge of energy – it was wanting to be born.

The doctor could not do what he planned. He delivered the baby with her pitiful little leg.

Dr. Loomis said, "Every foreboding came true. The mother was in a hospital for several months. I saw her once or twice and she looked like a wraith of her former self. I heard of them indirectly from time to time ... Finally I lost track of them altogether.

"As the years went on, I blamed myself bitterly for not having had the strength to yield to my temptation."

Years later, as was the custom of the nurses at the hospital where Dr. Loomis served, an impressive Christmas party for the hospital staff and doctors was held. This year was particularly interesting. Every doctor and staff member who could be there was.

When the nurses, beautifully attired in their spotless uniforms, entered in procession, the audience stood as one to honor them. Then, from the back of the auditorium entered twenty more young nurses, each holding a lighted candle and singing the familiar strains of "Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright...."

The spotlight then focused on the elaborately decorated Christmas tree with every decoration shimmering with unusual beauty. Then the spotlight moved to center stage as the curtain was slowly drawn aside to reveal three lovely young musicians, all in glistening white evening gowns – a harpist, a cello player, and a violinist. Together with the organ the beautiful harmony of their music brought tears to many eyes.

The harpist played so exceptionally well that at the close of the evening Dr. Loomis waited to congratulate her.

As he sat alone waiting, a lady came running down the aisle and with outstretched arms excitedly cried out, "You saw her. You must have recognized your baby. That was my daughter who played the harp – I saw you watching her. Don’t you remember the little girl who was born with only one good leg 17 years ago? We tried everything else first, but now she has a whole artificial leg on that side – but you would never know it, would you? She can walk, she can swim, and she can almost dance.

"But, best of all, through all those years when she couldn’t do those things, she learned to use her hands so wonderfully ... She is so happy ... And here she is!"

And then they met.... Instinctively Dr. Loomis reached out and embraced the one whose life he came so close to destroying before she had a chance to live.

"You will never know, my dear," he said, "you never will know, nor will anyone else in all the world, just what tonight has meant to me. Go back to your harp for a moment, please – and play ‘Silent Night’ for me alone. I have a load on my shoulders that no one has ever seen, a load that only you can take away." *

How precious is the gift of life. There is only one gift that is greater – that is the gift of eternal life.

Some time ago one of my sons was upset with me about something. What I did I have long since forgotten but I will never forget what he said. In his frustration he blurted out, "Why did you have me anyhow?"

I paused for a moment and then replied from the depths of my heart, "Because you were part of God’s eternal plan."

And that is true of you and me also. From the moment we were conceived in our mother’s womb, God knew us by name. And we, too, are a part of his eternal plan. But at our birth only God could see our handicap. We were deformed, too – not physically perhaps – but spiritually. Because of our sinful nature, we were born spiritually dead and cut off from God – the giver of all life. But because we were so precious to and so loved by him, he sent his Son, Jesus, on that first Christmas to come to earth to die in our place for our sins, to deliver us from eternal death, and to give to us the greatest gift of all – the gift of eternal life. God has this gift for you, too. Whatever you do, don’t leave earth without it. There could be no greater tragedy.

_________________________

* Adapted from CHRISTMAS IN MY HEART, Book 2, by Joe L. Wheeler. Herald Publishing Association, 55 W. Oak Ridge Drive, Hagerstown, MD 21740, U.S.A.

Written and © by Dick Innes

======================================

Another version by King Duncan:

Dr. Frederic Loomis faced the most difficult decision a physician could ever make -- whether to allow a deformed baby to live or die. He had only seconds to decide. Dr. Loomis had delivered hundreds of babies, but this one was different. The infant lay in a breech position, promising at best a difficult and dangerous birth. One of its feet stretched only to the knee of the other leg. Furthermore, it was missing a thigh. The mother, a frail person visiting the sterile delivery room for her first time, was not aware of the grossly deformed child struggling to survive.

Dr. Loomis closed his eyes; at his fingertips squirmed a pitiful creature yet unborn. Would not the most loving thing be to detain the birth long enough to cause the child to be stillborn? He agonized within himself. Will this kid not be considered a freak, a twisted burden to its delicate mother? How can I justify playing a part in such a cruel drama? Surely no one will ever know if I spare this family from inevitable pain. The doctor, through the baby's cord, felt its heartbeat -- dancing in rhythm to his own wildly racing heart. As Dr. Loomis continued to prevent the birth, he felt the normal foot pressing for passage into the world. Suddenly, he could no longer justify “playing God.” Instead, he would trust God to care for this child against what seemed to be impossible odds. Dr. Loomis delivered the infant into the world, which, he sensed, would be very unkind.

In the years that followed, Dr. Loomis often second-guessed his decision. He watched the anguish of the family as desperate parents sought in vain to find some correction for their child's deformity. Even after they moved away Dr. Loomis continued to lament the burden that he had saddled upon the family. The heartache, he often said to himself, was his fault.

In time, however, Dr. Loomis would find peace. It came at an unexpected time and place -- the hospital Christmas party. Typically, it was during the holiday season when his pain seemed most severe. He could not shake the image of that unfortunate child from his mind. While the world celebrated the greatest birth ever known, Dr. Loomis obsessed over the saddest birth he had ever known.

At this particular party, the most heavenly music filled the room. The sadness seemed to dissipate as the rich tones of “Silent Night” washed Dr. Loomis' anguished spirit. Following the concert, a woman approached him. “Doctor,” she said excitedly. “You saw her.”

Dr. Loomis studied the woman's face, wanting to recognize her but unable to recall the memory. “I'm sorry. I should know you, but you may need to help me.”

“Don't you remember the little girl with only one good leg, 17 years ago?”

Remember... it was the one thing in his life that he couldn't forget! In disbelief, he listened to her story.

“That baby was my daughter, doctor. And I saw you watching her play the harp tonight! She has an artificial leg. She's doing well.” At her Mom's bidding, the lovely harpist walked toward them. With soppy eyes, Dr. Loomis enveloped the girl in his arms.

“Please” he said in a tightening voice, “please play Silent Night' for me one more time.” The young lady returned to her harp and played his request with poise and perfection. As she played, Dr. Loomis reflected on the incredible gift of life. He thought about the sanctity in every person. And he exhaled 17 years of questions and wondering whether or not it was wise to grant a baby its life.

__________

By Karl Haffner, College Place, WA Source: Gleaner, August 2003, ISSN 0746-5874, mailto:gleaner@npuc.org. Cited in WITandWISDOM(tm) - August 6, 2003 ISSN 1538-8794.

*

Superman and Utilitarianism: Kindly Ignoring the Argument

In 1995, Christopher Reeve tragically injured his spinal cord in a riding accident. The actor, who once portrayed Superman, is a quadriplegic. His life is now entirely dependent. Not only is Reeve unable to eat or wash or dress by himself, he can't even breathe by himself requiring technology and constant supervision to stay alive.

Reeve wants to walk again. Stem cells torn from cloned embryonic humans, he believes, will heal his spine. And so Christopher Reeve has become a vocal advocate of cloning and stem cell research.

On March 5, Reeve testified at the U.S. Senate. Echoing Jeremy Bentham, he made a thoroughly utilitarian argument in favor of cloning and embryonic stem cell research. Reeve said, "Our government is supposed to serve the greatest good for the greatest number." This is, at best, a naïve and, at worst, a dangerous argument coming from a man in a wheelchair.

Jonathan Imbody, of the Christian Medical Association, pointed this out in a letter to the WASHINGTON TIMES. Imbody wrote, "Sadly, Mr. Reeve did not seem to grasp the grim irony that severely disabled individuals like him would hardly fare well in the utilitarian calculus of anticipated benefit for the most people. Spending limited healthcare resources on intensive and expensive therapies to benefit a few would simply never pass the test. If public policy truly were reduced to 'the greatest good for the greatest number,' racism and exploitation would flourish, eugenics would rule, and the fittest and favored would be released once and for all from the burden of 'useless eaters.'"

Sound cold and calculating? It is! In utilitarianism cold calculations determine life and death. And if this were the utilitarian society Mr. Reeve advocates, he wouldn't be here to make his arguments. He would have been taken off life support, and the millions spent to sustain him would have helped thousands of other people with a better chance of being cured. And if money is to be used for the greatest number of people, medical help wouldn't go to people with spinal cord injuries; it would go to the millions with cancer.

Thankfully we don't live in that kind of utilitarian society. We live in one that still retains the dignity of life assured in the Christian worldview.

As Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops puts it, "Our government is not supposed to serve the greatest good for the greatest number. Totalitarian governments are supposed to do that. Our government is supposed to protect the vulnerable INDIVIDUAL from the rich and powerful who may find it expedient to forget his or her dignity."

So when your neighbors talk about all the emotional arguments by Reeve and others made for embryonic stem cell research, you can explain the irony -- that the people making these arguments wouldn't be around to make them, if we embrace the worldview they advocate, which cheapens human life. The funny thing about the secular worldview, as Mr. Reeve makes plain, is that the people advocating it can't live by it.

Take Action:

Urge your senator to cosponsor the Brownback-Landrieu total cloning ban, S. 1899. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to connect to your state's Senators' offices.

For further reading and information:

Visit the Council for Biotechnology website . To receive the Biotech Policy Update e-newsletter, send your request to .

"Bioethics in the New Century Resource Kit"

Gilbert Meilaender, BIOETHICS: A PRIMER FOR CHRISTIANS (Eerdmans, 1996).

Lynne M. Thompson, "Those Who Would Be King: The Perils of Man-Made Ethics," PHYSICIAN MAGAZINE, March/April 2002.

Jonathan Imbody, "Utilitarianism is not 'the American way,'" Letter-to-the-Editor, WASHINGTON TIMES, 8 March 2002.

Christopher Reeve's testimony can be read here .

_________________________

*

Daily Bits (4/16/99)

WEAKNESS OR STRENGTH

Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your

biggest strength. Take, for example, the story

of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo

despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in

a devastating car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master.

The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why,

after three months of training, the master had taught him

only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "shouldn't I be learning

more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move

you'll ever need to know," the sensei replied.

Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the

boy kept training.

Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his

first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily

won his first two matches. The third match proved to

be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent

became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his

one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success,

the boy was now in the finals.

This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more

experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched.

Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called

a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei

intervened.

"No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue."

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical

mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his

move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament.

He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in

each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to

ask what was really on his mind.

"Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First,

you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in

all of judo. Second, the only known defense for that move

is for your opponent to grap your left arm."

The boy's biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.

Autism and Human Dignity

Matthew 25

We hear a lot about acceptance and diversity these days. But what happens when acceptance is inconvenient?

As you may know, Chuck Colson’s grandson, Max, is autistic, a diagnosis he shares with the son of a friend and colleague of mine. Max got Chuck to thinking a lot about what Christians mean when they talk about human dignity.

I can’t help but wonder what Chuck would have made of a recent story from Sunnyvale, California. There, the family of an autistic child has been sued by two of their now-former neighbors for creating a public nuisance. Actually, it was their son, who is now eleven, who was regarded as the nuisance.

To be fair, the child’s autism, as the Washington Post put it, poses “social and behavioral challenges.” This conduct, in its most extreme manifestation, included “hitting, kicking and other aggression against adults or their children.”

The boy’s parents insist that they take the concerns “seriously and that either they or a caregiver provide one-on-one supervision at all times.” They also insist that portrait of their son in the complaint is “wildly exaggerated” and that their neighbors’ reactions amount to a “modern day witch hunt against a disabled child.”

Maybe the parents have a point, given that the lawsuit has continued even after both the family of the autistic child and one of the plaintiffs moved away from the neighborhood! What’s more, the complaint claims that issues with the child have had a “chilling effect on an otherwise hot real estate market.”

Jill Escher of the San Francisco Autism Society called the lawsuit “preposterous and an affront to public policy.” She called the proposal to declare a disabled child a public nuisance “extraordinary” and “unprecedented.” Well, I call it sad, and tragic.

The judge is urging both sides to settle, although having left the neighborhood, I wonder what else he thinks the autistic child’s family can do.

As you can imagine, this story hit close to home with my colleague. It’s an exaggerated version of the countless times people, often strangers, reminded him that his son didn’t fit the norm; that he, and people like him, were incorrigibly “other.”

In this case, a person is being treated as the equivalent of a barking dog, improperly-disposed of trash, and an overly sensitive car alarm.

Think about Emily Colson’s experience with Max at the movies [see below]. As in Sunnyvale, the message was that these kids shouldn’t inflict their “otherness” on the rest of us.

In other words, they don’t possess inherent dignity and worth. They are tolerated, not accepted, much less welcomed.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the Greek word sunago, which is translated “welcomed” in Matthew 25. It means more than hospitality; it means to gather in and make part of your own.

We honor a person’s God-given dignity when we look beyond their “otherness” and we treat them as one of our own. Our culture consistently fails this test. It’s a huge part of the reason why 90-plus percent of all Down syndrome cases diagnosed in utero end in abortion. For all of our culture’s babbling about “diversity” and “authenticity,” there are limits to how “diverse” and “authentic” many people are prepared to tolerate.

Chuck understood that being pro-life, not only anti-abortion, required welcoming people like Max even when it made us uncomfortable. It required walking alongside their families in the hard task God has seen fit to assign them, instead of treating them like a neighbor with a noisome pet.

________

=====================

"Distraught mother reveals how theater audience turned on her autistic son," by Daily Mail Reporter, March 21, 2014,

A Massachusetts mother has been jeered out of a movie theater because her autistic son was annoying patrons, one of whom called the young man ‘retarded.’

Colson said in the blog that their problems started when Max, who often gets frightened at the beginning of movies, shrieked ‘I want to go home,’ during the first preview and said it again once the film started.

‘We hadn’t even gotten past the previews. I know most of us, as families of children with disabilities, have all these plans in mind, but we couldn’t even get there,’ she later told the Patriot Ledger.

That’s when the crowd turned on them.

‘Are you going to make him be quiet?’ one woman said, according to Colson’s blog.

When she was informed that Max had autism, the woman hit back, ‘I know he is, but why should the rest of us have to suffer?’

Her husband then allegedly chimed in with, ‘If you don’t make him be quiet I’m calling the manager.’

And things got worse from there, with ‘ugly’ remarks coming from all directions.

When the mother finally decided enough was enough and got up to leave, she claims the theater erupted into applause and patrons shouted ‘don’t come back’ and ‘he’s retarded’ as the family made their way to the door.

But before she left, she felt compelled to speak to the jeering group, she said in her blog.

‘There is a lesson here. A lesson that is so much more important than anything you will learn from this movie,’ she said she told them.

Now a woman Colson goes to church with, Renee Watson, is hiring out an entire movie theater for children with special needs after being so moved by the mother’s painful experience. Watson, a mother-of-three, was so touched by the story that she organized ‘Movie With Max’ on March 27 at a local Regal Cinema and nearly 300 special needs kids will watch ‘Muppets Most Wanted’ together without fearing they’ll be bullied to leave.

The popular event was expanded from a 94-seat cinema to one three times the size and has now sold out.

‘I just thought that if it were my child, I would have to find a way to make this right for him,’ Watson said.

And this time Colson knows she can enjoy the movie with her son. ‘There are so many families (with special needs) that are very isolated,’ Colson said to the Ledger.

‘(This) has generated a huge amount of conversation about our families in the community, and I’m so thankful for that.’

(untitled)

2 Corinthians 12:9

I read recently the story of a 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo

despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car

accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing

well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training, the

master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need

to know," the sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in

his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament.

Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third

match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became

impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match.

Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals. This time, his

opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy

appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the

referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei

intervened. "No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue."

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he

dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy

had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and the sensei reviewed every move in each and

every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on

his mind: "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First, you've almost

mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the

only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left

arm."

The boy's biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.

We don't often view our weaknesses in the same way, but we should. I am

reminded of the time that Paul prayed fervently for God to remove some

affliction unknown to us, what he called a "thorn in the flesh." Refusing

to remove it, God said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my

strength is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor. 12:9).

That seems to make no sense, and yet we see throughout the Bible how God is

able to work despite the weaknesses of men and women, showing forth his

power -- David with his small stature against Goliath the giant, Gideon a

man of no significant background leading a greatly outnumbered band of men,

Jesus taking on humanity in the form of a helpless baby. In fact, the

greatest demonstrations of God's power have come when men and women have

felt the weakest. Remember that the next time you feel inadequate.

"Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the

power of Christ may rest upon me....For when I am weak, then I am strong."

(2 Cor. 12:9b-10).

Have a great weekend!

Alan Smith

Boone church of Christ

Boone, NC

(untitled)

When you think of the late HELEN KELLER ... deaf ... mute ... blind ... are you drawn AWAY from the Lord or toward Him? Do you think more of Him ... or less of Him? Someone wrote into one of these Sunday magazine supplements that gets put in with the Sunday newspapers. It was in the section that features questions and answers. The letter said, "I've just read a reference to a BOOK by Helen Keller. This must be an error ... because she was deaf ... and mute ... and blind." In answer the editor replied, "No. You're correct that she was deaf and mute and blind. But she's not only the author of THAT book ... she's the author of NINE books. "She wrote in BRAILLE ... she also wrote slowly in LONGHAND. She graduated from Radcliffe College with honors. She appeared in vaudeville. She contributed $2 million to a foundation to help others."

Who will never forget another blind lady that we all love so much. So often we forget her affliction as we sing, "Savior more than Life", or "He hideth my Soul", or "Close to Thee", or "Nearer the Cross." Among the many other hymns that she wrote, however, I think the words to "My Savior first of all" are probably the most thrilling ... listen as she says, "When my lifework is ended, and I cross the swelling tide, When the bright and glorious morning I shall see, I shall know my Redeemer when I reach the other side, And His smile will be the first to welcome me. O, the soul thrilling rapture when I view His blessed face, (remember she was blind) And the luster of His kindly beaming eye! How my full heart will praise Him for the mercy, love, and grace, That prepare for me a mansion in the sky! (I don't even hear a note of bitterness about her affliction do you?) Thro' the gates of the city in a robe of spotless white, He will lead me where no tears will ever fall; In the glad song of ages I shall mingle with delight. But I long to meet my Savior first of all. I shall know Him. I shall know Him, and redeemed by His side I shall stand. I shall know Him. I shall know Him by the print of the nails in his hands. God greatly used the affliction of Fannie Crosby to inspire us to live for that day of final reunion.

Do you remember when John Glenn first circled the earth and enjoyed fame unequaled by any man at that time? Then he filed in the Democratic primary for the US Senate in Ohio. He walked in his bathroom one morning, had a freakish accident and had to WITHDRAW from that race. Do you recall reading about the AFFLICTIONS of John Glenn and his family? You see, the HEROISM had worn off and now they were TELLING THE TRUTH. He was NOT an "A" student ... he was a "B" student. He was NOT a topflight athlete ... he was a 2nd stringer. You see, man always wants to attribute greatness to brain or brawn ... never to character ... never to the spirit. When the public got around to telling the truth ... it was because the character of John Glenn centers in Jesus Christ! The writer in this particular magazine article ... told how he had to withdraw from the campaign trial (but had not yet withdrawn from the race) ... HIS WIFE went out to substitute for him. She's step up to the microphone and say "I'm Annie Glenn. I STUTTER you know; here's Rene." Then she would step back and Rene Carpenter, the wife of another astronaut at that time, would come to the microphone. Rene was not only a very capable speaker, she was an extremely attractive woman. People went for it ... the HONESTY OF IT ... "I'm Annie Glenn ... I stutter, you know."

Moses is usually thought of as a shy, reticent man who was seeking to withdraw from responsibility. BUT, it is quite possible that Moses withdrew from responsibility because being slow of speech meant that he stammered or stuttered. He was AFFLICTED but the Lord said to him, "I made that mouth, and I made all other mouths, and now I will give you a mouth that will speak for you, a mouth that can communicate, the mouth of your own brother, Aaron."

When we think of this century we marvel at the voice of one man, Winston Churchill, literally a speaker who changed the course of human history ... who rallied an entire people ... never realizing that his great speaking ability was NOT a style ... it was an AFFLICTION. He stammered and stuttered all his life and it made him sound the way he did. With the affliction that he never corrected ... he grew in greatness. I think of a friend of our family, Brother August Leulf. Do you remember him? We had him here several years ago over a weekend. I had him preach both Sunday morning and Sunday evening while he was here. He is a traveling evangelist. He is a mechanical genius ... if you have something that needs to be fixed, he can fix it. He always has brain teaser puzzles in the trunk of his car to entertain children. He is also an amusing character. He drives an old Cadillac that he has driven for years. It is piled with stuff to the top of the seats. The trunk of his car is piled to capacity as well. There seems to be no sense of organization about his life at all. Maybe you will remember that he took as his text for one of his messages while he was here, "The three little pigs." He is a very interesting preacher ... but he has an agonizing stutter. Many times while preaching he will get hung up on a word and the only way he can get released is to either spell the word or to have someone in the congregation say it for him. But he doesn't stutter when he sings! Remember how he sang "His eye is on the sparrow ... .and I KNOW He watches ME." When he would sing that his face would just light up. We believed him. The Psalmist says ... "Many are the afflictions of the righteous ... " not the unrighteous ... but the righteous.

The prophet Hosea said (speaking of the Lord), "In their affliction they seek me early," implying that if it were not for the afflictions they would seek him late ... if at all. Have you ever known any man or woman in the naked joy of success ... good fortune ... good health ... who ever reached UP for the hand of CHRIST? But how many have you known in the naked sorrow of failure ... ill health ... defeat ... who have reached up and claimed the greatest gift of all from the hand of God?

This Is Her Story, This Is Her Song

The life of Fanny Crosby –- our sweet singer in the night -- shows us how faith, courage, and cheerfulness can win over terrible handicaps. Her sight was completely destroyed when she was only six weeks old because someone placed a wrong poultice on her eyes. Fanny, then, never saw the beauties of the world about her. This affliction, however, only served to open a new world about her in which she saw Christ as her ever-present Helper and Friend.

Refusing to be pitied, she lived a most happy and useful life, making other lives better by her sweet songs. Believing that this was the work to which God had ordained her and for which He had providentially permitted the loss of her natural vision, she entered upon her lifework with such wholehearted zeal that she produced and published more than 8,000 gospel hymns and songs. She became America’s best-loved gospel-song writer.

Throughout her songs runs a note of certainty and assurance which stems from faith in God and His Word. Often the lines came to her as fast as they could be dictated. The words for “Blessed Assurance” were written as a result of a visit that Mrs. Joseph F. Knapp paid to her. Mrs. Knapp wrote the tune, took it to her friend, and after playing it asked, “Fanny, what does that tune say to you?”

Fanny thought for a few moments and then replied: “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.”

Another hymn was on its way to bless humanity. This one, Ira Sankey declared, was one of the most popular and useful of gospel hymns in the great Moody-Sankey revivals. In her declining years “Aunt Fanny” loved to recite these words:

This is my story, this is my song,

Praising my Saviour all the day long.

Though sightless, Fanny Crosby had, nevertheless, experienced the “beatific vision” and was able to translate her faith and assurance into lines that have enriched the world.

________

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Copyright (c) June 1984, Pacific Press

*

[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #21059]

One Who Had the Right Attitude About Adversity

Job 2:11

Early in my ministry I met a seriously handicapped man. Worral had been stricken with rheumatoid arthritis at age 15, and when I met him 30 years later, he was totally paralyzed except for one finger, could barely speak and was totally blind. But he had a string tied to that one mobile finger that could turn on a recorder. He wrote for national magazines, authored books and led a happy and influential life from his bed.

This was possible because after initial prayers brought no healing, he accepted his lot graciously and said, “Well Lord! If this is the size plot in life you've staked out for me, let's you and me together show the world what we can grow on it.”

Down the path of humble acceptance, Worral achieved a happier and more useful life within the limitations of a very restricted circumstance than most people ever will manage with excellent abilities.

Eugenics By Any Other Name: the Abortion / Crime Link

Even if you think abortion is immoral, you should take comfort in knowing that Roe v Wade helped reduce crime. At least that's what a pair of social scientists is telling us in their study just published in Harvard's Quarterly Journal of Economics.

The authors claim not to take sides in the abortion debate, but they maintain that legal abortion accounts for as much as half of the recent drop in the crime rate.

Pro-life groups challenge the study's credibility. But the real question is not accuracy: It's whether we deal with crime by attacking its roots, or by attacking unborn children instead.

The study, "Legalized Abortion and Crime," notes that in five states that legalized abortion before the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade case, crime started falling slightly earlier than in other parts of the country. The study found that states with especially high rates of abortion before Roe have experienced large declines in crime recently, even after considering other factors.

The authors attribute this to the fact that the majority of women seeking abortions are poor, young, unmarried, and minority.

Well, no one should be surprised that a drop in the number of children born to single and poor women might reduce crime. We know that a high proportion of the young men who commit the most serious crimes are born to the kind of mothers who were having abortions in the 1970s. The question is, what do we do with this information?

First, we ought to be aware that studies like these can condone unspeakable evil. Take the case of eugenics. For example, in the 1920s, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger called for the elimination of what she called "inferior races" and "morons, misfits, and the maladjusted." Sanger blamed them for most crime.

Hitler's death camps for "inferior races" showed us where such thinking can lead. But eugenics is still with us. When tests reveal a Down syndrome baby, for example, doctors often pressure the parents to abort. And sadly, eight out of ten do.

This most recent study plants in the public mind the idea that abortion is a social good that stops future crime. There's no doubt that among the forty million American children killed by abortion, some potential criminals lost their lives. But none were certain to become criminals -- whatever their social circumstances. Social scientists would love for us to believe that they can predict behavior with certainty. But the same ghettos that produce the criminals these scientists decry also gave us musical geniuses like the jazz great, Louis Armstrong, and the brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson at Johns Hopkins.

And as Christians we know that no life can be sacrificed for any supposed social good. No life is worthless; no life is irredeemable. I have learned that and seen it many times over in twenty-five years of prison ministry.

There's a better way to combat social ills than imitating Hitler's death camps. Instead of building abortion clinics in poor neighborhoods, we ought to be supporting desperate women and their children with Crisis Pregnancy Centers and programs like Angel Tree, which bring hope to the crime-prone children of prisoners.

In the process, we'll demonstrate that the answer to crime is not killing more babies, but bringing Christ's love to those in need.

For further reference:

"The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime." Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2001.

Christopher Reeve On Perspective

Luke 7:22

"Anything can happen to anybody. In the last movie I did, 'Above Suspicion,' I played a paraplegic. I went to a rehab center and I worked with the people there so I could simulate being a paraplegic. And every day I would get in my car and drive away and go, "Thank God that's not me." I remember the smugness of that, as if I were privileged in a way. And seven months later, I was in this condition. The point is, we are all one great big family, and any one of us can get hurt at any moment... We should never walk by somebody who's in a wheelchair and be afraid of them or think of them as a stranger. It could be us - in fact, it is us."

Christopher Reeve

Actor

Cited in BITS & PIECES

Perfectly Normal

The year was 1963.

That's when I was born ... to "perfectly normal" parents at a "perfectly normal" Cleveland hospital.

I would like to say that I was a "perfectly normal," healthy baby, ready to take on the world. But instead, I was born with multiple deformities. My eyes were almost on the sides of my head, and I only had holes where my nose was supposed to be. I had a club foot and was missing all but one toe, if it could be called that. Also, three of my fingers were missing on my right hand. A cleft palate had an opening in my top lip and extended all the way to the right eye. Unfortunately, even one leg was shorter than the other.

The hospital staff, I was told, thought I had too many problems to survive. The doctors, in fact, refused to show me to my parents and, incredulously, even gave my parents forms to sign to "give me up for science."

I can only thank God that my parents had other plans for my life. I belonged to them and to God. They intended to love and accept me just as I was, despite acknowledging that it would be a long, hard road ahead.

At the age of seven months, I began to undergo a very long series of operations. However, the first seven were deemed failures. The surgeons, it seemed, were trying to do too much at once. I, on the other hand, was like a puzzle that needed to be "put together" one piece at a time.

While successive surgeries were a little more successful, my appearance was still far from normal. In fact, very few people knew that I had already had sixteen operations by the time I was ready for third grade.

When I began kindergarten, I was placed in a special-education classroom because my appearance and imperfect speech were not accepted. Aside from being labeled a "special-ed" kid, I endured constant ridicule from other students who called me "stupid," "ugly" and "retarded" because of my looks. I also walked with a limp and had to wear special shoes and braces on my legs. I spent almost every school holiday in the hospital having operations and also missed a lot of school. I wondered if I would ever get out of special classes. My desire to become a "normal" child prompted my parents to pursue tests that would place me back in regular education classrooms. My parents and I worked very hard that summer to get ready for the big test. Finally, I was tested.

I'll never forget the day I waited outside the principal's office while my parents received my test results. The brown door between them and me seemed to loom bigger and bigger as time went by. Time passed in slow motion. I longed to put my ear to the door to hear what was being said.

After an hour passed, my mother finally emerged with a tear streaming down her cheek. I thought, 'Oh, no, another year in special-ed.' But much to my relief, the principal put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Welcome to 3B, young man!" My mom gave me a big hug.

Another milestone in fourth grade was the "miracle" that my parents and I had longed for. I was selected to undergo a very experimental surgery that would resculpt my entire face with bone grafts. The surgery was life-threatening and lasted ten hours. I survived this operation, my eighteenth, which really changed my life. At last, my nose had a shape, my lip was "fixed" and my eyes were very close to being in their normal position.

While I now faced a new chapter in my life from a physical perspective, I hadn't seen the end of my trials.

Within the next few years, my mother developed cancer and died, but not before instilling in me a sense of worth and the determination never to give up.

When other kids called me names, she had prompted, "Don't let those names bother you. Feel sorry for those kids who were not brought up right."

In addition, my parents taught me to be thankful for my blessings, pointing out that other people might have even greater challenges.

Their words eventually impacted my life when I did see people with greater challenges - in hospitals and whenever I did volunteer work with children who were mentally challenged.

As a teenager, I came to realize that my purpose in life was to help others become successful with whatever gifts they were blessed with, despite the things that society might point out as handicaps or shortcomings. In fact, my father advised, "Mike, you would make a great special-ed teacher." I knew what it was like to be a special-ed child.

However, I simply wasn't ready to make teaching my career choice at that point. Instead, I earned a degree in business and went on to become a very successful salesman, spending seven years in retail management. Then, I went on to become a very successful bank employee, spending five years as a loan officer. Still, something in my life was missing.

Despite the fact that I had met and married a special-ed teacher, it took me twelve years to realize that was my calling also and that my dad had been right.

Continuing my college education, pursuing a master's degree in education, I now teach in the same school district as my wife.

My classroom is a kaleidoscope of children with special needs - emotional, physical and mental. My newest career choice is my most challenging yet. I love to see my students' smiling faces when they learn something new, when a few words are spoken and when an award is won in the Special Olympics.

I've now gone through twenty-nine surgeries. While many have brought a lot of pain to my life, the fact that I have survived them all only seems to reiterate to me that God has a purpose for my life, as well as for every other life. I see my purpose being fulfilled one child at a time.

I may not have been a "perfectly normal" healthy baby, but I am ready to take on the world - thanks to God and to people like my mom. The motto she gave me will always be the motto I use in my own classroom: Never give up.

______________________

*

A World of His Own: the Sad Case of Gauvin Hughes McCullough

Luke 7:22

We expect every parent to put good health at the top of their hopes for their unborn child. Why wouldn't they? Doesn't every parent want to give their children the best chance at success in life?

According to an article in the March 31 issue of the WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE, the answer is "not necessarily," especially if it gets in the way of what's most important to the parents.

The article tells the story of newborn Gauvin Hughes McCullough and his two mothers: Sharon Duchesneau, his birth mother, and Candace McCullough, his adoptive mother. Yes, Duchesneau and McCullough are lesbians, but that's the least remarkable part of Gauvin's story.

Duchesneau and McCullough are also deaf. They met at Gallaudet University, a university for the deaf in Washington, D.C. From the moment they decided to have a child, they set out to maximize the chances that the child would be deaf like them.

To that end, they asked sperm banks if they had any deaf donors. The sperm banks told them that deafness was the sort of condition they screened out in potential donors.

Disappointed, they turned to a deaf male friend from Gallaudet. Even so, that wouldn't guarantee that Gauvin would be deaf like his "mothers." They had to wait several months after Gauvin was born for an audiologist to confirm success: The baby was deaf. So the women could have what they called a "special blessing," a deaf child.

Why would parents, especially ones who have experienced the challenges posed by a disability like deafness, wish this condition on their children? After all, kids already face plenty of challenges and obstacles growing up, particularly in a lesbian household.

The answer lies in the way many deaf people in this age of multiculturalism see themselves. Increasingly, they see Deafness, with a capital "D," not as a disability, but a culture. They regard treatments, like cochlear implants, which enable deaf children to hear, as a kind of cultural genocide, but this brand of identity politics perfectly reflects the postmodern obsession with identity politics. We don't belong to one culture, say all humans in America. We belong to the culture we build out of our own grievance groups, and society, as a whole, is fractured into many cultures defined by sexual orientation, gender, disability, and the like.

The really dangerous issue illustrated by this story is one that goes beyond the fate of one child. While Duchesneau and McCullough were unusual in that they wanted a child with a birth defect, they are hardly alone in practicing what can only be called "eugenics." Their search for a donor who would maximize the chances for their desired outcome of the child is no different from what increasing numbers of Americans are regularly doing.

And, thanks to advances in genetics, soon parents won't have to live with the uncertainty of "success" this couple did. Not only will they be able to prevent disabilities and illnesses, they will be able to enhance physical and mental attributes and choose things like hair color and size. Children will become, as one commentator put it, the ultimate shopping experience -- designer babies.

Thus, we will have gone from seeing children as charges whose well-being we are supposed to put above our own to the means by which we achieve self-fulfillment and what we think is best for us.

For further reading and information:

Charles Colson, "Can We Prevent the Abolition of Man?" an address to U.S. Congress members and staff.

Gilbert Meilaender, BIOETHICS: A PRIMER FOR CHRISTIANS (Eerdmans 1996

BreakPoint commentary, "Missing the Point: Defect-Free Babies," 7 March 2002.

C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., "Hurtling Toward Eugenics ... Again," 27 February 2002.

Liza Mundy, "A World of Their Own," WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE, 31 March 2002, W22.

_________________________

*

Abounding Contradictions [2 versions]

Job 19:6

G. K. Chesterton once said, "It is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God."

His reasoning so fitting for our times, I quote his explanation at length. He writes:

The moment you condemn something you have to assume there is some

standard by which to condemn it. The modern day rebel has got no

standard left because he's rejected everything. The new rebel is

a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything... The fact that

he doubts everything gets in the way when he wants to denounce

anything. For all denunciation applies a moral doctrine of some

kind, and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the

institution he denounces but the doctrine by which he denounces

it... [He] goes to a political meeting first where he complains

that savages are treated as if they are beasts. Then he takes

his hat and umbrella, goes to a scientific meeting where he

proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern

revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in

undermining his own mines.

A colleague speaks of an old college friend who taught her something profound about contradiction. We will call him Chad. They first became acquainted in a communications class. Born with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, Chad was an unlikely candidate for a career in public speaking - he is unable to speak. Or walk. He communicates through a computerized voice by typing with only his big toes. Overcoming more in his lifetime than most dare to hope, Chad has become a much in demand public speaker. His body a slow moving, twisted shell of uncontrollable muscle, his life is a picture of what he calls nothing short of wholeness. This glorious contradiction he attributes entirely to Jesus Christ.

You see, the gospel is unique in its power to contradict our own contradictions, compelling us to drastically redefine what we mean by life. As Paul W. Hoon the author once noted, Jesus repeatedly contradicts us in the way we experience ourselves as alive, just as he encountered the disciples on Easter Sunday. They were the ones marked out for death. He, the "dead" was really the living. [1]

Jesus Christ has placed the greatest of all reminders before us: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." This, properly understood, offers truth and eternal life.

________

1. Paul W. Hoon, Integrity of Worship Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971, p. 141.

________

=============================

Version from January 12, 2004:

G. K. Chesterton once made the proclamation that it is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God. If the whole universe has no meaning, said Lewis, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. We live in a world where the skeptic objects to everything under the sun. Yet, the moment you condemn something you have to assume there is some standard by which to condemn it. The modern day rebel, as Chesterton refers to the skeptic, has no standard left because he has rejected everything; he lives in contradiction. As Chesterton's reasoning is so fitting for our times, I quote his explanation at length. He writes,

“The new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust

anything... [T]he fact that he doubts everything really gets in

his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation

applies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern

revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces but

the doctrine by which he denounces it... [He] goes first to a

political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as

if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes

on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically

are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an

infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines.

In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality;

in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.”

Moreover, it is the Gospel that is entirely unique in its power to shore up our own contradictions, and it is Christ who repeatedly challenges us in the way we experience reality, in the way we experience ourselves as alive.

A friend of mine in college illustrated to me this profound truth. He was born with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, and as a result he is unable to speak or walk. He communicates through a computerized voice by typing with his toes. Overcoming more in his lifetime than most can imagine, he was in a public speaking class when I first became acquainted with him. Though an unlikely candidate for a career in public speaking, he has become exactly that, and is now a much in demand public speaker. His message is powerful. “My body,” he says through the voice of a computer, “is a slow moving, twisted shell of uncontrollable muscle, and yet my life is a picture of nothing short of wholeness. This glorious contradiction I attribute entirely to Jesus Christ.”

Indeed, Jesus compels us to drastically redefine what we mean by life, just as he did the disciples on Easter Sunday. “They were the ones marked out for death,” writes author Paul W. Hoon, “He, the 'dead' was really the living.” In the One who lives we find coherence and wholeness. In Christ alone we find life.

__________

Outstretched Arms

Mark 9:36

I was told a fascinating story of a young couple's journey to Romania. They went to adopt a little boy named George, who was born without arms. As they visited the orphanage, they noticed that nobody would even look in little George's direction because his handicap was viewed as an ill omen and a curse upon a family. But the couple was determined to bring George back to the United States and raise him as their son if his mother agreed. But then something unforgettable happened.

The mother, when contacted, asked the couple why they wanted this child. “I have heard,” she said, “that in America they use babies for genetic experimentation. Is that why you want to take my son?” The would-be parents were as wise as they were selfless, and with the complete limitation of language, handed a Romanian Bible to the woman and opened it up to Psalm 139. She took it and began to read:

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I

sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You

discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all

my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O

LORD.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my

mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and

wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full

well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the

secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the

earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for

me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

The mother wept as she read and clutched the Bible to her heart. She knew that her little boy would grow up and want to see her. But she also knew that he would be pointed not just to the source of his life but to the source of her life, too. With gratitude to God, the mother gave her armless son into the arms of one who saw his outstretched being, not the absence of his outstretched arms.

May I submit, my friend, that our beings long for God. Only in Him is the soul hunger met - even as we find our acceptance in Him. To slightly alter the words of Augustine, our hearts are restless until they rest in His arms.

_________________________

*

The Little Girl Who Dared To Wish

Job 17:2

As Amy Hagadorn rounded the corner across the hall from her classroom, she collided with a tall boy from the fifth grade running in the opposite direction.

"Watch it, Squirt," the boy yelled, as he dodged around the little third grader. Then, with a smirk on his face, the boy took hold of his right leg and mimicked the way Amy limped when she walked.

Amy closed her eyes for a moment.

'Ignore him,' she told herself as she headed for her classroom.

But at the end of the day, Amy was still thinking about the tall boy's mean teasing. It wasn't as if he were the only one. It seemed that ever since Amy started the third grade, someone teased her every single day. Kids teased her about her speech or her limping. Amy was tired of it. Sometimes, even in a classroom full of other students, the teasing made her feel all alone.

Back home at the dinner table that evening Amy was quiet. Her mother knew that things were not going well at school. That's why Patti Hagadorn was happy to have some exciting news to share with her daughter.

"There's a Christmas Wish Contest on the radio station," Amy's mom announced. "Write a letter to Santa and you might win a prize. I think someone at this table with blond curly hair should enter."

Amy giggled. The contest sounded like fun. She started thinking about what she wanted most for Christmas.

A smile took hold of Amy when the idea first came to her. Out came pencil and paper and Amy went to work on her letter. "Dear Santa Claus," she began.

While Amy worked away at her best printing, the rest of the family tried to guess what she might ask from Santa. Amy's sister, Jamie, and Amy's mom both thought a 3-foot Barbie Doll would top Amy's wish list. Amy's dad guessed a picture book. But Amy wasn't ready to reveal her secret Christmas wish just then. Here is Amy's letter to Santa, just as she wrote it that night:

Dear Santa Claus,

My name is Amy. I am 9 years old. I have a problem

at school. Can you help me, Santa? Kids laugh at me

because of the way I walk and run and talk. I have

cerebral palsy. I just want one day where no one laughs at

me or makes fun of me.

Love,

Amy

At radio station WJLT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, letters poured in for the Christmas Wish Contest. The workers had fun reading about all the different presents that boys and girls from across the city wanted for Christmas.

When Amy's letter arrived at the radio station, manager Lee Tobin read it carefully. He knew cerebral palsy was a muscle disorder that might confuse the schoolmates of Amy who didn't understand her disability. He thought it would be good for the people in Fort Wayne to hear about this special third grader and her unusual wish. Mr. Tobin called up the local newspaper.

The next day, a picture of Amy and her letter to Santa made the front page of the "News Sentinel." The story spread quickly. All across the country, newspapers and radio and television stations reported the story of the little girl in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who asked for such a simple, yet remarkable, Christmas gift - just one day without teasing.

Suddenly the postman was a regular at the Hagadorn house. Envelopes of all sizes addressed to Amy arrived daily from children and adults all across the nation. They came filled with holiday greetings and words of encouragement.

During that unforgettable Christmas season, over two thousand people from all over the world sent Amy letters of friendship and support. Amy and her family read every single one. Some of the writers had disabilities; some had been teased as children. Each writer had a special message for Amy. Through the cards and letters from strangers, Amy glimpsed a world full of people who truly cared about each other. She realized that no amount or form of teasing could ever make her feel lonely again.

Many people thanked Amy for being brave enough to speak up. Others encouraged her to ignore teasing and to carry her head high. Lynn, a sixth grader from Texas, sent this message:

"I would like to be your friend," she wrote, "and if you want to visit me, we could have fun. No one would make fun of us, cause, if they do, we will not even hear them."

Amy did get her wish of a special day without teasing at South Wayne Elementary School. Additionally, everyone at school got an added bonus. Teachers and students talked together about how bad teasing can make others feel.

That year, the Fort Wayne mayor officially proclaimed December 21st as Amy Jo Hagadorn Day throughout the city. The mayor explained that by daring to make such a simple wish, Amy taught a universal lesson.

"Everyone," said the mayor, "wants and deserves to be treated with respect, dignity and warmth."

_________

The Threat of Embryonic Research

Not long ago, I listened to perhaps the most powerful and eloquent speech I have ever heard. It was delivered by Joni Eareckson Tada at a Prison Fellowship banquet. Many of you, of course, know Joni's story: As a teenager, she dove into shallow water and broke her neck. For thirty-five years, she has lived in a wheelchair, a quadriplegic.

It was this fact that gave her speech such power. You see, the subject of her speech was embryonic stem cell research, which has been dangled out as a “miracle cure” for dozens of different medical conditions -- including spinal cord injuries. Indeed, one the most aggressive proponents of this research is another quadriplegic: actor Christopher Reeve. Both Reeve and Joni know what happens during embryonic stem cell research: The embryo -- a tiny human being -- is killed as stem cells are plundered for use by the already born.

Reeve is willing to overlook this inconvenient fact; Joni is not. Unlike Reeve, she understands where such research will lead.

Consider what Joni said: “The weak, the frail, quadriplegics, the infirm, the handicapped, the elderly have never fared well in cultures which view life as a commodity.” Look what happened just more than fifty years ago in Germany, she said, when doctors first cast a cold eye on people whose lives they considered not worth living. “The first to be carted off down the long, dark, midnight hallways of institutions were the defective, or the handicapped, or the mentally disabled.” Specifically, they were “disabled people,” Joni said, “who had no visitors, no friends, no one to speak up for them.”

“And now we have the philosophers of this age,” she said, “people like Peter Singer insisting that folks like those with mental handicaps have no rights.”

And she added: Our dream of solving all medical problems is turning into a nightmare. “Our society doesn't seem to have a place for those who suffer. We want to avoid [suffering,] ignore it, eradicate it, medicate it. We have such contempt for suffering, and it's only a short philosophical hop, skip, and jump to where you begin to have contempt for suffering people. People who strain Medicare, people who drain the grandkids' college funds, people who contribute nothing more than bills to society.”

But, as Joni pointed out, it is not just the disabled who are at risk. “The lives of all of us are jeopardized when life can be bought and sold, copied and replicated, altered and aborted and euthanized,” she warned. We are all vulnerable “in a society that thinks nothing of creating a class of human beings for the purpose of lethal experimentation and exploitation.” Those are powerful words, given with such conviction.

Of course, we all want cures for disease and disability, as Joni said, but not at the price of human dignity. She knows, as Reeve does not, what a bad bargain it is. The promise of a cure is seductive, but it becomes a death warrant.

Unlike Christopher Reeve, Joni knows that there are worse things in life than being handicapped. There is the destruction of human dignity through cloning. And there is the creation of a cultural climate where first the weak, the small, the sick, and the suffering, and then all of us are carted down the “long, dark, midnight hallways.”

Just Trust Jesus, Mordecai

Luke 10:19

Mordecai Brown had a dream. He wanted to be a great baseball pitcher. His mother encouraged him and would say, “Trust Jesus to make it happen. If He wants you to be a great ball player, he will help you. Just trust Jesus, Mordecai.”

One day, when he was still quite young, Mordecai was helping his father harvest sugarcane, his sleeve got caught in the equipment and the forefinger on his right hand was torn off. His second finger was mangled and his dream of being a great pitcher was shattered. But he didn't give up. He refused to listen to life's “no.” After the accident, Mordecai tried to learn to throw left-handed, but he couldn't do it. So instead he learned to throw a baseball with his injured hand and discovered that he was pretty good at it.

One day, a major league baseball scout was traveling through Terre Haute, Indiana, and as he ate breakfast at the local diner, he struck up a conversation with the waitress there. “Anybody any good at baseball around here?” he asked. She told him he ought to see “Three-fingered Brown” and the rest is history. Mordecai Brown went on to become one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history and is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. For with God's help, he had turned life's “no” into a “yes” for him.

Slowest Marathoner Always Finishes Race

Luke 10:19

Like other athletes preparing for the New York City Marathon, Zoe Koplowitz knows the usual tips: Dress for the weather, pace yourself, start out slow. But slow for Koplowitz, who takes to the 26.2-mile course every year with two fuschia crutches that match her eye shadow, can mean a race that stretches well into the next day.

“Last year was a little better than usual,” said Koplowitz, 55. “I knocked it off in 28 hours.”

Like the 30,000 or so runners attempting the marathon this Sunday, Koplowitz goes as fast as she can. She was diagnosed 30 years ago with multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease of the nervous system. She also has diabetes. She wears thigh braces because she suffers from a painful leg condition called illotibial band syndrome. She has carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrists from using crutches.

That hasn't stopped the motivational speaker from finishing 17 marathons, 15 of them in New York and all of them in last place.

“A cab driver told me something. It was a very nice analogy. I was kind of like the Yankees,” she said. “People have a need for me to win because they have a need to win themselves. And when I finish, they do, too.”

Marathon spokesman Richard Finn said, “We think it's great that she keeps coming back.”

Koplowitz' first marathon, in 1988 when she was 40, was her fastest: 19 hours, 57 minutes.

“I thought it would be 12 hours. I thought that I would just go and go and go until I got there,” the New Yorker said.

Her longest marathon was more than 33 hours, in 2000. The weather that year was humid and warm, conditions that generally exacerbate her MS.

Koplowitz begins her journey at the Verrazano Bridge starting line at 6 a.m., more than four hours before the other runners. She stops every mile to stretch, and tests her blood sugar every two hours. She doesn't take a break of longer than 15 or 20 minutes, except one stop at a restaurant during the last nine or 10 miles. She doesn't sleep.

The Guardian Angels, the volunteer civilian patrol, watch over Koplowitz for the last 10 miles. Restaurants and police precincts open their doors for her in the middle of the night.

For using her crutches - nicknamed Spot and Rover - a good part of her training is upper-body weight work. “I've got biceps that make grown men weep,” she says.

When she's not marathoning, she needs one crutch to walk.

Koplowitz is not the only disabled marathoner. The Achilles Track Club, which represents disabled runners, estimates that more than 1,000 members ran the marathon last year.

Her finish is not scored; the New York City Marathon stops recording finishers after eight hours.

She doesn't have an exact time goal. She always tells herself 24 hours, “but I realize I pushed very, very hard last year and I got 28.”

“I know that I won't be able to do this forever,” Koplowitz said. “Each year is very special to me.”

Blessed Are the Merciful

Luke 7:22

James Kennedy was a mentally disabled young black man in South Carolina who didn't have much going for him.

Although he kept to himself and didn't bother anyone, he was an easy target. Kids picked on him and adults kept their distance.

But one day Kennedy -- better known as “Radio” -- was fortunate enough to meet Harold Jones, a high school football coach. Full of kindness and compassion, Jones befriended Radio and made him part of the football team.

Under Jones's care, Radio flourished. He became a welcome part of the high school and a beloved member of the community. Some didn't appreciate what Jones was doing, but he knew it was right and he wasn't going to back down. And although not all the students at the school were crazy about Radio to begin with, he gradually won them over with his loving heart and unconditional acceptance.

Now made famous on the big screen, the true story of Jones and his love for Radio is heartwarming. The word “hero” gets bandied about regularly in sports. While many athletes and sports figures don't deserve that label, Jones certainly does.

As I watched this inspirational story unfold, I thought about someone closer to home. I thought about my friend Chuck, who is one of my heroes.

Like Jones, Chuck has done something truly remarkable, something not many people would be willing to do. He has sacrificed a lot for someone very similar to Radio.

Tommy is a mentally disabled young man who was pretty much a social outcast. First, Tommy likes to talk ... a lot ... and then some more. Sometimes you can't get him to stop. He'll talk about basketball and football for hours. At times, he can be downright annoying.

Tommy also had a wretched home life. He didn't have a warm place to sleep. He didn't take showers, and he didn't brush his teeth, sometimes for weeks at a time. That alone made it difficult to be around him.

But Chuck saw past all that. Chuck saw that even with his disability, Tommy wasn't meeting his potential. And while others would show small acts of kindness toward Tommy, Chuck went all out. He welcomed Tommy into his home permanently. He has taught Tommy about basic hygiene and social graces, and in only a few months' time the changes in Tommy are noticeable.

People like Radio and Tommy are constant reminders that human life is precious. Although not as fortunate as most people, they are infinitely valuable in God's eyes -- and obviously, in the eyes of people like Chuck.

Treating the less fortunate with mercy is not always the easiest thing to do. Our lives are busy and resources are limited. We can find lots of excuses not to do what Chuck has done.

But I'd venture a guess that Chuck would resonate with one of the most memorable lines in the movie. Jones was talking about everything that Radio had accomplished, and everything he had come to mean to people in the community. While he was so busy trying to teach Radio, it was really Radio who was teaching him, Jones said.

The world needs more people like Jones, and like my friend Chuck. I wish I were more like them.

Are We This Pro-life: Parenting Special-needs Children

Sharon’s prenatal ultrasound looked ominous. She knew others with similar ultrasounds who had delivered perfectly normal children, but all indications were that her child had Down Syndrome. He was one of those infants who typically wind up in the trash, either aborted or abandoned. Because of their worldview, however, Sharon and Burt Kettinger chose to keep the child.

B.J. was a month premature, with two heart defects. Vital functions stopped three times in a twenty-four-hour period. He was hospitalized nearly five months. Surrounded by specialists, the parents soon found life very exhausting. Complicating it further were insurance challenges. A doctor belittled Sharon, saying she had acted “very irresponsibly” in bringing one “like him” into the world.

B.J. couldn’t walk until age 3. At age 15, he still has trouble with speech. Yet when anyone says “Down Syndrome child,” his parents Burt and Sharon respond, “He is first a child, who happens to have Down Syndrome.”

Four out of five marriages in this situation, break up under the strain. When a father sees the long-term commitment required, he often abandons the mother at the time she needs help most.

The Kettingers stayed together, but a “special needs child” needs supplemental help. Church friends arranged transportation for Sharon’s fifty-eight-mile daily round trip to the hospital. Neighbors helped with laundry, vacuuming, and meals. A nurse watched B.J. so Sharon could attend church.

And the exhaustion in part destroys the families, so parents critically need relief. Parents need time away from their child so they can focus on their relationship. Friends have stayed with B.J., once for twelve days. One church provides a regular respite evening for children, including some 40- or 50-year-olds.

To make it all work Burt stresses the need for volunteer training, spiritual responsibility, and patience, and familiar with C.P.R. Sign language can be helpful, and a hundred details need to be in place. It demands that the Church be the Church.

Burt says, “God isn’t looking for experts, but those who are willing and not afraid to learn.” Kids with special needs will respond more slowly, but their emotions are intact. Praise and humor go a long way.

B.J. is a Big Job, but he’s also a Big Joy. Burt observes, “B.J. can make almost anyone smile. He has unending empathy for others.... In terms of heart and spirit, he outdoes us.” When he earned AWANA’s Timothy Award, another child exclaimed, “Wow, he’s pretty smart for being retarded! “

What does it mean to be pro-life? Just signing petitions and affirming an abstract concept? Or responding to needs when you meet a couple who followed their pro-life convictions by giving birth to a “special needs child” they could have aborted?

We salute the Kettingers and others who have ignored the “pro-choice” rhetoric and made the difficult, courageous choice — giving birth to a child they knew would have “special needs.” And three cheers for all the volunteers who have helped out over the years. Parents like this need a hand — not just in applause, but in lifting the extra burden.

Burt summarizes, “It’s one thing to sing, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,’ but another to be the one coming in God’s stead.”

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Joni and Friends exists to communicate the Gospel and equip Christ-honoring churches worldwide to evangelize and disciple people affected by disability.

• Visit the website for Burt Kettinger, Sound Servant Ministries.

• Linda L. Treloar, “Disability in the Body of Christ,” Journal of Christian Nursing 17, no. 3 (summer 2000).

• Pamela W. Vredevelt, Angel behind the Rocking Chair (Multnomah, 1999).

• Jim Pierson, Just Like Everybody Else (Standard Publishing, 1993).

• Max Lucado, The Crippled Lamb (Thomas Nelson, 1999).

• Peter Kreeft, “Human Personhood Begins at Conception,” Catholic Educator’s Resource Center, 1997.

• The BreakPoint Culture of Life packet includes resources to help you make a difference for the sanctity of life in our nation today.

• Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn, Being the Body (W Publishing, 2003).

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040419, “Building Better Babies.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 031023, “Who Is My Neighbor?“

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There's No Charge For Love

A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell. He painted a sign advertising the 4 pups. And set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.

“Mister,” he said, “I want to buy one of your puppies.”

“Well,” said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat of the back of his neck, “These puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.”

The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer.

“I've got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?”

“Sure,” said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle. “Here, Dolly!” he called.

Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur. The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse. Slowly another little ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up....

“I want that one,” the little boy said, pointing to the runt.

The farmer knelt down at the boy's side and said, “Son, you don't want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.”

With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers. In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe. Looking back up at the farmer, he said, “You see sir, I don't run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands.”

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup. Holding it carefully he handed it to the little boy.

“How much?” asked the little boy.

“No charge,” answered the farmer, “There's no charge for love.”

The world is full of people who need someone who understands.

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Kevin Rayner, Oak Tree Church of Christ, Rochester, MN

What Chances Did He Have For Lord's Work?

Bill's dad and mother were Methodist missionaries in Chile many years ago. They were poor. In fact, they were very poor. Sometimes their salary for a year was not more than four hundred dollars. Every penny really counted!

When Bill was about 3 he had typhoid fever, which left his eyes weak and nearsighted. When he was 5 he caught his left hand in a pulley in some farm machinery, leaving his hand crippled and almost useless.

Weak eyes, crippled and useless hand. No money. A less than adequate education; he didn't even attend a regular school until he was 12! What chances did Bill have of doing something for the Lord's work?

You might say, “None!” But Bill wouldn't have agreed. As he grew older he had good health and he could think. Best of all, he understood the value of learning, and knew that knowledge is power if used wisely. So he couldn't play ball like the other fellows? Well, he could still read despite his not-so-good eyes. When most boys his age were poring over adventure stories, Bill was reading history and Bible books. By the time he was 11 he knew what he wanted to be-a Bible archeologist! A person in such work learns about the life and habits of people who lived in ancient times. Bill's ambition meant long years of study in Bible lands-far from Chile-but he was determined, and he set about to realize his goal.

He took one step at a time and let the Lord lead. First, he studied hard in school, particularly subjects such as history, geography, mathematics, and Latin. A Danish sailor who lived with his family for a while taught him German. When college time came, he worked all his way and taught himself two ancient languages, Hebrew and Assyrian (cuneiform). Gradually he edged toward his goal.

Dr. William F. Albright-Bill in our story-became one of the greatest archeologists and probably one of the most intelligent men in modern times. When he died at the age of 80 he had received many honors.

Knowledge is power if used wisely. Is this part of your growth experience?

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The Real Point: Jason Mcelwain and Respect For Life

You may not know his name, but you have probably seen Jason McElwain in action. A recent videotape of his basketball exploits has touched an entire nation.

I pray that it does more than that.

McElwain, a senior at Greece Athena High School in upstate New York, is autistic. Like many autistic persons, he didn't speak until he was five years old and has limited social skills. These didn't stop him from serving as student manager of the basketball team.

In two years, Jason never missed a game, practice, or workout. Coach Jim Johnson and the players wanted to reward McElwain for his dedication by letting him play in at least one game.

With four minutes left in the last game of the season, Jason entered the game to deafening cheers. After missing his first two shots, Jason hit six three-pointers, including one that seemed to be launched from a different zip code, and wound up as the game's high scorer with twenty points.

After the buzzer, the crowd rushed the floor, and his teammates carried Jason off on their shoulders. Coach Johnson called what happened “as touching as any moment I have ever had in sports.”

Sportswriter Mike Lupica called it “as perfect a sports moment [as] ... any of us will ever know about.” The tape, which aired almost everywhere, made an autistic kid from upstate New York “the most famous basketball player anywhere.”

While watching the news reports, I felt great for Jason and his family. As the grandfather of an autistic child, it was wonderful to see a reminder that these wonderful kids can be helped and can exceed our expectations.

But, as a Christian, I was struck by a savage irony: At the same time that Americans were touched by one disabled child, countless disabled children in the West face annihilation.

For example, in the Netherlands, medical protocols allow for the killing of disabled infants. As Wesley Smith points out, “disabled” includes Down syndrome, hemophilia, and other conditions that don't prevent people from living happy lives. All that matters is that the child's death “serves the interests of their families.”

Here in the United States, children with Down syndrome have been systematically “targeted for elimination.” A combination of amniocentesis, abortion, and pressure from physicians has made bearing a child with Down syndrome an heroic act.

Given this track record, can anyone seriously doubt what will happen as more disabilities can be detected through genetic screening? The pressures to abort children with possible disabilities will be immense. Just last Sunday, the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE had a chilling story about doctors being sued for “wrongful birth” because they have failed to warn the mother of defects in time for her to get an abortion.

It would be a shame if the sentimentality over the Jason story blinded us to the most important lessons we can learn from kids like Jason: What makes their lives worth celebrating is not what they do; it's who they are. For me, what really mattered most was the love and respect shown to Jason by both his teammates and the crowd.

It's a model for how ALL life should be treated, and anything less is missing the point altogether.

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'Handiphobia': Who's Afraid of the Rain Man?

I recently told you about Jason McElwain. He's the autistic high-schooler from Greece, New York, whose feats on the basketball court, in President Bush's words, “captivated our country.”

Not surprisingly, McElwain's story is being turned into a movie. What is surprising is that this is not the only movie being made about autistic people.

There are at least three other films scheduled for release or in production about autistic people and their families. The most highly anticipated of them is probably DANIEL ISN'T TALKING, starring Julia Roberts. Based on the novel by Marti Leimbach, it's the story of a woman whose seemingly perfect world is turned upside down when her three-year-old son is diagnosed as autistic.

Leimbach, whose nine-year-old son, Nicholas, is autistic, says that stories about autistic people “[dramatize] the fact that none of us have perfect children.” In her estimation, this is why the stories have broad appeal.

As the grandfather of an autistic boy, I'm gladdened by the positive attention being given to people like my grandson Max, who has some amazing qualities. And one of BreakPoint's writers and a valued colleague is a single dad raising an autistic boy. This subject is close to home. But, as a Christian, I cannot help but notice that all of this attention is coming at a time when it's increasingly dangerous to be a handicapped child. They are squarely in the gunsights of those who are conducting what I call a “war on the weak,” which is what this present series is about.

The best-known advocate of this war is Princeton Professor Peter Singer. He has justified the killing of a handicapped child if it “leads to the birth of another child with better prospects of a happy life.” In this case, “the total quantity of happiness will be greater . . .”

It is tempting to dismiss Singer as a crank, that is, until you recall that, just last fall, the Netherlands legalized the killing of terminally ill children — this despite ample warning that the practice is not and will not be confined to the terminally ill. All Dutch children with birth defects are now at risk.

Outside the Netherlands, the threat is subtler, but no less real. Italian neonatologist Carlo Bellieni has coined the term HANDIPHOBIA to describe the fear of having a disabled child. According to Bellieni, we in the West see “the fetus, as a means and not as the end they truly are.” Thus, “the child is no longer loved unconditionally and respected as a human person.”

Instead, we use prenatal testing to detect any identifiable defects in the unborn child. Those with such defects, like Down syndrome, are then aborted. As Bellieni puts it, “[A]s with all phobias, [the object of our fear] must be made to disappear.”

Well, that's putting it starkly, but it is true: If a prenatal test for autism were ever developed, it would not be long before autistic people would also be “made to disappear.” While Leimbach is right about no one's child being “perfect,” Bellieni is also right about how much “imperfection” we're not prepared to accept.

That's why I hope that stories like young Jason McElwain's do more than make us feel good. I hope they also help us to understand the evil that comes from giving in to our fears.

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This is part three in the “War on the Weak” series.

He Won the Match

Ogden High School’s wrestling team showed up for a wrestling meet at Humboldt High School. The home coach greeted them with the news that one of his wrestlers had Down’s syndrome. “He has no skill but loves to compete. You can pin him in seconds. He knows he’ll lose; he just wants to roll around on the mat for a little bit. Would anyone on your team be willing to wrestle with him?”

First, there was silence. Then a lone voice on the Ogden team replied, “I’ll do it,” and wrestler Lane Brueland stepped forward to grapple with the boy named Brent.

The gesture alone was commendable, but what Brueland did next was exemplary. Instead of doing what the Humboldt coach requested, Brueland wrestled with the boy for the full six minutes. Not only that, he let the youngster score enough points to win the match.

When Brent’s hand was raised and he looked up in wonder and said, “I won?” There wasn’t a dry eye in the gym. Both boys got a standing ovation.

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Copyright 2007 Josephson Institute of Ethics; reprinted with permission. Michael Josephson, one of the nation’s leading ethicists, is the founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics and the premier youth character education program, CHARACTER COUNTS! For further information visit http://www.charactercounts.org

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of #21013]

That Was Then ... This Is Now? A Nazi Nightmare

A horrible discovery was made last week near the German town of Menden. The lack of media attention about this in the United States should serve as an alarm in itself.

As Deutsche Welle reports, the skeletons of twenty children and five adults were found as a cemetery site was being excavated. It appears that these skeletons represent victims of the Third Reich’s policy of euthanizing persons with handicaps or other problems.

As the paper reports, the site is very near to the location of a World War II hospital run by Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt.

From the paper’s report:

The children, aged from one to seven years, were found alongside

the bodies of five adults, Hans-Bernd Besa-von Werden, a

spokesman for the district administration said.

Investigations of two of the children’s skulls indicated the

victims might have been handicapped.

More:

Some 70,000 people with physical or intellectual disabilities

perished in the euthanasia program, which the Nazis believed was

necessary to cleanse the German people of racially unsound

elements.

Those who were deemed “unworthy to live” by showing symptoms of

mental retardation or physical handicap were sent to the so-

called killing facilities, where they were murdered by lethal

injections or exposure to carbon monoxide gas.

The Nazi euthanasia program, which became an open secret in the

Third Reich, was officially terminated in 1941 in the wake of

protests from members of the German clergy.

The practice, however, clandestinely continued until the end of

World War II with an ever wider range of victims, which included

geriatric patients, bombing victims and forced laborers.

The German practice of euthanizing those considered unworthy of

life did not begin with the Third Reich. German doctors began

the practice under the liberal Weimar Republic, with doctors

defining those considered inferior as Lebensunwerten Lebens --

life unworthy of life.

Those identified as Lebensunwerten Lebens were simply killed --

sometimes after being subjected to inhumane medical experiments.

Karl Brandt, who was in charge of the program, was executed for

war crimes in 1948.

How is this definitively different from the current practice of selecting out “inferior” embryos or of aborting “defective” babies in the womb? These, too, are assaults on human dignity. How long will it be before some later generation excavates our own moral landscape?

The truly frightening aspect of all this is the fact that the German people allowed it to happen. The logic of euthanasia is so seductive and the concept of Lebensunwerten Lebens is so convenient. Simply define those difficult to care for as unworthy of life. Select one racial profile to be considered superior to all others. Sacrifice human dignity for the promise of a perfect race -- free from all those we would rather not see.

We can’t say that it can’t happen. Consider this -- why are so few babies with Down syndrome born today? Imagine what Dr. Brandt could have done with today’s prenatal genetic tests.

Clearly, a good many modern Americans have bought into Dr. Brandt’s logic to some degree. The past haunts us because it is not safely put away. The past threatens to erupt into the present in the form of modern euthanasia. This is a Nazi nightmare taking a new and seductive form.

Disability In America

According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 51.2 million people who have some level of disability. They represent 18 percent of the population. Of that 51.2 million, 32.5 million people with a severe disability or 12 percent of the population. The Census Bureau reports that 10.7 million people, age 6 and older, need personal assistance with one or more activities of daily living (such as taking a bath or shower) or instrumental activities of daily living (such as using the telephone). This group amounts to 4 percent of people in this age category.

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Pulpit Pieces Weekly, http://www.net153.com/best.htm

Stop Trying To ‘Heal’ Me

Mark 6:5

Like many disabled people, I am often approached by Christians who want to pray for me to be healed. While they may be well-intentioned, these encounters often leave me feeling judged as faulty and in need of repair. So I set out to discover what Christianity has to offer disabled people beyond promises of miracle cures.

From time to time, without warning or encouragement, I get approached in the street by Christians who tell me they want to pray for me to get my sight back. Since I became blind as a teenager this has been a regular yet annoying by-product of being an independent disabled person who can walk about on the street.

The last time this happened was on the London underground. The train was packed full of people all studiously ignoring each other when a man put his hand on my shoulder and asked if he could pray for my sight to be restored. But more about that later.

I had always assumed that everyone knew these encounters are a fact of life for people who are visibly disabled. But when one day I told some colleagues about my latest brush with a would-be healer, they were variously fascinated or outraged that anyone would have the cheek to impose their beliefs on me about something so personal.

At this point I should perhaps confess that I am not religious. The message I’ve taken from the Christians who’ve offered me healing is that I need to be “fixed” - just as Jesus “fixed” disabled people in the Gospels. Far from converting me, this has put me off Christianity. So I was interested to learn that it also annoys some disabled Christians.

Reverend Zoe Hemming, vicar of St Andrews Church in the village of Aston in Shropshire, is a part-time wheelchair user who lives with chronic pain. She’s had her own encounters with strangers offering healing prayer and says she finds this approach can be “spiritually abusive”.

“I’ve been in situations where I’ve been talking to another wheelchair user in church and somebody was so determined to pray for us and we just kept ignoring them because we were in the middle of a conversation. In the end he just put his arms on both our shoulders and just prayed. It was really annoying and very disempowering. I was furious.”

Healing hands

Of course, Christians who offer healing do so because, in the Gospels, Jesus healed the sick and commanded his disciples to do the same.

At my school, we learned all about the healing miracles Jesus performed. He told a “cripple” that he was healed and should pick up his stretcher and walk. He cured a blind man or two, healed a woman with a haemorrhage and another who was bent double. He even brought his friend Lazarus back from the dead.

For Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, these stories can be alienating for readers who, like her, are disabled.

“I think the main problem for disabled people reading the Bible is that while Jesus does spend a lot of time with people with disabilities, every time he meets them, if they encounter him with faith, he heals them and so he’s sort of like this cathartic scourge that wanders around eradicating disability from the world.”

Another difficulty, says Prof Moss, is that disabled people are often used by the Gospel authors to beef up Jesus’ credentials, showcasing his divine powers.

“When Jesus meets people with disabilities, he fixes them and that’s a sign that he is powerful,” she says. “That relegates people with disabilities to just being there to show the power of God. They’re not really real characters or real people who have feelings and needs and personalities. That pushes them to the margins of the story.”

But Lyndall Bywater, a Christian who writes and teaches about prayer and is herself blind, says it’s important to understand the historical context of Jesus’ healing miracles. While disabled people today might bristle at descriptions of the “pity” Jesus feels for the people he heals, Ms Bywater says Jesus was operating at a time when being disabled meant being poor, unemployed and excluded from mainstream society.

“There was obviously no welfare state, so you’d have been begging on the side of the road. Your life condition would have been pretty terrible and I think pity from Jesus in that context is probably a lot about that sense of exclusion, that sense of destitution that he saw.”

Another motive, she says, was the fact that many disabled people were banned from worshipping at the temple as, under religious law at the time, they were deemed “unclean”.

“Jesus did heal physical illness a lot and I think some of that was because it did restore people to social dignity at the time.”

So if Jesus met me today, empowered as I am with my job and my guide dog, would he still think I need healing?

Lyndall Bywater is sceptical: “If Jesus was walking the streets now,” she says, “I don’t know if he would be healing in the same way. I don’t think Jesus would look at you and think ‘there is someone who needs pity’.”

God has a wheelchair

Some Christians are going even further in rethinking what the Bible has to say about disability. Among them is 16-year-old Becky Tyler, who in 2017 preached to 6,000 people at the Christian festival Greenbelt. Tyler has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and communicates using eye-gaze technology and a speech synthesizer. She tells me she talks to God every day inside her head.

“God says to me that He loves me a lot. He says that I am made in His image and that my disability doesn’t make me any less than an able-bodied person. He loves us all the same.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone born with a severe disability, Becky hasn’t always believed this.

“When I was about 12 years old, I felt God didn’t love me as much as other people because I am in a wheelchair and because I can’t do lots of the things that other people can do. I felt this way because I did not see anyone with a wheelchair in the Bible, and nearly all the disabled people in the Bible get healed by Jesus - so they are not like me.”

She felt alienated by much of what she read in the Bible - until she was given new food for thought.

“My mum showed me a verse from the Book of Daniel (Chapter 7, Verse 9), which basically says God’s throne has wheels, so God has a wheelchair.

“In fact it’s not just any old chair, it’s the best chair in the Bible. It’s God’s throne, and it’s a wheelchair. This made me feel like God understands what it’s like to have a wheelchair and that having a wheelchair is actually very cool, because God has one.”

If you think this is a random moment of silliness from a teenager, Prof Candida Moss says Becky has chanced upon a fresh but perfectly legitimate reading of the Old Testament.

“We don’t get many descriptions of what God is actually like but we get one of them at the beginning of Ezekiel,” she says. “The Prophet has this vision of the Heavenly throne room, where God resides and God is sat on this throne that is pretty much on fire.

“But it’s also described as having wheels within wheels attached to it. And following this scene, if you think of all the scenes of the Bible laid out chronologically, God is always sat in this wheeled throne and in fact moves - leaves the city of Jerusalem - on the wheeled throne and returns to it later on the wheeled throne.”

Although God is depicted walking in the Bible, Prof Moss says this happens earlier - in the Garden of Eden.

“It seems like God is a wheelchair user maybe a thousand years before human beings themselves have thought about wheelchairs.”

So is God disabled? “That is certainly a way to read it” says Prof Moss, admitting that for many, this is a jaw-dropping and theologically challenging idea: “Yes, it’s very counter-intuitive to the image of divine power that we grow up with in Sunday school or Church, but that’s precisely why we should look at these passages - because they challenge us to reconsider what we think is important and what we value highly.”

Prof Moss is part of a group of academics who are carving out a new “theology of disability”. It’s a relatively new academic field, which has only really taken off in the past 10 to 15 years, inspired by pioneering texts like The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (1994) by Nancy L Eiesland.

The body of Jesus

For the Reverand Zoe Hemming, these contemporary readings of Christian scripture have provided new ways of seeing - and coming to terms with - her own disability.

“I can’t believe it took me this long to realise it,” she says, “but when Jesus rose from the dead, his risen body still had scars,” explaining that crucifixion left holes in his hands and feet as well as his side.

“It was profound for me to realise that the most powerful symbol of the disabled body in the Christian story is His.”

She says she is glad that Jesus didn’t come back from the dead as physically whole and perfect. “He came back better than perfect,” she says. “He wore his scars because they told his story.

“That’s the Jesus that I find in Christianity, not the one that wants to normalise everybody.”

Prof Moss says the fact that Jesus retains his scars after the Resurrection suggests that disabled people might also retain their disabilities in the afterlife - something she hopes for herself.

“I think that if I’m not disabled in heaven, I’m not myself so I certainly hope I’ll still be disabled in heaven. I certainly hope that I don’t feel pain in heaven - that seems antithetical to what heaven is. But I still want to be me. And I don’t think that I would be me without the conditions that I have. It’s shaped who I am, how I think, what I do. Everything about my life involves this part of myself, which is integral to who I am.”

I understand this. My visual impairment, along with the things I’ve come to love and cherish as a result of having it, is so bound up with my identity, I would feel a bit weird if I were to suddenly not be blind. That said, I think on balance it would be quite handy being able to see.

I asked Lyndall Bywater, who is also blind, if she would like to be disabled in heaven. “Oh no I hope not,” she replies. “That isn’t because I think that there’s anything wrong with being blind and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it thus far. I just want to be able to get in a sports car and drive a sports car. That’s really what I want to do. So I’m desperately hoping.”

But despite her personal hopes, she believes some people will retain their disabilities in the afterlife.

“The Christian message does have in it this sense of restoration,” she says. “Now what restoration looks like for each of us may well be different. I suspect there might be some surprises in heaven as to people that are like: ‘Do you know what, I have still got this disability because restoration for me was never about that.’”

Prof Candida Moss thinks disability may not have the same meaning in heaven as it does in this life: “I don’t know if you would need to see in heaven. Saint Augustine has a whole conversation about how he’s not sure it’s necessary to be able to see in heaven to love God. That might be because, when you look at descriptions of heaven, people just kind of stand around singing to God, so it might not be as necessary to be able to see because I don’t really know what it’s like. None of us do.”

Next time a Christian approaches me and offers healing, I might try to challenge their theology with some of the new interpretations of scripture I’ve learned from disabled Christians.

The notion that God and Jesus could be interpreted as being disabled may not be mainstream, but it’s a message that is more empowering for disabled people than the idea that we are all faulty and in need of repair. And who knows, maybe if we were approached with the message that God loves us as we are, more disabled people might welcome that conversation.

I was really taken by something Lyndall Bywater said to me. She said the “sighted world” might find it difficult to believe, but she thinks that being alive and at peace with yourself while being blind is a bigger miracle than having your sight restored.

And it’s true. I like me and I like the “blind person” things I do - for want of a better way of putting it.

At the start of this article, I told you about a man who spoke to me on a packed London underground train. Normally when people offer to pray for me to be healed, I say ‘No’. But this man told me that he was a recovering drug addict and alcoholic who had himself been healed by prayer. I got the sense that he really needed me to let him pray over me, so I said ‘Yes’ and let him lay his hands upon me.

I can’t claim to be cured of blindness as a result of his prayer, but I’ll never forget how happy and grateful he appeared to be.

To me it felt very much like the roles had unintentionally been reversed, and that it was the disabled man during the encounter who had given out a dose of healing. The man left the train after giving me a very big manly hug. I felt quite good too, and smiled wondering what the other people in the carriage had made of it, as I plugged my headphones back in.

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Additional reporting by Helen Grady

A Disabled Woman Who Responds To Mocking With Faith and Dignity

Luke 7:22

Lizzie Velasquez was born with a rare genetic disorder that leaves her unable to gain weight. Now 30, she has never weighed more than 62 pounds. The disorder has left her with deformed facial and skull bones. In 2006, a cruel YouTube video dubbed her the “World’s Ugliest Woman.”

Instead of crushing her spirit, Velasquez has used the bullying and mockery to become a champion for the disabled and for others on the receiving end of internet-enabled cruelty. After graduating from college, she has become an author, writing several books to bring hope to those who have been abused because of their looks or disabilities.

Velasquez is not shy about what is behind her remarkable response to all of this adversity. Her Christian faith, she says, has been her “rock through everything, just having the time to be alone and pray and talk to God and know that He’s there for me.”

Tragically, as our culture’s disregard for human dignity worsens, so has the ridicule and abuse. This is especially true on the internet. Velasquez confronts those who mock the disabled online, pointing out that it is not okay to mock and laugh at people with disabilities. “If you are an adult who has a young human in your life,” Velasquez said, “please do not teach them that being scared of someone who doesn’t look like them is OK, please ... Because we are humans. We have feelings.”

Velasquez is right to appeal to our shared humanity and human dignity, and, as a Christian, she knows that our human dignity is based on the fact that each and every one of us is created in the image and likeness of God. Everyone, regardless of what we look like or how able-bodied we are or not, are eternally valuable, from the moment of our conception to the moment of our natural death. Tragically, our society jettisoned that belief decades ago.

Our culture’s disdain for and impatience with the disabled is just another example of what happens when life is devalued. Sometimes, it’s overt and cruel, like the mockery and bullying Velasquez and others have endured. Other times, it takes the form of regarding those with disabilities as burdens and annoyances. Parents of children with cognitive disabilities are far-too-acquainted with the impatient looks and even hostility from people who resent the disruptions at grocery stores, movie theaters and elsewhere.

From abortion clinics to social media apps, the loss of the belief in the imago dei has resulted in the denial of the sanctity and dignity of every human person. The world, as a result, has become a crueler and less humane place. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims.

Thank God for Lizzie Velasquez and people like her, whose faith and endurance show the world what true dignity looks like. In fact, let’s learn from her and never tolerate for a second the mistreatment of people with disability.

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Copyright (c) 2020 Prison Fellowship Ministries. By John Stonestreet with Roberto Rivera; edited by David Holwick. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Edited by David Holwick.

As American As Apple Pie: Eugenics and the War On the Weak

Protestant judge Lothar Kreyssig and Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen courageously resisted the Nazis’ war on the disabled. Sadly, that war still rages today. And America has been on the front lines for nearly a century.

The story is told in two indispensible books: War Against the Weak by Edwin Black and Better for All the World by Harry Brunius. Both Black and Brunius tell us the all-but-forgotten story of how the United States tried to stop what Theodore Roosevelt called the “wrong type” from perpetuating themselves.

The idea that we can manage who is born and who isn’t is called eugenics. It was the creation of an Englishman (Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin), but it didn’t really take off until it reached America. And whereas Galton’s goal was to persuade the “right type” of people to have more children, his American disciples were more concerned with reducing births among the “wrong type.”

The weapon of choice in what a colleague of mine has called “apple pie eugenics” was forced sterilization. Between 1907 and 1927, “the United States [shockingly] became the pioneer in state-sanctioned programs to rid society of the ‘unfit.’” Thirty states enacted forced-sterilization laws.

And it didn’t take much to be considered “unfit.” New York actually contemplated prohibiting marriage between people who wore glasses and others who didn’t!

Apple-pie eugenics reached its peak in the 1927 Supreme Court case, Buck V. Bell. The famous Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, upholding Virginia’s decision to sterilize Carrie Buck, said “It is better for all the world” if “society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” He then concluded infamously with the words, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

It didn’t matter that neither Buck nor her mother were “imbeciles” or that the “science” behind eugenics was quackery. What mattered was that it offered the chance to remake society - in other words, to play God.

As Brunius and Black chronicle, what was going in America was closely followed abroad. Countries such as Canada, Sweden and, yes, Germany used American laws as models for their own statutes.

And American eugenicists actually offered both technical and moral support to the Third Reich’s program.

While Nazi crimes and atrocities exposed the horror of eugenics, the idea of playing God, and the war on the weak it entails, has never gone away. What Black calls “newgenics” seeks to achieve many of the same goals in a “kinder, gentler” way.

The most obvious example is prenatal genetic testing. This is how we get Down Syndrome children identified in the womb and kill them. Since we are years, if ever, from being able to fix genetic abnormalities in utero, the logic of prenatal genetic testing is inexorably tied to taking lives, not alleviating suffering.

Just think how society has advanced-now we can solve the problem of the “manifestly unfit” in a way earlier generations of eugenicists could only have dreamed of: getting rid of them without the bad publicity. Who will resist on behalf of the victims?

Do I hear any volunteers?

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[see also HolwickID #30866]

All That Jesus Asks: Unsettling Questions

Mark 3:1

What would you give to sit at the feet of Jesus and ask all those questions you have about life, the universe, the past and the future? What would such an encounter be like? After reading Stan Guthrie’s book All That Jesus Asks, I’m convinced that it would be a mind-blowing and perhaps very uncomfortable experience. That’s because Jesus would be the one asking most of the questions. As Guthrie writes, “Jesus, the master teacher of history, asked probing questions of all who came to him .... He was intensely personal and ‘in your face.’ He frequently turned the tables on those around him, forcing them through his questions to confront issues of life and death, love and hate, heaven and hell.”

And, as Guthrie points out forcefully, Jesus’ questions recorded in Scripture are still turning tables, still forcing us to respond to Him. For example, Guthrie recounts the story of Jesus healing the woman who for 18 long years was hunched over like a boomerang because of a “disabling spirit.” The woman rejoices, but the synagogue ruler does not, objecting that the miracle has occurred on the Sabbath and that she should come for healing another day.

Guthrie writes, “Demanding that this woman bear up under her infirmity even one more day than she already has betrays a breathtaking ignorance of her plight.” Jesus’ questions, Guthrie notes, force us to examine whether we are just playing religious games. In this case, are we too committed to our own agendas to care for the hurting around us?

Guthrie continues. The synagogue ruler is like those among us today who complain about all those handicapped parking spaces taking up so much space at church. Would they rather have the disabled stay home? Really, folks.

We see that Jesus’ questions are much more than an intellectual challenge. They force us to examine our hearts. “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox and his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it?” Jesus asks. “And ought not this woman,” the Lord continues, “a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” The questions of Jesus Christ, of course, are living questions. Not many of us still own oxen or donkeys, but we are all tempted toward hardheartedness and hypocrisy.

Another time, after healing a man with a withered hand, Jesus gets the same flak about doing “work” on the Sabbath. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath,” Jesus asks in response, “to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” As Guthrie notes, “This wording raises the stakes for all of us. Not only is it permitted to do good on the Sabbath; it is enjoined .... Saving lives is not a right; it is our responsibility.”

These penetrating questions and nearly three hundred more affirm our human dignity and demand our human responsibility before God. They force all of us, of whatever faith or no faith at all, to stop, listen and answer -- with our minds and our hearts.

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How We Treat the Disabled Among Us - Do We Fear God?

Leviticus 19

Recent revelations about the abuse of disabled workers has me thinking: Do we fear God? I’ll explain.

Last May, an Iowa jury awarded $240 million — later reduced to $6 million — to 32 mentally-disabled men who, over the course of three decades, were systematically cheated, exploited and abused by their employer.

It’s a sad reminder of how vulnerable those with disabilities are and why any church worthy of the name should be at the forefront in protecting them.

The story is, as the New York Times put it, “Dickensian” in its details. Over three decades, hundreds of intellectually-disabled men were shipped from Texas to Atalissa, Iowa, to work for Henry’s Turkey Service, which then sold their labor to turkey processing plants.

The men “were housed in a 100-year-old Atalissa school building the company converted to a bunkhouse.” As the Times told readers, “their supervisors never received specialized training [in working with the intellectually-disabled]; never tapped into Iowa’s social service system; [and] never gave the men the choices in life granted by decades of advancement in disability civil rights.”

And that was before the issue of pay comes up.

Under federal law, these workers did not have to be paid the same as the non-disabled co-workers.

Instead, they were paid a percentage based on their productivity.

Even that reduced amount seldom reached their pockets. The company “deducted hundreds of dollars from the men’s earnings and Social Security benefits for room and board — and ‘in-kind’ services, like bowling, dining out and annual visits to an amusement park.”

No matter how many hours they worked, they never got more than $65 a month.

Then there was the physical abuse including handcuffing and being forced to walk in circles while carrying weights.

“Dickensian,” indeed. All that was missing was a foreman named Wackford Squeers.

This exploitation and abuse continued unimpeded for three decades until Henry’s Turkey Service and the processing plant decided that the men had slowed to the point where, even at $65 a month, it was no longer profitable to employ them.

After a social worker discovered and documented the abuses in 2009, a suit was filed against Henry’s Turkey Service by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which resulted in the record award I mentioned earlier. Nearly a year after the verdict, only about $30-to-40 thousand of the award has been collected.

The day my colleague, whose son is intellectually-disabled, read the Times article, the Old Testament reading was from Leviticus 19.

In it, God tells the people of Israel, “You shall not curse the deaf, or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the LORD.” Thus, how we treat the disabled is a measure of whether we fear God — the Hebrew word for fear meaning revere, honor, and stand in awe of.

Reading the piece brought to mind Christian alternatives like L’Arche where “people with and without disabilities share their lives in communities of faith and friendship.” As L’Arche’s founder, Jean Vanier, said “we are brothers and sisters, and Jesus is calling us from the pyramid to become a body.”

While desperately needed, even the best laws and most-dedicated enforcers cannot make people see the intellectually-disabled as their brothers and sisters. As the Bible tells us, Christians have no choice in the matter. The question, as Vanier put it, is “Does the church really believe in the holiness of people with disabilities?”

Only if we truly believe in the holiness of God, in whose image they are made.

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He Reads His Bible With His Lips [2 Versions]

Mark 7:6

I read of a man in the Kansas City area who had lost both hands in an explosion. Not only so, but his face was torn and his eyesight completely destroyed. He had not been saved long and one of his greatest regrets was that he could no longer read the blessed Word of God.

Someone told him of a woman in the British Isles who had learned to read the raised Braille type with her lips. He ordered portions of the Scriptures in Braille for himself but, upon their arrival, he was chagrined to discover that the explosion had so deadened the nerves in his lips that no sense of touch remained.

Stooping to carefully kiss the Book, somehow his tongue touched the copy and he realized the possibility of reading the raised type in that manner. A teacher was hastily summoned and the young Christian actually learned to read the raised characters by running his tongue along them. When I read the account, that enthusiastic disciple of our Redeemer had gone through the Bible completely four times – and a number of the books he had read over and over again.

No other book every inspired such devotion!

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The Biblical Evangelist, Volume 42, Number 2, March - April 2011 . Originally from the book The Wonder of the Word of God (1969), by Dr. Robert L. Sumner.

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http://www.biblecharts.org/thebible/theexampleofwilliammcpherson.pdf

William McPherson was severely injured when a charge of dynamite exploded in front of his face. Although he survived the blast, he lost his eyes, hands and the feeling in parts of his face. He realized how much the Bible meant to him and he greatly needed the its strength. He could not read it in Braille because of his artificial hands. He tried to place his lips on the dots but they were numb. He found he could use his tongue to decipher the Moon Type System of dashes. Although the metal left his lips and tongue bleeding and very sore, he prayed to God to help him continue to learn just one letter of the alphabet. In the 65 years that followed, he read the Bible through four times with his tongue. What love for the Bible! His example leaves us without excuse.

Unattractiveness -- A Disability?

Proverbs 31

A professor of economics at the University of Texas has scrutinized the relationship between physical beauty and success. Daniel S. Hamermesh details the results of his study in a recently released book published by Princeton University Press.

In a column published in The New York Times, Hamermesh wrote that being blessed with pulchritude “helps you earn more money, find a higher earning spouse (and one who looks better, too!) and get better deals on mortgages.”

Those who are lacking beauty earn “10 to 15 percent less per year ... a lifetime difference, in a typical case, of about $230,000,” according to Hamermesh. Not only do these unfortunate souls suffer in compensation, Hamermesh says they are simply less successful in every area of life than those endowed with pulchritude.

Hamermesh believes the government should provide legal protection to those deficient in beauty “as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals.”

In Hamermesh’s book, “Beauty Pays,” the good professor documents that American culture discriminates against ugly (his word, not mine) people. Most in society, he says, prefer to interact with “attractive” people. “In our roles as workers, customers and potential lovers,” Hamermesh writes, “we are all responsible for these effects.”

The ugly, it seems, are doomed to less success than the beautiful. Thus Hamermesh makes the case that ugly people should be “protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act.”

“Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.... We could even have affirmative-action programs for the ugly,” Hamermesh writes.

I have long been taught that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and quite subjective, but not so says Hamermesh. “For purposes of administering a law, we surely could agree on who is ugly, perhaps the worst-looking 1 or 2 percent of the population.”

I wish I were making all of this up, but I am not. Hamermesh’s conclusions and solutions are all too real. In his world, ugly is a disability.

American pop culture pays so much attention to so-called physical attractiveness that it often fails to recognize the essence of true beauty. Authentic beauty is much more than skin deep.

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting,” wrote the author of Proverbs 31 in the Bible. “But a woman who fears the Lord will be praised.” The same holds true for men.

I am not sure how one goes about defining who is or is not ugly in Hamermesh’s world.

Will a government panel be established to decide if someone is ugly or can individuals declare themselves to be unsightly? If I am declared to be ugly and disagree with the decision, can I appeal the verdict? Can my employer?

What about those who do not fit into the category of beautiful or ugly? It stands to reason that, according to Hamermesh’s conclusions, average-looking people will be less successful than the most attractive people. Do the aesthetically average also warrant some government protection as well?

The truth is that we all have deficiencies to overcome. Some are aesthetic and some are less obvious. Government intervention on behalf of those who are “looks-challenged” is not the answer and neither is plastic surgery.

“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand in the presence of kings. He will not stand in the presence of unknown men.” This bit of wisdom, found in Proverbs 22:29, indicates that a person who becomes particularly adept at something will not go unnoticed.

The key to overcoming any deficiency, aesthetic or otherwise, is to develop a skill, a service, a product. Deliver it in a highly professional and proficient manner and you will make a name for yourself.

If you do, you won’t have to worry about the government pulchritude panel coming to your rescue -- and you will always “look good” to others.

Respectable Barbarism: the Logical Pro-Choice Conclusion

Luke 19:44

We’ve all been shocked by the barbarism we’ve seen committed in the name of Islam. But what about the respectable barbarism we see around us every day?

It’s pretty clear when a worldview is barbaric, because worldviews have feet. They reveal themselves in the real world. We saw it the other day when the Islamic State, or ISIS, terrorist group beheaded American journalist James Foley. ISIS then posted the video for a shocked world to see. Only the most depraved, fanatical person would label such behavior as morally correct.

But what about the respectable barbarism — you know, the kind that wears a suit, gives snappy interviews, and carries an advanced degree?

I’m speaking of the famous British atheist Richard Dawkins, who caused quite a stir the other day when he said that it would be immoral not to abort a fetus with Down Syndrome. Yes, you heard that right. Responding on Twitter to a woman who tweeted that she would face “a real ethical dilemma” if she became pregnant with a Down Syndrome baby, Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, replied: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”

Fully consistent in his atheistic, utilitarian worldview, Dawkins added, “Suffering should be avoided. [The abortion] cause[s] no suffering. Reduce suffering wherever you can.”

Aside from the fact that he’s wrong on facts — the unborn certainly can feel pain at twenty weeks — he’s also wrong on his assumption, that giving birth to a baby with Down Syndrome relegates you — and the child — to a life of suffering. According to Lifesite News, 99 percent of respondents with Down Syndrome say they are “happy.” Further, 99 percent of parents say they love their child with Down Syndrome. Only 4 percent of parents who responded say they regret having the child.

However, whatever we may say about Dawkins’s barbarism, a lot of people agree with him — in fact, over 90 percent of unborn children with this diagnosis get aborted.

Later, responding to a firestorm of criticism, Dawkins callously pointed out the obvious: “What I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary pro-choice stance that most of us, I presume, espouse.”

Worldview matters. Followed to its logical conclusion, the atheistic worldview says that human life has no inherent meaning or value and is therefore disposable. True to his utilitarian impulses, Dawkins makes a distinction between humans who can “contribute” to society and those who can’t. Those with Down Syndrome, Dawkins decrees, simply are “not enhanced,” and therefore expendable. In fact, he says it’s wrong to let them live.

I’m guessing that Dawkins never met Tim Harris, the owner of Tim’s Place, the amazing restaurant in New Mexico I told you about some months ago. Tim has Down Syndrome.

Dawkins, trapped in his atheistic worldview, doesn’t understand that all humans – including those like Tim – are made in the priceless image of God. And he’ll never see that those with disabilities “pull us away,” in the words of my colleague Stan Guthrie, “from our besetting narcissism.” Sometimes suffering, which Dawkins so abhors, actually makes us better people.

In “Dancing with Max,” Emily Colson’s great book about her autistic son, Chuck Colson wrote that through the huge trials of Max’s disability, the family came to a “new understanding of what love really is.”

And as we face the pressure to conform to the respectable barbarism of our times, we ought remember what Jesus said about treating those considered “the least of these.” Perhaps He had in mind the infirm, the poor, the prisoner, and the baby with genetic disorders.

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Disabilities, Identity, and Healing: Should We Even Want To Be Made Whole?

Mark 10:51

Nearly twenty years ago, Chuck Colson told BreakPoint listeners the story of Gauvin Hughes McCullough. His parents, Sharon and Candace, in addition to being a same-sex couple, were also deaf [see HolwickID #17079]. Being deaf was an important, if not the most important, part of their identity. It was so important, in fact, they did everything they could to maximize the chances that their child would also be deaf. They recruited a deaf friend as a sperm donor and hoped for what they saw as the “best,” which they got: a deaf son.

Chuck’s commentary came to mind after I read a story at the BBC’s website entitled “Stop Trying to ‘Heal’ Me.” The author, BBC digital editor Damon Rose, begins by telling readers that “From time to time, without warning or encouragement, I get approached in the street by Christians who tell me they want to pray for me to get my sight back.”

Now, going up to a total stranger, especially one who cannot see you approaching, and offering to pray for them then and there without getting to know them first could reasonably be called “rude.” The same would be true if you insisted on praying with someone who told you not to.

If that were all Rose was trying to tell people, including well-meaning Christians, that would be fine. But he didn’t stop there. Bad manners were the least of his concerns.

What Rose objected to is the idea that anyone thinks that he needs “to be ‘fixed’ – just as Jesus ‘fixed’ disabled people in the Gospels.” Those are his words, not mine. What the Bible calls “healing,” which in Greek can also mean “salvation,” he views as a form of denigration.

Now if you’re thinking, “What about all the times the Bible tells us that Jesus was moved by compassion for the person He was healing?” Well, then you’re not reading the Bible through the proper modern lens. What matters most nowadays, apparently, is not what Jesus was feeling when He was moved to heal, but how it makes some contemporary readers feel when they read about those stories.

Based on this new criteria, one theologian quoted by Rose suggests that Jesus was wrong to heal those with disabilities. Even worse, she claimed that the people Jesus healed were not “really real characters or real people who have feelings and needs and personalities.” Instead, they were simply opportunities for Jesus to show off His power.

Now to be clear, this theologian quoted also argued that saints and martyrs such as Perpetua, Sergius, and Bacchus were transgender, so make of her statements what you will.

Even so, another person Rose quotes “defended” Jesus’ healings by pointing out there was no welfare state in first century Palestine. I’m not making that up. In her estimation, if Jesus were to see a blind man walking down the street today, He would not feel pity for him.

Chuck pointed out years ago that the case of Gauvin McCullough is what Cornell West called the “cultural politics of difference.” Today, as we see in Rose’s articles, it’s more commonly known as identity politics.

As with McCullough’s parents, Rose and those who agree with him are claiming that what makes them different from other people is what defines who they are. So to suggest, as in the case of cochlear implants for the deaf or divine healing for the blind, that things could be different, or even better, is a personal affront, or even worse. It’s even been compared to genocide.

How different this is than from being at peace with your or your loved one’s disabilities. Think of Joni Erickson Tada or so many parents of children with special needs who see God’s hand at work in their circumstances.

They would never regard God’s compassion or healing as “alienating.” They certainly would not let their pride get in the way of God relieving them or their loved one of their disability.

Whatever our degree of brokenness or disability, none of us are whole. Not a single one of us. That’s why we should all welcome God’s grace and kindness, and why we should long for the day when God will make all things new in Christ—even us.

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Resources

"A World of His Own: The Sad Case of Gauvin Hughes McCullough," by Chuck Colson, BreakPoint.org, April 9, 2002; see HolwickID #17079.