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| Thomas Alva Edison (born Feb 11, 1847 -- died Oct 18, 1931), was taught at home by his mother because at age 7 he was expelled from school for being considered mentally retarded -- he was deaf. |
I remember in Grandma Kate’s kitchen, seeing the old
man with long hair and crooked hands. “So you’re Dougie’s girl,” he said. I was
five going on six, loved my daddy Douglas and had never heard him called Dougie, but it sounded like a good
mixture of Douglas and Daddy. I
nodded. Cat swallowed my words. That was the first and only time I met my
Grandpa Charles. Later I asked my parents about him and was put off with “He’s
in a hospital”. Institutionalized.
“Always been crazy”. How come there were
such pretty paintings all over Grandma Charles’ homestead, though everyone said
she was so poor an’ he never gave her anything? Why does Grandpa Charles have long hair – boys wear it short. ‘Cept
in pictures of Jesus and Moses and people from the Bible. Is Grandpa from the Bible times? Did he die? And when we visited
the Richmond
Nowadays the problems of mental illness are different.
People are no longer institutionalized for long periods. Several friends I know
on both sides of the Atlantic have family members who struggle with mental
illness and though there is no more a culture of “putting away” or
institutionalizing people who have “gone mad”, many are the unresolved issues,
and families are embarrassed to talk about them. Often family and friends wish
there were a way to simply “lock up” the “offender”. “Crazy” family members
spend like made, though they may have been the most beautiful child in the
family, do weird and irresponsible things like getting rid of all their
belongings, or expecting Christmas presents every day, or hiding and hoarding
food, when not getting drugged and dragged naked into the street by their
folly. They are old children, never growing up and never knowing what a soft,
gentle demeanor can do to make them lovely once more.
Once when a recovering addict answered the phone at
the Refúgio clinic my husband directed in Brasília, the person on the line
asked, “Is that where the crazy people stay?” and Ulisses, without missing a
beat, answered, “Yeah, here the best of us drool!” Especially after I suffered
a CVA, I felt that not only the “best of us drool”, but also the Brazilian saying
“between doctors and madmen, we all own a bit of both”. Edward Welch describes
diseases that “characteristically alter intellect, emotions or behavioral
capabilities. These can impair understanding, pose limitations on the
expression of the heart, provide occasions for temptation and sin, and raise
unique problems for families.... because they mimic spiritual problems of the
heart, they are often misdiagnosed by counselors and physicians”.[1]
Now, a blog is no place for an all-encompassing, deep
essay on mental disabilities – and I am certainly not qualified to analyze such
problems. Have a couple of friends who are respected neurologists, many who are
practicing psychologists, and even a couple of psychiatrists, besides the
pastoral and family counselors with whom I am familiar. I can only write as a
Christian reader who wants to know what the Bible can offer to those who are
perturbed. Mainly it is a matter of hope and encouragement.
I write as a “drooler” -- one who not always can
control the saliva I produce – much less the mental and psychological issues
that we confront on a daily basis. I write as the child who discovered that her
grandfather was labeled “crazy” and put away, the young mother who discovered a
child she begat and wholly loved -- with mental illness that loses her, the
middle-aged couple who have to deal with their parents’ senility, the “golden years”
grandmother who faces the reality of her own disenfranchisement as she forgets
more often, remembers “long ago” but lets the beans burn and the shower run dry
and mixes up the grandchildren’s birthdays. I write to friends who are afraid
of “losing it” and want to grab every detail of their past and hold tight so it
won’t get away, while hoping to forget those things that hurt deep in their
heart of hearts and still make them feel “like the motherless child” of the Negro
spiritual.
Mental and emotional disabilities remind us that
nobody is really normal. Disability
requires patience, time, trust, submission and hope” – qualities most of us,
normal, mildly or severely disabled all, severely lack in our post-modern
world. There is need for “awareness that to live will involve us, at some time
and at some level, in physical and/or psychic suffering”.[2]
Michael Beates poses some hard questions:
Why do we... demand that everybody be ‘normal’ and
look the same? Why do we ... try so hard at hiding people with disabilities
from our everyday view? Why do some people with visible and invisible
brokenness often feel as if they have to hide the problem in order to join
God’s people for worship? Finally, and perhaps more importantly, what answers
does the good news of the gospel give us for those questions, and how does the
gospel give us hope in these situations?... Many sources number statistics as
to Americans with disabilities at over forty million people.... Add to this the
number of people whose ‘brokenness’ is relational and emotional, and this category
may include almost every other person in the pew.[3]
I have a dear friend who struggles with bipolarity and
a split personality, and has illusions that, if by faith, she stops taking her meds, the Lord will heal her through the
television ministrations of some quack evangelist.
Another loved one is locked in her room and her dreams while hoping she will be
healed by a new relationship, a new love, so she buries the meds and tries out
new loves.
Disability is not foreign to the Bible. King Saul was
tormented by fits of madness for which David was called to sing, play his harp
and comfort the king – First case of
music therapy that we have documented
knowledge (1 Samuel 14:14-23). Later, David sought refuge with the king of Gath king Nebuchadnezzar, who behaved like an irrational
animal (Daniel 4). Later both reason and government were restored.
When, upon preparing
to enter the promised land, Moses presented his people with the fullness of
blessings or destitution of curses as they obeyed or disobeyed the Word of God,
I was intrigued by one of the curses: “The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart.... So you shall be driven mad because of the sight which
your eyes see” (Deuteronomy 28.28, 34), and goes on to a horrifying description
of evil in the land. A couple of thousand years later, Paul warns Timothy of
the evil of the “last days”, which in every detail seems to describe our days:
For men will be lovers
of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to
parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without
self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers
of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying
its power.
And from such people
turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives
of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always
learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy
3:2-7).
.We
are confused at Biblical representations of those who are disabled. The imago dei, the fact that we are created
in God’s image and likeness, would indicate that we were created perfect, and the many imperfections in
the people around us whom we love and loathe are the result of the universal
fall, but definitely “not the way it should be”. Just as the sacrificial lambs
goats or bulls had to be “perfect”, entrance in the tabernacle and temple were
denied to those with deficiencies. But sacrifices were made “for the simple and
those who could not answer for their own sanity” (Numbers 15:30; Ez 45.20). On
the cross, Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do” Luke 21.34. There is a disability
due to ignorance which is freely forgiven. But as we look at the Gospel, we see
that the Spirit was upon Jesus to heal and set free. Beates says:
In many respects (John 9 being an exception), Jesus
never fully explained his focus on the lame, blind, crippled and poor. He let
the healings and parables speak for themselves, allowing the hearers to connect
the dots, so to speak.... Paul drew the lines more clearly, perhaps for the
sake of those new to the covenant community... but throughout, we continue to
see (albeit sometimes subtle) an important thread in the fabric of our
understanding of the gospel: brokenness (spiritually and emotionally) and
weakness (physically representing our spiritual state) are the normative human
condition. And recognizing this reality is the first step to embracing the life-giving
power of the gospel.[4]
There is a very special boy in our family who has struggled
with learning disabilities, mental and neurological challenges, and in a way
will always need help, medical and psychological, to function properly. But he
loves the Lord and was taught in the Word. When he was still quite little, at a
school that denied the Trinity, he said to his dad, referring to his teacher,
“Here Dad. Tell her that God is three in one -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Tell her like the Bible says!” More recently, he has depended on the Lord to
strengthen him in the areas where he is weak, and prays that “God will use me with my disabilities to help
other kids like me to know Jesus”. We are as proud of this young man as of
the other children all – whether normal, gifted or disabled. This gospel is
what gives hope to us – whole or “special” – in manifold ways. Paul says it
humbly and triumphantly:
For you see your
calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world
to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world
and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not,
to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His
presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God
– and righteousness and sanctification and redemption -- that, as it is
written, "He who glories, let him glory in the LORD." (1 Corinthians
1:26-31)
Elizabeth Gomes
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