Jeff McNair, Ph.D. is professor of special education at California Baptist University where he directs the Education Specialist program in Moderate to Severe Disabilities. He and his wife Kathi have personally been involved in local church ministry to persons with disabilities since 1974.
I am a professor of special education specializing in moderate to severe disabilities. I am not a seminary professor or theological expert who can parse out Bible verses or speak about meanings in the original languages. However, I am a Christian who has worked within the Christian church and community on areas related to persons with disabilities since 1974. I can read my Bible and make applications to Christian life. Following this simple practice, I can say that we as the Christian church are failing in this area.
Love your Neighbor
In considering theology and disability, one should begin by looking at the greatest commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor. Jesus addressed this in the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). When scripture commands us to love our neighbors, we cannot be like the law scholar described in the passage who in seeking to “justify himself” basically asks Jesus, “Who is not my neighbor?” It could be that he wanted to reflect on what he would expect to be Jesus’ perspective in that he is commanded to love some people but not love others. We may think we can look at this question and consider it a bit silly. However, although this question has perhaps already been answered, we act as if the Lord supported the questioner’s perspective and in fact, did identify groups of people whom we are not required to love. Among those are persons with disabilities.
Back in 2010, I ran across a document related to persons with disabilities in Uganda, a place where I was attempting to develop a university program in disability studies. Entitled, “As if we weren’t human: Discrimination and violence against women with disabilities in Northern Uganda” the essay shares stories which make the reader wonder if the women described were indeed fully human. Too often, persons with disabilities are perceived as weak (McNair, 2014) and are treated poorly. That is wrong. However, there are other ways in which people can be considered less than fully human. When the Lord commands us to go and make disciples of all nations, he does not add any qualifications. If we were to say, “No, I’m not going to go to Canada” we would be considered disobedient. Why would we exclude a group of people simply because they have the characteristic of being from a place called Canada? We might also say, “No, I’m not going to go to people with a particular skin color.” We would then be a racist community. However, we feel entirely comfortable in saying, “No, I am not going to go to people with disabilities.” It is as if people with that characteristic were not human, i.e., not created in the image of God, and so needn’t be a focus for evangelism and discipleship.
In a recent conversation with a denominational leader over what was called compassion ministries, I asked whether churches were reaching out with ministry towards persons with disabilities. He indicated that of the over 200 churches in the region he was over, he knew of only six that were evangelizing, discipling, and/or including persons with various impairments in a very deliberate fashion. I wish I could say that this is a malaise of only this particular denomination, but virtually every flavor of Christianity might be indicted for lack of caring for this particular group.
As we consider a Biblical perspective on disability, we begin by understanding that the Bible applies to all people. We then move to other scriptures commands which we have apparently chosen to ignore. I would refer the reader to McNair and Rhodes (2019) for an in-depth discussion of scripture references which they lay out in the description of a Christian model of disability. This model uses the Bible to describe five relationships: the person with disabilities in relation to God, the person with disabilities in relation to themselves, the person with disabilities in relation to the community, the community in relation to itself, and the community in relation to God.
Confronting Traditions
Scripture shows us that Jesus confronted unloving traditions. We see this is the story of the woman at the well (John 4), the woman with the bleeding issue (Mark 5:25–34), and the woman who washed his feet with her tears (Luke 7:36–50) among others. The Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day (maybe pastors of our day) allowed their traditions to trump the commands of God, particularly to love one’s neighbor. They replaced the command with their traditions, treating them as equivalent to the commands of God. In Mark 7:6–9 and 13, Jesus says,
Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition…thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
It is as if I am considering two options: I can obey the commands of God (e.g., love all of my neighbors) or I can hold to my traditions where I treat some people as more valuable than others, the others as if they weren’t human. James addresses this practice in chapter 2:1. “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” The New Living Translations translates the passage in a more confrontative manner saying, “My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others?” Other passages such as Romans 2:11 also make this point. The implications of this passage are many, however. At a very basic level, this form of favoritism can call into question whether we have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet we consistently exclude persons with disabilities, particularly those who may have some form of social skill deficit.
In an introduction to special education class that I teach for general and special education teachers, I have my students interview their pastor with three questions.
- Are people with disabilities a priority for ministry in our church?
- If they are a priority, what is the evidence that they are a priority?
- If they are not a priority, why aren’t they a priority?
I will also prepare the students for the often-disappointing responses they may receive from church leaders. Sadly, most walk away discouraged. Pastors will say everything from, “We are not impacted by persons with disabilities,” the implication being almost a sigh of relief in that they therefore don’t have to do anything in that area. One might respond, “Maybe that is why no one with a disability attends your church.” Another common response is “We love all people who come to us the same” when many are unable to come to church because they cannot drive or get a license due to their disability and regular congregational members have been discipled into feeling no compulsion to provide rides to potential disabled members. I’ve used the word “discipled” deliberately throughout this paper as I believe that is how people have been taught about the Christian faith in relation to persons with disabilities within the Christian community. Pastors have told me, “We cannot prioritize all areas of ministry, so we chose not to serve in this area.” In other words, if you are a person with a disability go someplace else because you are not a priority to us.
One would think these responses are not the result of a lack of understanding scripture’s indicating we should love our neighbors, all of our neighbors. It is more likely a decision to not understand, to not love some neighbors because loving them may be more challenging. It is like the old adage, “You cannot wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.” Somehow, cultural change in the Christian community needs to be facilitated.
It is interesting to look at how Jesus interacted with persons with disabilities, and there are many examples. Two verses when considered side by side are particularly interesting. In Mark 2:1–2 we read the familiar story of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof by his friends. In verse 5, the passage states, “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” I suspect that when the friends heard this, they were disappointed. But when confronted by a person with a disability, Jesus looks to the need that every person has independent of their personal characteristics, the need for forgiveness. Contrast this with the story of another interaction. In Mark 10:46–52 we read of Bartimaeus, a blind man. He calls out, arguably in faith, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus ultimately calls him forward but then asks an unusual question for the context. “What do you want me to do for you?” Clearly, Jesus knew what he wanted but I suspect he was trying to teach something about the blind man. He already had faith which was the most important thing and healing on some level was secondary.
In each of these interactions with someone with a disability, the critical question is whether they have faith or not; once again the same question for any of us. If Jesus goes to the heart of the issue which is faith in God, why wouldn’t we?
The Sovereignty of God
As Christians, we are familiar with the concept of the sovereignty of God, which implies that nothing is outside of his control. Everything we observe is either caused or permitted by him. We see this idea in a variety of passages. Exodus 4:11 states “Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” This implies purpose on God’s part.
But let’s think some more about the ramifications of the sovereignty of God. His design for people is the church. The church is a gathering of Christ followers. One would assume therefore there should be a place for all Christ followers in the church. If there is not a place for someone based on some perceived characteristic or difference, if a person with disabilities is rejected or unwelcome, then something is wrong with how the church operates. This is the case whether it is tradition trumping the commands of God (Mark 7), members seeing and treating some people as more important than others (James 2) being unwilling to relinquish our power (McNair, 2014) such that seemingly weaker people are treated as dispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22), that people are thought as less honorable and treated as such (1 Corinthians 12:23) or telling someone, “I don’t need you” (1 Corinthians 12:21). The end result is that we reject God’s sovereignty for the church/Christian community by rejecting people created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) who according to his purposes have a disability.
In recent years, there has been a significant growth in the incidence of autism. Whether this is an actual increase or in part a recategorization of persons who were served under a different label like “learning disability” in the past—a discussion on labeling people is worthy of another whole discussion—it seems there are more people with this characteristic today than in the past. From a sovereignty of God perspective, one might ask, “What is God doing with this increase?” “Is there purpose in this for the church, the Christian community?” Inviting their presence to the larger community would change us. For example, we likely would have to do things reflecting the showing of special honor (1 Cor. 12:23). So, is this increase a corrective for us in the way we have been doing church and Christian community? Going back to Mark 7, will we obey the commands of God particularly to love our neighbors and embrace the radical changes obedience would bring? Or will we ignore, sidestep, or deny the commands of God and continue to hold to traditions which cause us to stay the same, making our traditions-based failings the newly created and embraced commands of God? These then allow us to not love all of our neighbors.
Changing our Culture
Can we, once again under the sovereignty of God, accept that people have purpose in the way they are for themselves and for the community? I can ignore that sovereign purpose for me as a community member and not experience the growth minimally in love for others that I might learn. “I only want to love people who are easy to love” could be a criticism of some Christian groups. Don’t ask me to love someone who would cause me to have to change my life traditions, my church traditions, my worship traditions. It is important to note, however, that you are not the way God created you exclusively so that I can learn lessons about life. That perspective is too self-centered. Your life has purpose entirely apart from mine. Yet at the same time, we are in community in part, so that we will learn these lessons from each other.
It might be countered, “If persons with disabilities are present, I won’t be able to do all the things I have always done in the same manner.” You are absolutely correct! You often will not.
However, as implied thus far, is their presence in some way a “prophetic presence” (McNair in press)? A prophet may be defined as someone who speaks for the Lord. Is the presence of people, the mere presence, prophetic through the changes their presence demands? It is not that a child with autism is making demands in the form of statements like, “I want this or that.” But rather his presence forces us to reflect on our comfortable, entrenched practices that have resulted in exclusion. We learn what loving our neighbor acted out in inclusive practices demands. We then must decide whether we will respond to those demands and change. Once again, overtly or not, this is something that we in the church have too often considered and have then decided to hold to traditions and ignore the commands of God. As indicated by the responses my students receive when interviewing their pastors, the lack of evidence of caring would condemn us in that we don’t care for some people because of the way they have been created.
It is funny that when people with disabilities are at times integrated, we decry their presence and talk about how we don’t know what to do. Take the example of a 10-year-old child with autism who joins the Sunday school class. We are stymied as to what to do with their presence. There is no disagreement that faith development/discipleship can become more challenging particularly as compared to the way we typically do these things. However, once again at a very basic, organic level these people were created to be among us in a community called the church.
But that is what obedience to the command to love your neighbor looks like. It can be inconvenient, challenging, hard, life-changing and it is not even so much about the person with the impairment as it is about you. Resistance to change is a characteristic of all of us. When we devalue some people, that is a defect in our character, not theirs. Perhaps the increase in autism, for example, is in part God’s way of showing us how much we fail at loving our neighbors. Think back again to the story of the Good Samaritan. The man in the story who had been beaten and left for dead was doing nothing in the story, just lying there dying. But his presence showed which of the passersby would or would not love their neighbor. It is interesting how Jesus uses someone with a disability to teach that in the parable. How will we respond when people with potentially difficult issues come into our social sphere? I know one thing that happens to me is that I am forced to rely on the Lord more in the context of ministry. I can no longer do things myself in my own power. It is like in the story of Jehosophat (when the nation is surrounded by enemies). He hasn’t the strength to defend his people. So, he prays, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). On some level, that is a place we should desire to occupy. A place where we recognize we do not have the strength or ability to do something and must rely on the Lord.
Yet within the Christian community, we have created settings with physical demands that cannot be met by some, social demands that cannot be met by others, intellectual demands that cannot be met by others and in the process have discipled people into becoming intolerant of any expectations being placed on them to do anything outside of their accustomed practices. This is in contrast to Christ’s command when he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). These environments and practices have been socially constructed. Because of that, they are different in different places around the world with different groups. If they are socially constructed, one must wonder how they came to be as they are. The author has often wondered about this when considering the unanimity there is in the Christian tradition towards persons with disabilities and the resistance to change in those traditions in response to the command of God to love our neighbors. We are commanded to love all of our neighbors and we must recognize that they are the way they are according to God’s sovereignty.
Change in Discipleship
When one considers the lack of inclusion of persons with disabilities, there is a degree to which this exclusion must be laid at the feet of our leaders. Whether it be pastors, denominational leaders, or faculty and administrators at Christian colleges and seminaries who are training our leaders. Based upon their actions, apparently, these folks have been discipled into the viewpoint that ministry to persons with disabilities is not sufficiently important to be made a priority. This perspective is then relayed to pastors-in-training and rank-and-file members of local Christian communities with the end result being the ministry priorities we currently see in local churches. This goes broader than disability ministry in a specific sense. At my own church, we have women with disabilities who would desire to participate in the women’s ministries and seniors who would like to be a part of the ministry to seniors. However, despite persistent efforts to encourage leaders of these ministries to invite and get group members to offer rides to individuals with disabilities, there is an ongoing refusal to do so by the ministry membership. This reflects both the priority the leaders place on loving all of our neighbors and the way participants in these ministries have been discipled into what their responsibility to love their neighbors might entail. It is important to note that this is also occurring in a church that vocally prides itself on ministry to persons with impairments. But no hypocrisy is apparently felt by leaders or members.
I observed this form of discipleship in a seminar I once gave in Chicago. While speaking to Sunday school leaders/teachers, one attendee who was an assistant to one of the children’s pastors who was present indicated with tears, that her son with autism had been in the children/youth ministry for eight years and had no friends. Apparently, that was an acceptable way to disciple young people about their responsibility for loving others with disabilities.
This is even at the Christian university level. I was once asked by a faculty member in the School of Theology whether one of my special education teachers in training would befriend one of their theology students with high-functioning autism. I responded, “Listen to what you just told me. There are no students preparing to be pastors who will invite someone with disabilities to friendship.” That the professor was looking outside of their school also implied that this was an acceptable practice.
So, once again people are literally being discipled into accepting the exclusion of persons with disabilities as an acceptable practice.
The Challenge of Loving Your Neighbor
It is also important to be honest in considering the propositions put forward in this paper. Some individuals with disabilities have social skill deficits. Some will have difficulty participating in church structures the way they are currently designed and acted out. This makes their participation difficult for them and for those who do not experience the same types of challenges as they. Also, for people who have no experience with persons with disabilities and don’t forget those with disabilities themselves. Will we have to change the ways that we do things? As stated, we definitely will. Will that cause people to leave churches that embrace a new way of doing Christian community? Yes. Change is difficult and it has yet to be determined what specifically we would be changing to. How does a community look different when it prioritizes loving all of its neighbors over not loving all of its neighbors? Surprisingly, it is arguable that this question has yet to be explored. It is more comfortable to love those who are more predictable and thus easier to love. I have personally received significant pushback when I state the fact that for some people, those with impairments can be more difficult to love, to do the things for these individuals that love requires. But this is true for all of us. For example, persons without intellectual disabilities may struggle with those who do. Those with intellectual disabilities may struggle with those with autism. And those with autism may struggle with those who are “neurotypical” (a new label developed by persons with autism for those who do not have autism). Pushback comes from both those who believe that exclusion is the preferred option and those who assume that loving all of one’s neighbors is something that is easy and should simply be demanded. On the one hand, because we all sin in this area, we really don’t know what this would actually look like. We do not know how the culture would change, how our traditions would be different and what might be required of each of us. On the other hand, we could attempt to facilitate ways that it would perhaps make it easier for us to love our neighbors. But to quote James Baldwin (1962, p. 62), “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” We need this form of confrontation. Do we have the courage to do what might be required to love our neighbors?
I once received pushback from a famous American Christian leader when I tried to describe how the typical worship service would change if more persons with social skill deficits were present. The response from the leader was that it would be difficult to worship with such distractions. We need to have completely quiet worship services out of respect for the Word being shared and for God himself. I responded by asking if the leader had ever attended the type of worship that often characterizes many African American churches. The congregation is very vocal and the last thing the worship service is is quiet. But please don’t tell me that you think that the Word of God is not going out, not being delivered in such settings. What we minimally come to understand is that the way we do Christian community is a cultural choice. We can choose to have quiet, social skill-demanding services. We can choose to have more verbally open and “noisy” services. One might find themselves uncomfortable in either of these types of services depending upon what they are used to. However, neither one is necessarily wrong unless, as they both will sometimes do, they refuse to embrace the changes in their culture leading to loving their neighbors. Any Christian community that embraces a culture resulting in them not loving their neighbors because of the way people are under God’s sovereignty, is doing something wrong. Their culture needs to change.
Inclusive Ministry
I was once invited to do a sermon at a church in Northern Ireland. The pastor encouraged me to be very confrontive, jokingly saying, “Punch us in the nose!” At one point in the sermon, I asked the congregation just to stop and listen. It was perfectly quiet. “This is what segregation sounds like,” I told them. “Segregation implies that we as Christians are not loving our neighbors as you cannot have a perfectly quiet worship service unless certain groups of people are excluded and that is sin.” After the service, the pastor good-naturedly said, “I told you to punch us in the nose, not body slam us!” Once again, we know what we may need to change from, but what do we need to change to? Remember, culture is to a great extent a choice. It has been socially constructed. Because it was socially constructed, it can be changed. Much thought and proposals from the theological and pastoral leadership is needed to guide us to what might be next as far as our culture goes.
This is true for our culture, our group, but it is also true for us individually. Our church would be different in the way that we would do things, but how would that make me different? Like the story of the Sunday school teacher and the theology professor, maybe there would be a greater demand for my acceptance of others. That is, perhaps I would learn that my primary responsibility toward others is to love them, to invite them to friendship, not to judge them or change them. That would cause me to become different. Maybe there would be a greater demand for service from me. Going to a worship service would perhaps cause me to do everything from helping someone to find a Bible passage, to ignoring movement and noise, to assisting people who want to stand during parts of the service, to assisting people to use the restroom, and everything in between. Worship would imply service during the service. What a novel idea. Church would not be simply about me and perhaps complaining when my preferences for a particular type of music or social environment are not met. It might also imply expectations of me to bring people to church and make them feel welcome. I might learn to overlook social skill deficits and support families who are struggling with children with challenging behaviors. Just this brief description provides a bit of a visual of what the result of changes might look like. How would I benefit?
We must be clear that inclusive ministry is not just for me and not just for those with disabilities; the latter of which is the mistake most often made. The feeling can be that even though you are at church, I don’t need to be integrated with you because the ministry you participate in is only to serve you and I have nothing to gain from your presence. So, I reject the prophetic potential of your presence. Using the metaphor of a human body, Paul warns us in 1 Corinthians 12 that we need each other. Verse 21 tells us that the eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” In other words, I can’t say to you, “I don’t need you” nor can you say that to me. We may not have specifically said those words to a group of people, but our actions too often have reflected those words. Until we are all present, arguably we are not the church as it was intended to be if only based upon God in his sovereignty making people the way that they are. It is an elementary proposition to state the following:
- God made everyone the way that they are.
- We are commanded to love everyone.
Yes, this is very simple to state, but it is so difficult to carry out. Will we try and fail? Of course, we will. However, to quote the basketball great, Michael Jordan, “I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I cannot accept not trying.” I think that could be what we are most guilty of.
It is funny that people will use the phrase “people affected by disability” to describe those who have impairments like autism or intellectual disability or cerebral palsy. The implication being there are two distinct groups and that one alone is “affected” by disability. In reality, parents, family members and friends are deeply affected. Yet our goal should be to increase the number of people affected by disability through friendship and community participation together. There should be little room for an us and them perspective. It should only be us. Sure, you have cerebral palsy and I may not. But I am also affected by cerebral palsy because I am in your life through our inviting each other to friendship if nothing else. We should see this type of relationship and the disdain for the separation described, throughout the Christian community because that is what loving one’s neighbor would look like.
Disability and Lament
It is important to understand that building relationships can be difficult for those with and without disabilities. Minimally, they are “unchosen” (McNair & McKinney, 2016). I have often heard from parents of children with impairments, the lament, that it is at times frustrating to try to integrate their family into typical social settings because of the way they are misunderstood or treated. But I understand from a theological perspective that I, we, need these people in our community to be what we were intended to be. This is not some pablum of a statement, but a truth that desperately needs to be embraced. Parents and their children with disabilities may experience being segregated from the community, but in part because of the experiences they have had, in attempting to participate in the community they may also segregate themselves. We must do our best to encourage them not to do that. We need them, their perspective, even their lament. If we will listen to that lament, we can become better at understanding their lives and loving them better. Individuals with disabilities will often state that the hardest part of having a disability is the way you are treated by others. This is a very broad-brush statement but remember that most disabilities are mild and can cause someone to act a bit different, socially. But that minor difference is for the community’s unkind treatment. As stated earlier, if I devalue others because of a personal characteristic such as a disability, that is a characteristic of me, not of them. When I am confronted with their consistent devaluation through their lament, I may become aware, start to pay attention, and see my need to change.
But there are other aspects of lament that go beyond the social consequences of disability. How do I respond to God if I have a physical disability that I was born with? What does Christian theology tell me about who I am because of this impairment? People have been told some pretty awful things about what they or their parents may have done to cause this. Such misunderstanding about disability is once again in part based on the lack of attention the Christian community has paid to this topic and has almost been encouraged by the lack of attention. This misunderstanding is so prevalent it even has a name in academic circles, the “moral model of disability,” which states that any disability you experience is the result of sin in your, your parents or someone else’s life. that has caused this form of punishment to you. This perspective needs to be attacked at every level.
I once interviewed a prospective student for an MA program in Disability Studies. In the course of the interview, the applicant revealed that he struggled with mental illness. “In terms of your acceptance to the program, that doesn’t matter to me,” I replied, “as long as you can do the work required.” He responded, “Do you mean that you don’t think that I have mental illness because of unconfessed sin in my life? That is what my pastor told me.” This is the kind of pronouncement people hear when their leaders are uninformed about disability. The haughty implication is, “I don’t have mental illness because I have confessed the sin in my life. But you do because you have done something wrong.” I wish I could say these types of experiences are much less frequent than they are.
Once again, I believe we have been discipled into not caring about persons with disabilities. You have seen this term used elsewhere in this article. This is an outcome of a malaise within the Christian community. We do not teach about these issues in theology programs in Christian colleges. We do not teach about these issues in pastoral programs at seminaries. We do not teach about these issues from the pulpit. We do not teach about these issues in Bible studies or Sunday school classes. So, why would we expect anything other than the kind of response the student received from his pastor?
It is not entirely surprising that people would say these kinds of things. Have they ever been given a biblical perspective on disability? Think about the number of times you have heard a sermon in church that has addressed the topic of disability. In my own church, there have been 3 in 30 years. I know because I was the one who delivered them. This is in spite of estimates that nearly 20 percent of the population of the United States experiences some form of impairment. If one were to factor in the number of persons affected by disability through family or friendship connections, percentage. What would your conclusion be about yourself as a person with a disability or your family’s conclusion if the church never addressed people facing issues related to impairment? These people don’t think my experience is important.
To help people understand the prevalence of the experience of disability, we once created an event in our church where everyone who attended was given access to a bright yellow t-shirt with the words “Everyone belongs” printed on it. People were told, “If you have a disability, have a family member with a disability, or a friend with a disability, please take a shirt and wear it during the service today.” Minimally two-thirds of the congregation were wearing a shirt. This illustrated in a very observable way, the impact of the experience of disability on people’s lives. The question was then, what did people do with this information? For our congregation, the answer was that there was no significant change that we could identify. Why might you ask? Could it be because this information was outside of what had already not been taught about people with disabilities and our response to them?
C.S. Lewis wrote about what he called “the terrible parable of the sheep and the goats” based on Matthew 25:31–40. He states,
This can leave no conscience untouched, for in it the ‘Goats’ are condemned entirely for their sins of omission as if to make us fairly sure that the heaviest charge against each of us turns not upon things he has done but on those he never did–perhaps never dreamed of doing (Lewis, 1958, p. 11).
This observation applies to the points we have been making here. It is pretty obvious that, if you want to love other people, they probably have to be present. Interestingly, the things the sheep in the passage are commended for doing, ways they loved their neighbor, are not impossible actions. Matthew 25:37–39 lists the things what the sheep did.
Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
How do we get on the right side of this sheep/goat dichotomy? Give some food, give a drink, welcome others, provide clothing, and visit the lonely. These acts are not difficult, but they are things we too often are not doing, particularly in the context of disability. Arguably, these are the basic components of loving one’s neighbor. But the starting point—the principal challenge—is that one’s neighbor first be present.
Read more from the inaugural issue by downloading the full pdf or accessing the articles below.
Bibliography
Lewis, C.S., (1958). Reflections on the Psalms, Harper One; Reprint edition (February 14, 2017)
McNair, J. (2014). The power of those who seem weaker. The Journal of the Christian Institute on Disability, vol 3.1, 93–107.
McNair, J. & McKinney, B. (2016). Disability when viewed as impaired and unchosen relationships. The Journal of the Christian Institute on Disability, vol 5.2, 69–90. McNair, J. & Rhodes, B. (2019). Towards a Christian model of disability: The Bible is for all people. The Journal of the Christian Institute on Disability, vol 8.1, 11–36.