Good News, Bad News

I’ve been noticing something frightening lately. The idea of “good” and “bad” is rapidly disappearing from the public vocabulary. I don’t just mean in moral terms – though in fact the concept of “evil” has been at best trivialized or at worst abolished in public discourse, which leaves us, individually and collectively, stunningly vulnerable to the forces of evil – but rather in the simplest terms, the most practical terms imaginable.

I was struck last week by a New York Times article reporting on an advertising campaign intended to raise public awareness of mental illness in children. The advertisements had the form of “ransom notes” informing the public that such-and-such disorder had kidnapped their child. For instance: “We have your son. We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives.” — Signed, Autism. Some parents of autistic children complained. Why? Because the campaign made it seem like children with autism were damaged or had something in need or repair.

The implications are terrifying.

We are not yet quite at the point at which our culture says that it is no worse to be blind than to see, no better to be able to walk independently than to be unable to walk… but we’re close. At the same time that psychological and mental diagnoses of illness are proliferating, so too is the idea vanishing that these constitute dis-ability.

As sinning human beings, we sadly often fail at putting into action the truth that all human beings are precious and valuable, no matter how able or disabled they are, mentally or physically. We must continue to work at that. But the way forward is to embrace equal value in the face of disability, not deny the existence of disability. Saying that an autistic person is simply made different, not disabled, by his inability to process stimuli, or that a child with Asperger’s who cannot understand emotions doesn’t have something broken in her brain, strikes a blow at the very heart of the concept of “good” and “bad,” at the ideal of human wholeness and health. – and that has deadly implications for all of us.

I am an athlete, a competitive fencer. My joy in fencing is a special gift; the fact that I have a physical body to use (for fencing, walking, typing this essay, and so on) is part of the package of being a created human being. Last spring I developed severe tendonitis in my right elbow from overuse, and wound up in excruciating pain. I couldn’t so much as pick up a glass of water, shift from park to drive in my car, or hold a pen without intense pain. I literally lost most of the use of my arm.

I was disabled. Dis-abled, not differently abled.

I was every bit as much a human being as before my injury, but with all my heart I wanted to be healed, wanted to be free of pain, wanted to be able to do again what I used to be able to do.

Thanks be to God, I progressed well in physical therapy, am able to fence again, and am almost (though not entirely) pain-free. I also learned a great deal during that time. I came to understand that I needed to abide patiently in whatever state of ability or dis-ability I was in. Whatever my condition, God is working through it for my ultimate good (and I did grow in my relationship with Him during the difficult time of my rehab). It was (and is) my responsibility to work hard to enable that healing to take place, holding in mind the vision of health and wholeness that is God’s image for each of us.

What I fear is being lost in our culture is that vision of wholeness. Personally, I am grateful that my fencing teammates were supportive of me while I was in rehab, considering me just as much a member of the team even when I wasn’t able to participate (and patiently putting up with intermittent bouts of whining). I am appreciative that my coach was willing to modify our lessons to accommodate my disability. But I am even more grateful that no one gave up on me – not my therapist, not my teammates, not my coach, not my pastor – as I worked hard to recover the full use of my arm.

I was disabled for a time. But my disability was not part of my identity.

What I fear is that our culture is increasingly encouraging people to claim dysfunction as identity. Two thousand years ago, Christ walked among the people, healing them. The paralyzed, He made to walk; the deaf to hear, the blind to see. What does He find today?

People who resist the idea of curing deafness in children in the name of preserving “deaf culture.” Anorexics who resist treatment because they define themselves by their disorder. The popularization of “body modification” by scarring, piercing, and tattooing in extreme. Parents whose rightful protection of their autistic children’s value as human beings leads them to deny that autism causes damage, not just difference.

If our culture is losing the sense of “good” and “bad” even on the physical, practical level, it has already lost it on the moral level. The only value judgment left to us is the distinction between “I like it” and “I don’t like it.”

What’s the result?

Back in pagan times, people recognized the existence of sin and evil. They didn’t have an effective way to deal with it, but they accepted that humans are flawed and the world is broken. The Christian gospel was good news: the announcement that, finally, humankind had a complete and comprehensive answer to the problem of sin.

The gospel is only good news to people who understand that they are sinners.

So evangelists in the modern day have a challenge unprecedented in the history of Christianity. Christians have always been counter-cultural, but never so much as now. The gospel has been met with “it’s too good to be true” and “it’s not true” but not with “I don’t need it.”

For us in the present day, it’s necessary to first preach the bad news – we are sinners, evil is real – before the good news can be heard as such. We cannot be healed unless we want to be healed. And before we can want to be healed, we have to recognize that we are sick.

It is easier, in the short term, to redefine individuality and self-worth so broadly as to include all forms of dysfunction, easier to avoid the pain of correction and overlook the places that need repair. But easier doesn’t mean better. In my physical therapy sessions, having the therapist break up the scar tissue along the tendons in my arm was excruciating; even with my high pain tolerance it literally brought me to tears. But I’m glad my therapist cared enough to do what needed to be done.

Recognizing that we are broken, in need of repair, dysfunctional, disabled is hard. Pretending we’re not broken only blinds us to the vision of wholeness, health, and joy that ought to be ours.

Healing is often difficult and painful. That does not make it less necessary. The fact that we are broken does not mean that we should settle for anything less than wholeness.

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