Sermon Tone Analysis

Let me start today by asking you a question.

What thoughts were going through your mind as you watched the slide show?

And be honest with yourself.

What were you feeling?

I’m sure some of you felt pity as you thought of people who can’t walk, or talk, or see, communicate, or have lost the ability to interact or understand their loved ones.

I’m sure there were a few among us who were feeling thankful you were not born with a physical or mental disability.

Some of you may have felt anger.

Why would a loving God allow such pain and suffering?

Some of you may have felt guilty.

You know people who have special needs but you have made a conscious decision to stay as far away as possible because it makes you feel uncomfortable to be around them.

I’m sure many of you simply felt overwhelmed.

What can I do with all the other things I have on my plate?

Well let me start off and say my goal is not to make you feel guilty and it is not to coerce you into joining our special need ministry.

My goal is to simply give you some tools to help you see disabilities from God’s perspective and to then help all of us deal with the reality of people who have been touched by disability.

As a church we would be negligent if we ignored the reality of families and individuals touched by children, moms, dads, grandparents, neighbors, and friends with special needs.

We live in a community that is knows as one of the best in dealing with the educational, emotional, and physical challenges of children with special needs.

People move to our community so their children can get the best care possible.

As a church we have been called to reach out to all seekers in our community regardless of their physical or cognitive ability.

Wouldn’t it be great if one day, not only are parents moving to our community because of our school system, but also because they heard of a church that was ready and willing to welcome then, love them, and guide them and their children to place of discovering and then fully enjoying a relationship with God regardless of their special needs?

That my friends is a dream I have for Eastern Hills.

You see we can’t ignore the facts:          

* Between 34 and 43 million people have some type of disability

* More than 50 percent of persons over age 65 (or 32 million people) have some level of disability.

* Nine million people of all ages are severely disabled and need personal assistance for daily activities.

* 70 million adults deal with chronic pain, 4.8 million live with the effects of stroke

So how are we to view and understand the reality of disabilities in the world we live in?

Does the Bible give us any help in answering that question?

Let me show you three views and hopefully land on one that is consistent with what the Bible teaches.

Much of what I am going to share with you has been influenced by this book, Same Lake, Different Boat.

It was written by a woman who has a son with Down Syndrome.

The first view is what I am going to call the *Historical View*.

This view says; Disability is an abnormal part of life in a normal world.

Let’s admit it, most of us start out thinking we are exempt from having a child or a spouse or a parent touched by disability.

We all dream of having children with ten perfect toes and fingers, who progress at a normal rate of development.

We expect our parents to age gracefully, and we dream of living out our retirement with our spouse, enjoying the golden years of our life together.

So when autism is discovered, when muscular dystrophy begins to wither our child’s muscles, when Alzheimer’s robs a loved one’s mind, when macular degeneration leaves you visually impaired, it is not expected, it is not the norm, therefore it is abnormal.

And if it is abnormal the person affected is also seen as abnormal.

As opposed to being viewed as a person of value, we focus almost exclusively on the distinctive, negative characteristics of their diagnosis.

And as you know, how people are viewed clearly affects the way we treat them.

The *Reactionary View* says this: Disability is a normal part of life in a normal world.

The reactionary view recognizes the damage and the danger of seeing people as abnormal, so in an attempt to improve the lives of people affected by disabilities, they decided to change the language of disability.

For example, listen to the statement made by a nationally known speaker at a recent Down syndrome conference:

 

/“Having a disability is a difference like any other human characteristic.

It is not a deficiency.

It is by no means a tragedy and does not deserve pity or benevolence or charity.

Now is the time to recognize and celebrate disability rather than ignore, devalue or use it as a justification for lower expectations.”/

Did you catch what this speaker said?

He is saying that my son’s battens’ disease is to be regarded with no more regard than his hair color or his eye color or whether he is right handed or left handed.

In fact he is saying it is something to be celebrated, because it is a normal part of living in a normal world.

Does that make any sense to you?

I am sorry but I personally find this view to be offensive and absurd.

You see the problem isn’t that they see disabilities as normal, because they are.

No matter where you go in the world you will find people with an endless variety of disabilities.

Where they miss the boat is in their inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that the deeper issue lies in our worldview, our view of the world itself.

And that leads me to what I am simply going to call the Biblical View.

The *Biblical view* says this: Disability is a normal part of life in an abnormal world.

I can say with complete confidence that people touched by disabilities were never a part of God’s original plan for creation.

That’s why I can’t and won’t celebrate David’s disease.

We live in a fallen broken world.

Let me show you what I mean.

As you open the pages of the Bible and read the creation account you will quickly realize that everything God created was good, and in fact, when he created mankind he said it was very good.

Gen. 1:27  /So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

/

According to the Bible we are the crowning act of his creation.

In verse 27 it says we were created in his image.

That means we were created and designed to embody his likeness.

That means we have the ability to love and create and rule and design and reason just as God does.

In a real sense we are like this mirror.

We were created to reflect God character as his image bearers.

His goal was for us to experience purposeful and blessed lives.

Unfortunately we come to the third chapter of the bible and tragedy strikes.

Adam and Eve choose to tell God they no longer need Him to tell what is right and wrong, they rebel against Him, sin enters the world, impacting every aspect of creation.

What was once normal is now abnormal.

Romans 8:20 says, The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice.

From that moment on brokenness, frustration, sickness, and pain was introduced.

Creation became marred.

Not only was man and his relationship with God affected, the marring of creation permeated the physical, intellectual, the emotional, the psychological, and the social.

We see this affect throughout the world in our relationship with other people, in our bodies and minds, and in our relationship with God.

Later in Romans 8:22

It says, /We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

/ And if you could translate that groaning it would say, this is not how God created the world, this is abnormal.

This second mirror illustrates this brokenness that is common to all mankind.

This doesn’t mean that the image of God has been totally removed; it means that our ability to reflect His image as originally designed has been cracked.

We still reflect God’s image, but it is a marred.

So now every human being experiences a mixture of both the blessedness of being made in his image and the brokenness of the fall.

There isn’t a person in this room who is not broken or affected by the fall of Adam and Eve.

But for some us the effects of brokenness are more noticeable or more dramatically experienced than others.

When you talk to a person who has dementia, or watch a group of adults walking in the mall from a local group home, or walk along with a person using a wheel chair their cracks are more visible.

We who are “temporarily able-bodied”, have an easier job of hiding our brokenness, because lets admit it, disability is an eventual part of most of our lives.

Disability is simply a more noticeable form of the brokenness that is common to the human experience, a normal part of life in an abnormal world.*

*

So if this is true, how do we respond, how do we deal with those who have been touched by a disability?

As you know Brenda and I have been walking in the reality of this abnormal world for the past ten years with our son, David.

I have to admit I entered my marriage with a historical view of disability.

Never in a million years did I think we would be dealing with a son who would loose his vision at the age of 8 and to then walk the journey we have been on for these past ten years.

Even if I agreed that disabilities were a normal part of life in an abnormal world, it was always normal for someone else, not for me and my family.

I can still remember the shock and pain as we listened to the doctor give us his diagnosis, Batten’s Disease, a progressive, untreatable disease.

I’m not sure if I can truly explain how we felt, but the closest thing I can compare it to was what I assume you felt when you saw the planes on Sept. 11th crash into the twin towers.

In a second of time your world is changed and nothing is ever the same.

You walk around numb, in shock, struggling to make sense of the words flowing from the doctor’s mouth.

In a nano second how we viewed the world, how we live our lives, and how we prepare for the future were all altered.

We were not the first, nor will be the last.