My friend and colleague Karen Swallow Prior interviewed me about A Good and Perfect Gift for her.meneutics, the women's blog of Christianity Today (Perfection Obsession: What It Looks Like to Accept God-Given Limitations). Among other things, our conversation touches upon comparisons, limitations, idolizing intelligence, and prenatal testing.

The last question is my favorite, so I'll post that one here, and then you can head over to her.meneutics to read more and perhaps leave a comment:

You realize at some point that "who" Penny is is inextricably tied to the physical and biological reality of the extra chromosome in the cells of her body: without that extra chromosome, she wouldn't be Penny. What implications of this incarnational understanding of Penny's condition, of the human condition, does this have for the church body?

It took me a long time to realize that our limitations—physical, emotional, even spiritual—are part of our God-given humanity. Brokenness entered the world with sin, but limitations were there from the beginning, and they will remain. Penny's extra chromosome limits her in certain ways, just as all of us experience certain physical limitations. These limitations are not necessarily bad. In fact, to the degree that they enable us to become more vulnerable with one another, to need one another, and to serve one another, limitations enable us to become the body of Christ.

To read more, click here.