There are weeks when I can't help but write blogposts, and then there are weeks when my brain is too frazzled to put two sentences together. This week is one of the latter. William has had a fever. We have a new babysitter. Peter stayed home sick yesterday too. We're gearing up for Penny's surgery. So I haven't been able to come up with anything interesting to say about Valentine's Day or Whitney Houston (not that you would expect me to say anything about Whitney Houston...)
From an able-bodied reading of the Bible, it is easy to assume God wants to heal every person with a disability. In the New Testament, every person who encounters Jesus blind, deaf, or lame is restored to health. But theologian Amos Yong wants the church to read the Bible differently, seeing good news for people with disabilities as they are, and not as God might change them.
In The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God(Eerdmans) Yong draws upon his theological training, his Pentecostal faith, and his experience as the older brother of Mark, who has Down syndrome, to form an insightful critique of the assumption that disability is inherently negative. He challenges the church not only to reimagine the body of Christ as including people with disabilities, but also to understand these people as central to the church's mission.
