COVID & Disability Identity Part 2
Mark 5 doesn't need to be part of it (but it is kinda interesting)
In my last post on disability identity, I mentioned a chapter from the Gospel of Mark. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t refer to the New Testament of the Christian Bible in any of my disability writings. I was raised as an Evangelical Christian and went to a Christian college for undergrad (I technically have a minor in Bible, like everyone else who went to that university), but my disability thinking is not informed by theology. It is informed by culture and music and society, and primarily by postmodernism, dismodernism, and feminism. But I also have a job as a church organist, and Mark 5 was the reading from the Gospel from the lectionary on Sunday.
The Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible both have a lot to say about disability and illness, and a superficial reading of them might lead you to possibly take a more ableist reading of the theology of disability. Again, I am not a theologian, nor am I a theology of disability expert. But I think, based on my years reading critical theory and doing critical disability studies, that I can formulate some thoughts on disability identity, COVID, and Mark 5, and provide some nuance to the usual ‘faith healing’ readings.
Let’s start by unpacking the term ‘ableist’. I’ll be using it a lot here in this column, and I guess I shouldn’t assume that everyone understands what it means.
I like this definition, from https://www.accessliving.org/newsroom/blog/ableism-101/
‘Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability. Like racism and sexism, ableism classifies entire groups of people as ‘less than,’ and includes harmful stereotypes, misconceptions, and generalizations of people with disabilities.’
The article goes on to cite examples of ableism. I’m going to embolden some that might not be obvious to the average person:
Lack of compliance with disability rights laws like the ADA
Segregating students with disabilities into separate schools
The use of restraint or seclusion as a means of controlling students with disabilities
Segregating adults and children with disabilities in institutions
Failing to incorporate accessibility into building design plans
Buildings without braille on signs, elevator buttons, etc.
Building inaccessible websites
The assumption that people with disabilities want or need to be ‘fixed’
Using disability as a punchline, or mocking people with disabilities
Refusing to provide reasonable accommodations
The eugenics movement of the early 1900s
The mass murder of disabled people in Nazi Germany
Now, in Mark 5, we don’t actually, on the surface, see an example of ableism. We have a girl who has died, and whose parents want Jesus to raise from the dead:
‘22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” 24 So he went with him.’
We also have a woman who has suffered for a long time, from hemorrhages. We know she has suffered because the text says she has suffered. I’m not going to read anything else into that or try to impose my disability criticism onto the passage or ask what ‘suffering’ means here. I know what suffering means. She’s not happy. She wants to stop suffering. Fine. That’s a choice that people with disabilities can make. Why is she not named in the passage? I don’t know. A lot of people aren’t named in the Bible, including a lot of women. The girl isn’t named either—just the man, Jairus. Typical patriarchal stuff from the first century, I think (again, I’m not a theologian or a Biblical critic).
‘25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” 29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”’
I’ve heard this passage preached on many, many times in my life. The focus has always been on the woman’s faith. How she believed Jesus could heal her, but she couldn’t get to him. How she pushed toward him, and persevered, despite her suffering, and reached for him, for his attention, anything she could do, and her faith in him healed her—just a touch and she was healed. The power in the passage is that she could persevere despite all she was going through until she could find relief.
I don’t know this woman’s name, just like I don’t know the girl’s name who Jesus resurrected. I do know that the woman made the choice to be cured. In disability activism, we do have that choice to seek out relief. There’s nothing wrong with wanting relief! But in the end, I know that my disability is part of who I am, and it has shaped who I am. Hearing this story as a person with incurable, persisting, chronic disabilities, well, there’s no Jesus here to cure me. A miracle isn’t going to happen. I take my meds, and some days they just don’t work, and those days I stay in bed. *shrug* That is just the way it is. I don’t blame G-d or Jesus or anyone else. I am grateful for my life and for who I am because my identity as a person with a disability is who I am. It shapes who I am. I’ll talk about this more in the next instalment.