Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability, and the Body of Christ (Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability)

by Brian Brock

By daring publicly to amplify the quiet joy of Adam’s witness I hope to explode some of the layers of uncomfortable avoidance and outright censorship that surround disability in churches, in public discussion of social care policy, and in medical contexts. In each of these contexts most people assume they know what disability is. In fact their views are often skewed by unacknowledged fears of disability as a dark thundercloud threatening to destroy lives and eject people into a desolate life of social isolation, grinding practical difficulties, and unbearable expense. It is difficult for any of us to eradicate the fear evoked by the term “disability,” which threatens at the very least an unbearable diminishment of the life choices available to us. This fear points to an enslavement to the desire to control others, to make them into our images, and to make ourselves into an image of perfection. It is an enslavement that renders our lives, and our societies, frightfully two dimensional—efficient, homogenous, and so unsurprising.12 One way of summarizing the Christian gospel is as an empowerment to risk living as the vulnerable beings we in fact are, to make peace with our limits and blemishes and to delight in the unexpected. Human redemption consists in the recovery of the joy and freedom that come with being content to be creatures rather than aspiring to be gods. The central theological task of this book is to give theological density as well as contemporary tangibility t...

Fear and disability is