Will People Have Disabilities in the New Heaven and Earth? Part 2

Mark,

 I appreciate your concerns about the disabled but I take issue with your points.  In the first place, the disciples did recognize Jesus.  True, Mary Magdalene did not recognize Him, but that may have been because she was crying.  She did recognize Jesus when she called him "Rabboni" when He spoke to her [John 20:15-6].  The disciples recognized Jesus when He showed them His hands and side [John 20:19].  In the second place, you make the assumption that our glorified bodies will bear the marks of our lives on earth.  Making assumptions is always dangerous because they are based on an imperfect understanding.  The Bible is quite silent on these matters.  In fact, I am surprised how little the Bible speaks of specific aspects of life after death.  My guess is that words cannot express this concept.  I have not stated that I expect that we will be "annihilated and turned into something completely different than we were on earth" and I will accept that the concept of annihilation may suggest that "who we are on earth doesn't matter."  Still, it's cold comfort to me that I will still not be able to see the red cardinal in a leafy tree.

You have not addressed my comment about the difference between wounds inflicted before death (in the case of Jesus, pierced hands and feet) and those inflicted after death (pierced side).  I mentioned victims of the guillotine who would, if your assumption is correct, have glorified, but headless, bodies.

Let me give you an example.  In our recent federal election, a quadriplegic member of parliament was re-elected.  He was seriously injured when his car hit a moose 15 years ago.  Are you suggesting that he can look forward to remaining a quadriplegic for all eternity?  Of course, it can be argued that he can praise God with his infirmity but I should also point out that he also has memories of having been a provincial kayaking champion before his accident.  Are you suggesting that, when we receive our glorified bodies, our memory will be wiped clean?  How will this be seen by believers whose mind has become clouded by old age?  Will they receive glorified bodies with this diminished mental capacity?

I appreciate your concern for the disabled and it may well be that God places a high value on our experiences and that He values the experiences of people with disabilities.  But to speculate on things that we cannot know to change current attitudes is, to me, putting the cart behind the horse.  Yes, your assumptions may raise the self-worth of the disabled (and I value Bev's comment about her deformed hand) but do little for those of us who hope that our bodies and mind will be restored.

Shalom

Tyl

Mark,

Thanks for your response.  I suppose we'll have to "agree to disagree."  In your initial response, you wrote that "Like you, I expect that you will, and you will bear the marks of your color-blindness in the new heaven and earth."  Yet, in your second response, you assume that I "you will see colors in the age to come."  That was not my comment; I mentioned color-blindness.  But, more to the point, you seem to consider "recognition" as we currently understand it.  And, right away, this creates an intractable problem because we change over time and those who will "recognize" us won't have the same image of us, so we may be 'recognizable' to others in different ways, somewhat along the lines that the colors of a butterfly wind change depending on which angle you look at them.

You have already stated that one of your wishes is that your daughter will come running up to you and say, 'Hi dad, let's talk.'  In other words, you hope that your daughter will be made whole. Likewise, you hope you will be able to communicate with your mother who now has dementia.  Here we have two individuals, one with a disability since birth and one with an acquired disability.  Will they both have the marks of their disability?  I would think not.  What about the recovered drug addict whose body is a road map of tattoos?  He or she may be known by these tattoos.  Will they prevail into eternity?

Now let's get back to the wound in Jesus' side, acquired after His death.  Note that not all disciples were at the foot of the cross and may not have been aware of the desecration of Jesus' body after death.  Unless word got around, it's not likely that the disciples would have been aware of this wound.  And, considering how dense the disciples were, they may not have made the connection between Isaiah 53 and Zechariah 12 and the crucifixion.  Therefore, I think that the extrapolation to what our bodies may or may not look like is extremely tenuous and gets into the realm of speculation.

I see nothing wrong with pastors using terms such as 'freed,' 'released,' and 'made whole' at funerals.  Maybe these terms should be used in every funeral because we are freed and released from the bondage of sin.  This does not mean that life has no meaning or that we're better off dead than 'disabled' or 'in the bondage of sin.'

In conclusion, I don't disagree with you on the value of life and the value of disabled individuals.  What I have problems with is the - to me- questionable extrapolation of the marks that Jesus showed after His resurrection to our appearance in the life to come. But I'm not a theologian.

Shalom

Tyl

Tyl,

   Mark is pointing out the how disabled people are judged incomplete persons with those kind of statements at funerals. We all know about our spiritual incompleteness but these statements reflect added emphasizes to the view of disabled individuals. If they would say this at everyone's funeral that would be different. Remember, this isn't about what pastors say at funerals but hidden bias in our every day thought that create false images of value. These things seem innocuous until your on the receiving end.

Ken

Mark and Ben,

It's been a few days since I was able to respond to Mark's recent comment, first to my most recent comments, and then to Ben's. I welcome Ben's contribution to this interesting debate.

I maintain that this discussion is, to a large extent, conjecture: we don't have much of a clue as to what, as Mark calls it, "the age to come" will be. To save keystrokes, let's use the acronym "TATC."

First of all, the Bible says very little about TATC and that forces Mark to use the word "assume" a lot ("I assume that God is a God of economy"). Second, I am convinced that it's going to be a lot better than we can even assume (how's that for using "convinced" and "assume" in one sentence!). But I use these terms to show how little we know about TATC. Yet, in his most recent response, Mark is quite certain that some of us will have marks identifying us as martyrs.

Now let's get back to the initial point that Mark made, that, somehow, the marks that Christ showed in His resurrected body is a precursor of how we will be identified in TATC. I took issue with that and am pleased that Ben appears to share my views.

Mark also maintained that our disabilities will be evidenced in TATC. In his first entry in this series, he wrote, "we can expect that his followers will bear the marks of our own disabilities and challenges throughout eternity too." I disagree and want to push the envelope a bit here. What about conjoined twins? There is a pair of twins in Vernon, BC, that shares part of their brain. Will they retain a mark of this disability in TATC?

Let's take this one step further. With the exception of dementia and mental problems, the discussion has dealt primarily with physical aspects and how we are recognized by outward appearance. What about the acid tongue, the pettiness, the intolerance, by which many of us are recognized? What about pedophiles, some of who apparently are "hard-wired" that way? Will they retain a mark of this disability? On the one hand, we expect that sinful traits will be removed, initially gradually as the sanctification process evolves and then by a quantum step when we enter TATC. How is this different from physical shortcomings? I would argue that, just as our sinful nature will be cleansed, our physical dimension will be made whole as well.  Any "mark" would undoubtedly remind us and others of the saving grace effected by Christ but against a backdrop of the evil from which we were released.

Mark mentions that" God is a God of economy" and that "[n]one of our experiences gets wasted." I'm not familiar with the "God of economy" concept but there are experiences that we prefer not to bring into TATC. To assume that these experiences "conform us more to the image of Christ" presupposes that they were all positive.

As to recognizing each other, will my grandfather who died when my grandmother was 27 recognize her in the same way as I will, when she was in her early sixties? I doubt it and that makes me think (assume?) that, in TATC, we will recognize each other in an appropriate manner. If a wayward child does not enter TATC, its parents may not remember his or her existence but this, I admit, is also conjecture.

I think that part of our problem may be that we tend to be self-centred: will we recognize, will we marry, will we, will we? Now, if you really want to put the cat amongst the pigeons, will we need to wear any clothing? My answer to this is that God, through Jesus, will have the best in store for us and we can "take that to the bank." As the old Dutch hymn has it, "Take my hand in Your hands and lead me like a child." That's good enough for me. I realize that this does not resolve the issue of worthlessness that some disabled individuals may feel but to invoke the marks on Christ's resurrected body is, to me, not the way to go.

Shalom,

Tyl

Gentlemen,

  This actually, brings up a lot of profound questions. Like what are we now?(brain,body,soul) Remember, depended on senses that available determines what we know. Imagine a human without any input. Lots of questions about what we will be in Heaven are important to the decisions we make now.