"She was such a nice young lady. Then she talked to me, and when she heard my voice, she took the same [condescending] tone. Suddenly, I felt small, lesser. I felt condescended to, patronized, and diminished."
This message by Dan Vander Plaats, Director of Advancement at Elim Christian Services, winsomely challenges his audience to examine their own attitudes toward people who have disabilities. Based on 1 Corinthians 12:14-27, Dan reflects on his own experience as a person with a speech disability and how God has used that in his life to transform his attitude about other people who live with disabilities of various kinds.
Comments
I can relate. I've had people do that to me too, and I don't have a speech problem. But I do have a disability, schizophrenia, and at one time, when I was taking a certain kind of anti-psychotics I guess I tended to look a bit wooden. It's amazing how easily people tend to assume that because one has a disability, one is also--necessarily--intellectually deficient as well. As if intellectual deficiency were an inevitable dimension of all disabilities.
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