Mark Stephenson

Michele, I agree that you should follow where God is leading in terms of your time, attention, and energy. I thank God to hear that you are hoping to start a support group for people with mental health issues. I hope and pray that goes well. We have a couple resources that may be helpful. We produced a four-part Bible study a few years ago called Let's Talk! Breaking the Silence around Mental Illness in Our Communities of Faith. This includes a leader's guide and may be helpful to get your group started. Also, we invited people to share their stories and poems about their journal with mental health issues which we titled Stories of Grace and Truth; perhaps you or others would feel moved to contribute something for this page. Mental Health Ministries and Pathways to Promise also have a lot of good, free resources that are worth checking out; their Mental Health Ministry Toolkit for Congregations is hard to find but has some really good ideas and resources. Blessings, Mark

Right, their journey with mental health issues. Unfortunately, comments can't be edited so my error will have to stay. Thanks for the catch. 

Hi Michele, our newsletter, Breaking Barriers, follows themes, so it might be years again before we publish an edition featuring people's stories about mental health challenges; however, we have a page called Stories of Grace and Truth in which we have encouraged people to share their own stories, poems, and works of art. I'd really appreciate your sending us what you have written. The guidelines for submission are at the top of the Grace and Truth page. 

Thanks Michele. I found the article online too: Schizophrenia's Genetic Roots. 

HI Michele, I appreciate what you are saying, but I think we who do not have disabilities do need a little coaching. People tend to feel anxious around someone who is different from them (for whatever reason), and getting a little instruction about what to do and not do can help. For example, I just heard a blind mind say that recently he was walking down the street, using his cane, and came to a post which he detected with his cane. Just as he was about to go around the post, a man grabbed him by the shoulders and said "Stop." Obviously, the blind man was surprised and upset and said, "Don't grab me." The other man thought he was trying to help, but only startled the blind man who knew what he was doing. So a little guidance like knowing to ask, "Can I help you in any way?" is really good. Or another, if you are going to talk with a person in a wheelchair for longer than a few seconds, pull up a chair so that she doesn't have to strain her neck. Maybe not knowing to do these things is stupidity on the part of us nondisabled people, but I would prefer to call it lack of knowledge. And that's easy to correct with a simple tool like this document if only people would be willing to read and apply it.  

Amen to that. The church would be a long ways toward true community if everyone treated each other as people first!

Scott, interesting. So soon after his diagnosis, he began retooling for the next chapter in his life. I assume the Hebrew class was prep for his year of living biblically book. Not a lot of people use the diagnosis of a degenerative disease as a prompt for setting new life goals!

Bill, I disagree. You mention physical ability and mental capacity as ways to define adult, but in Canada and the US we define "adult" by chronological age. When someone reaches 18 or 21 (depending on what responsibilities are granted) we call them "adults." To put a 10-year-old in the nursery, or a 12-year-old in a Sunday School class for 3rd graders does these individuals a great disservice. Likewise, baby-talking to people who are in their 40's. We need to treat people who are of age as adults. Sure if an adult has intellectual disability, we do Bible Study on a level that he or she understands, but surely not have him sit in a Sunday School class with little kids.

Thanks Bonnie. You provide another good reason why it would be good for adults with intellectual disabilities to be with the adults without disabilities in Sunday school classes and other activities. My experience with adults who have intellectual disabilities is that many of them are much less limited by adult conventions than we who call ourselves nondisabled.

It's nearly impossible for science, good science, to make a blanket statement about a condition as complex as autism. However, the article I cite says, "The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the World Health Organization, and the Institute of Medicine all agree that there's probably no relationship between autism and vaccines." Considering the enormous, real, and documented risks posed to unvaccinated children, compared to the highly unlikely connection between autism and vaccines, I still feel the need to express my belief that the most responsible and loving choice a parent can make is to have his or her child vaccinated.

Regarding your final question, I'm strongly prolife. Your question is a difficult one, though you ask it in a misleading way. Your question makes it seem as if babies are continually aborted in order to create vaccines. In fact, some, not all vaccines, use stem cell lines from three babies that were aborted decades ago - two in the 1960's and one in the 1980's. Just because these abortions happened decades ago does not make the action of the abortions morally acceptable. However, as this article from Right to Life of Michigan  points out, "The further away the current act (using a vaccine) and intent (protecting a child from a disease) of an individual are from a previous immoral act (aborting a child), the less that individual is restricted by the immorality of the previous act. While the act of aborting the child was certainly immoral, all of the steps involved with the development and use of the vaccines thereafter did not cooperate with the abortion." This article goes on to cite a number of authorities who agree that using these vaccines is morally acceptable.