Last Memorial Day I had this discussion with a friend around a campfire. It's a great question and it is so revealing to hear the different answers people have. I have heard both the anticipation of a person who can't wait to run to his heavenly Father because he can't run now and others with very similar reactions as you state above. They don't know who they would be without the disability.
I believe it is a matter of identity. You touch on this, but I also think this is where the answer is. For all people with disabilities, that disabilities has strongly shaped their identity and how they relate to thew world, to God, to family... But as Christians we must always remember that our primary identity is in Christ. Who Christ wants us to be and become is our first and only aim. He uses things like disabilities, race, culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, to help shape that identity, but in the end we must surrender all of those things to Christ and let him work.
This is key for our eternal salvation. Life is learning that surrender so when we come into His Kingdom, we are prepared for that radical transformation that finally turns us into what he always intedned us to be. Right now we only know in part. Then we will know in full!! (1 Cor. 13).
In the "Great Divorce" CS Lewis picks this idea up in several different ways. A mother who only wants to get into heaven to see her son who tragically died years earlier refuses to enter Heaven because she has to see God first. A person who had become the puppet of some strange demon and had to choose to cut the leash and enter the Kingdom or go back to the "gray town." Both are people who would not surrender something they cherished, or feared to love without in order to be made complete in Christ Jesus.
The question then isn't so much if there will be disabilities in Heaven. But whether or not a person is humble enough to accept the true and complete person God has intended for them to become, of which we are only shadows of now! If that true and complete person hasd a disability in Heaven, can the he accept it if all he wanted his whole life was to run...or...can she accept that her body will be perfect if her whole life she couldn't imagine herself without the disability? It is a matter and question of faith. I might not be a white male in heaven who sturggles with his attention span, but I will be the me Christ intended.
Once we are at the point of surrender, once we enter the Kingdom, a fully realized heaven and earth, with our new bodies and transformed souls, fully integrated into the human being Christ has destined us to become, I don't believe there will be physical, mental or emotional disabilities, but I hope my Christian walk will have brought me to a point where I can trust God if there are. ...Only by His Spirit.
Posted in: Will People Have Disabilities in the New Heaven and Earth? Part 1
Last Memorial Day I had this discussion with a friend around a campfire. It's a great question and it is so revealing to hear the different answers people have. I have heard both the anticipation of a person who can't wait to run to his heavenly Father because he can't run now and others with very similar reactions as you state above. They don't know who they would be without the disability.
I believe it is a matter of identity. You touch on this, but I also think this is where the answer is. For all people with disabilities, that disabilities has strongly shaped their identity and how they relate to thew world, to God, to family... But as Christians we must always remember that our primary identity is in Christ. Who Christ wants us to be and become is our first and only aim. He uses things like disabilities, race, culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, to help shape that identity, but in the end we must surrender all of those things to Christ and let him work.
This is key for our eternal salvation. Life is learning that surrender so when we come into His Kingdom, we are prepared for that radical transformation that finally turns us into what he always intedned us to be. Right now we only know in part. Then we will know in full!! (1 Cor. 13).
In the "Great Divorce" CS Lewis picks this idea up in several different ways. A mother who only wants to get into heaven to see her son who tragically died years earlier refuses to enter Heaven because she has to see God first. A person who had become the puppet of some strange demon and had to choose to cut the leash and enter the Kingdom or go back to the "gray town." Both are people who would not surrender something they cherished, or feared to love without in order to be made complete in Christ Jesus.
The question then isn't so much if there will be disabilities in Heaven. But whether or not a person is humble enough to accept the true and complete person God has intended for them to become, of which we are only shadows of now! If that true and complete person hasd a disability in Heaven, can the he accept it if all he wanted his whole life was to run...or...can she accept that her body will be perfect if her whole life she couldn't imagine herself without the disability? It is a matter and question of faith. I might not be a white male in heaven who sturggles with his attention span, but I will be the me Christ intended.
Once we are at the point of surrender, once we enter the Kingdom, a fully realized heaven and earth, with our new bodies and transformed souls, fully integrated into the human being Christ has destined us to become, I don't believe there will be physical, mental or emotional disabilities, but I hope my Christian walk will have brought me to a point where I can trust God if there are. ...Only by His Spirit.