"Spiritualizing" Physical Disabilities

Jacob Nault
Mar 4
3 min read

Several pages of my website talk about spiritualizing physical disabilities. What do I mean by this?

This topic isn't new, nor is it my idea, but I find myself expressing it to churches and musicians for the first time. The disability theologian Kathy Black wrote a meaningful book entitled A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability. I heartily reccommend it for anyone who would like to take a deeper dive into the subject. She and many other disabled people of faith talk about many different ways the church preaches questionable or harmful theology around disability.

Here's a relevant section of my ordination paper around the topic.

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The late disability theologian Nancy L. Eiesland describes at length how disability is

depicted in the Bible. Disabled people are regarded as either sinful (see Leviticus 21:17-23,

John 5:14) or “virtuous [sufferers]” (see 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10), among other

characterizations. (Eiesland 70-75). The healings performed by Jesus and his disciples also reinforce the notion that disabled people are accepted in the community only after their physical healing (see Acts 3: 1-10). Instead, she understands Christ as “the disabled God.” Eiesland grounds this in the scripture of the resurrected Christ appearing to his disciples in Luke 24:

“He said to them, ‘Why are you startled? Why are doubts arising in your hearts? Look

at my hands and my feet. It’s really me! Touch me and see, for a ghost doesn’t have

flesh and bones like you see I have.’ As he said this, he showed them his hands and

feet.” (vv. 38-40, CEB)

In this scripture, Jesus embraces his newly acquired disability. Eiesland writes, “In presenting

his impaired hands and feet to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the

disabled God. Jesus, the resurrected Savior, calls for his frightened companions to recognize

in the marks of impairment their own connection with God, their own salvation.” (Eiesland 100). Surely, to understand Christ and God as disabled requires us to think differently about our relationship with God. Yet, if disabled people are created in God’s likeness, we must be able to find ourselves in it.

I also want to speak on a second element of disability theology. I share the disability

theologian Kathy Black’s desire to caution against the conflation of “healing” and “cure”. My

disability theology colleagues and I have experienced abled people praying for our healing

from our disabilities, but that’s a misnomer. Abled people instead want us to be cured—for the disability to cease to exist in our bodies or minds—because it’s not “normal” and they think we “suffer” from it. I don’t suffer from my disability; I’ve learned to live with it and it’s part of who I am. For myself and many of my colleagues, the most difficult part of living with a disability is not the disability itself, but instead the discrimination and dismissal we face in

society. Because of this misconception, “healing” has become a loaded word, but there could be a way to liberate it. Healing can refer to the emotional and spiritual resources that a

disabled person can access in the midst of living with the disability. I experience the healing

presence of God and Jesus through prayer, worship and music, even as my cerebral palsy

remains. When I experience this emotional and spiritual healing, I can feel the love and presence of God and Christ, and affirm that I am loved just as I am. I need not be cured of my disability to experience the love and grace of God. In disability theology, we celebrate that we can find belonging in God’s love with our unique bodies and minds.

Works Cited:

Abingdon Press.

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