Craig

Can I ask a question that maybe goes one layer deeper because, taking account of everything that Paul has written, and whilst he was thinking about Jesus with his limitations, in his second letter to the Corinthians he talks about his own thorn in the flesh – whatever that might be. And it doesn’t actually matter what the thorn is because the point he makes from that is that the answer he gets when he prays about it is that his weakness can be a strength. We might be uncomfortable with it, but it’s there and that seems to be his experience. So, when he’s writing about Jesus limiting himself he also has his own weakness firmly in his mind.

Charlotte

Yeah.

Craig

Does that mix it up again for you?

Charlotte

I think there’s something really interesting, isn’t there, in the way we hold that tension of weakness and strength. So I think, here we come to the joy of the New Testament letters, particularly of Paul: we have somebody’s lived experience. And we can listen to his lived experience of disability or limit. There’s definitely a limit there. He’s either in pain all the time or he’s really struggling with something, and it seems to be physical. There’s a remarkable sort of balance of him saying ‘in my weakness God’s strength comes through’. 

I think however, in teaching those passages, we have to be very careful that we are encouraging people to find their own lived experience. In what way is their weakness bringing them into the strength of Christ. In what way can I help you to find where God’s strength is? 

Instead of the simple statement that when I am weak, Christ is strong because this is where disability stuff is so interesting and so hard. For instance sometimes I just feel really weak. And I don’t know what that strength is. Where’s that Christ like strength? I’ve just had a few days where I couldn’t move. Now, I want to say that in that Christ is strong. But if I’m honest I don’t know where, for me, Christ is ‘strength’. And yet there is something very true that when I am less maybe Christ can be more, or I can acknowledge Christ more; or maybe just the fact that I didn’t give up and I keep coming back to Jesus counts as being where Christ is strong. 

But I think it is our perception of limitation that matters, that where there is perceived weakness there is strength, and the acknowledgement of limits that matches, like you say, with Philippians 2 and acknowledging that if we’re going to be Christ-like we need to embrace that limitation in some way. Paul is always saying imitate Christ and if you can’t imitate Christ imitate me as I imitate Christ, Maybe allowing Christ to be bigger than our weakness is where that happens.

And to be Christ like  – it means accepting limitations and it means pouring your power out. Not using your power only when you think you have it, but using your power where it’s needed where it’s wanted, where it’s accepted. And I think that is interesting particularly as a challenge for non disabled people. 

So I find that strength-weakness, stuff personally difficult. It is theologically great and personally really hard.

Craig

Yeah. I’m certainly with you on that. And I think the way you are talking is also part of the answer. Experiencing weakness forces us to be honest, and actually what people around us need and find most helpful is people who are honest. So if you’ve got no other choice than to be honest, then actually you’re a gift to people. So, whether or not we want to be, we are gifts to people because we can’t deny things about us that are obviously true.

Charlotte

Yes.

Craig

But there’s also a further aspect to this question which I have noticed in my own life. When I enter a room, people note me as a disabled person and they often don’t include me. They don’t think I have the capacity to engage in a meaningful way so they put me on the edge. But speaking from the edge can be a far more powerful place to sit. So I sit and listen, and I’m an introvert anyway so that suits me really well. I sit and listen, and then I make a contribution that is noted because they’re not expecting it from me.

Charlotte

Yeah.

Craig

And so maybe that does give me a unique opportunity. My weakness is eventually perceived as strength by other people. But I still have to count the cost of that. The exclusion and all that goes with it. And it’s painful, yes. But I wonder whether Paul is thinking in terms of his usefulness to God.

Charlotte

I think there’s something really interesting there that you said.

One of the things that Paul is consistently doing is pointing out that the way that God views things is not the way the world views them. 

So that language of weakness and strength is available for us to query just like you have done in your story. So what the world tells us is weakness isn’t always weak. And I think this again is interesting, that if you asked what the world thinks my disability is versus what I think my disability is, we’d say different things. So we come back to different models of disability, don’t we? 

You know, the medical, the medical model tells me one thing and probably tells you a very defined diagnosis  – it’s got lots of long words and it’s got lots of ways of describing you, but they may not be the things that you find a struggle at all. You might have got used to a particular way of being, because that’s just how you’ve been for a really long time. To the point where the world looks at you and goes, gosh, I would hate to have X issue (which is a phrase we hear a lot as disabled people ‘I would hate to have that because I wouldn’t be able to do X’) and you’re like ohh, that isn’t the problem I have, my problem is over here with something they haven’t even noticed.

Paul’s constantly doing that just with his description of the cross – like God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And I hate to get into 1 Corinthians because I’m constantly talking about it, but that whole bit at the beginning of 1 Corinthians is just saying “you think you’re clever, but you’re not. You think you’re wise, but you’re not. Because these are the things that are wisdom in God’s eyes. These are the things that are knowledge in God’s eyes”. 

So actually, I think disabled people can ask ‘what can, what do we bring to the church?’ Well, we bring a querying of ideas of strength, ideas of weakness, ideas of wholeness because we define ourselves differently to what the world thinks is goodness and strength.

to be continued…

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