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For disabled persons, healing does not first and foremost mean being cured. Rather, it has to do with restoration to and inclusion in the community. Churches willing to heal disabled people must fully assume their mission to include them.
The coordinator of the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (EDAN), Samuel Kabue of Kenya, made this point in Athens today while speaking to the 9-16 May 2005 Conference on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME).
Kabue, who became blind at the age of 16, explained that "To those who have been disabled since birthÂ… disability and sickness are two very different things, and healing [understood as cure] applies to sickness, not to disability."
The church needs to define healing in the widest possible sense, Kabue suggested. While curing has to do with reconstruction of the physical body, "disability is a social construct and healing is the removal of social barriers".
Another issue, said Kabue, is that healing in relation to disabled people is often assumed to mean eradicating disability "as if it were a contagious virus", or as promoting "virtuous suffering as a way to a greater faith in God".
Some churches closely relate disability with illness and sin. For them, "When prayers for healing do not yield the desired result, the victim is the one blamed for having no faith."
Yet "Jesus chose to use healing to unite disabled people with the rest of the society," Kabue stressed. "Prior to his time, they were excluded, ignored and considered unclean."
Jesus did indeed cure sick people. But, according to Kabue, that "was only a means to an end. What was and still is most important in our reconciliation message is the acceptance, inclusion and restoration into the mainstream of the society."
The full text of Samuel Kabue's address is available on our website at:
www.mission2005.org > Resources > Documents
Growing out of the WCC's 8th assembly in 1998, EDAN's primary objective is to support the work of individuals, churches and church organizations concerned with the issues affecting disabled people globally. EDAN website: www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/disabil.html
Conference website:www.mission2005.org