The Verb of God

The Word became a human being and lived here with us (John 1:14, CEV).  It’s a beautiful truth for any time of year, but one that’s in the forefront as Christmas approaches. The Word existed in the beginning, John tells us, giving light and life to all. Then, so humans could become children of God, the Word entered our world.

Like most Christians, I’ve always found the passage to be a deeply meaningful meditation on Jesus. It sank deeper in me, though, when I first read it in the RVA version of my Spanish Bible. “En el principio era el Verbo . . . y aquel Verbo fue hecho carne,” I read. “In the beginning was the Verb . . . and that Verb was made flesh.”

Jesus was God’s Verb. I was so taken by the idea that I remember exactly where I was sitting when I read it. I was on a wooden pew in a church in Peru, on the right side and about halfway back, and when I read the passage I stopped hearing anything being said.

I’m not equipped to make a case for whether or not “Verb” is a good translation for “Logos,” the word used in the original language. Logos is evidently a complex term not easily translated into either English or Spanish. I just want to sit for a minute with the idea of Jesus as God’s Verb and let it trickle down and add new flavor to the Christmas story.

Verbs are action words. They’re more than being: they’re doing. You can’t have a sentence without one. Because he wanted to give us the right to become children of God, Jesus came. He took the noun of God’s love and made it a verb.

I think the idea has implications for how we experience Jesus and for how we reflect his character, too. It’s easy to get stuck in the “being” place. We’re new creatures. We’re reborn. We’re God’s children. That’s an immeasurable treasure, but maybe in some sense it’s not a full sentence. To follow the Verb of God means that being leads to doing.

As Christmas approaches, I hope we can not only reflect on the amazing truth that Jesus entered our dirtied, hurting world for us, but on how we can follow his example of loving excluded people with our hands, feet, and voice as well as our heart. Do you know someone with a chronic illness or disability, for example, who could use some “verbing” from you? Meeting practical needs is a way to follow Jesus into the world. It’s a way to return love to the one who loved us so much that he became flesh.

Defending the Church

I recently heard a pastor with autism talk about the challenge of trying to represent both the Christian community and the autism community and I felt his dilemma deep in my soul. I experience the same tension, with one foot in the Christian world and one foot in the world of people with chemical sensitivities. In order to speak for the chemically sensitive, and for those with other illnesses and disabilities, I have to point out blind spots in the church and talk about things the Christian community isn’t doing particularly well right now. On the other hand, my Christian faith is the foundation of my life, I truly value what the church can offer, and I want my fellow travelers to know the hope and peace that can be found there.

Several times in the past few months, people have commented to me that they think religion (and Christianity in particular) has done more harm than good. Given that, and the fact that I’ve written more posts than usual lately that are critical of the church, I thought I’d turn the tables today and briefly highlight a few tangible ways the church makes a very positive difference in the world.

Let’s start with the United States and with the impact of faith-based social initiatives. It’s not easy to fully quantify that, but a 2016 study tried. Researchers from Georgetown University and the Newseum Institute looked at the economic impact of religious congregations, institutions, and businesses and determined that the economic contribution of religion in America was $1.2 trillion, which is equal to the world's 15th largest economy.

As one of the study authors put it, “In an age where there's a growing belief that religion is not a positive for American society, adding up the numbers is a tangible reminder of the impact of religion. Every single day individuals and organizations of faith quietly serve their communities.” They noted that religious organizations ran 130,000 alcohol and drug abuse recovery programs, 121,000 programs offering support and training for the unemployed, and 94,000 programs supporting veterans and their families.

Feeding people is also something religious communities do well. A 2022 article in the journal BMC Public Health analyzed food banks in 12 states and found that 63% were faith-based operations. The article notes that many volunteers are motivated by their religious faith and warns that as America sees a decrease in religious participation we may also see less food assistance.

How about the impact of western Christians overseas? In 2012, an important study was published, which was based on 15 years of research and won awards from the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Association.  It was entitled “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,” and as the title implies, it determined that Protestant missionaries greatly influenced the rise and spread of democracy around the globe.

The study author, Robert Woodberry, notes that the effects are “quite huge.” They also seem to be dose-dependent. An article on the study says this: “The more missionaries that came, the longer they stayed, and the more freedom they had, the better the outcomes, even a century or two on. Woodberry checks these off: longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher literacy and educational enrollment, more political democracy, lower corruption, higher newspaper circulation, higher civic participation, and on and on.”

We all base our perceptions on experience as well as objective data, and if you’ve felt hurt by the church, your feelings are valid and I’m sorry for your pain. There’s more to the story, though. No, the church doesn’t always do everything right, but it does a lot more right than we often give it credit for.

Religious Organizations and the ADA

In a previous post about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) I made a brief comment about churches being mostly exempt from the law, but I didn’t give the reason. Simply put, religious organizations are exempt because they fought to be.

I knew that, but assumed it was only because of financial concerns. Recently, though, someone in one of my online support groups posted a link to an eye-opening article and I learned I was wrong.

The author, Shannon Dingle, notes that the representative for an association of Christian schools argued for exemption because religious institutions are “morally required . . . to discriminate against carriers of AIDS where AIDS was incurred through immoral conduct.” In other words, the argument was that it was morally right to deny access to people with chronic illnesses and disabilities because of the possibility that some people’s challenges might be their own fault. That’s a truly amazing and appalling line of reasoning.

The representative also argued that “nothing has been shown to indicate that there is a national necessity to apply the ADA Bill to churches, religious schools, and other ministries.” Nothing? How about the teachings of the Bible?

How about the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10? Jesus compared his compassionate concern to the actions of religious leaders who ignored the needs of someone with an injured body. How about Jesus’s anger at the money changers in the temple (Mark 11)? They were keeping a group of people from accessing their place of worship while the religious elite were able to worship freely in theirs. 

What about passages like Ezekiel 34? God says to the religious leaders, “You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. . . . You abandoned my flock and left them to be attacked by every wild animal.” What about Matthew 25? God says that when we meet or ignore the needs of those who are sick or otherwise suffering, it’s as if we’re doing it to him.

The fact that churches aren’t required to provide access to people with disabilities leads them to forget we exist. I don’t think the average church leader or member has any idea how many of us there are (26% of all adults in the United States) or how completely inaccessible places of worship tend to be. 

It's no surprise that there’s a great deal of emotional pain among the chronically ill and disabled from being systematically shut out of church. Whether or not government requires them to do the right thing (the actual right thing, not the right thing as it was defined in the exemption argument), every church has the choice, and disabled people are acutely aware of the choices that are made.   

Dingle puts it this way: “Disabled people didn’t leave the church. The church didn’t even leave us. No, we were never welcome.”

She adds, “It takes all the forgiveness we can find to love churches that didn’t want us. . . . Hopefully, someday the church will love us back.”

Abused: The SBC Report and What It Can Teach Us

I imagine most people with Southern Baptist ties are reeling this week from a bombshell report that concluded that leadership consistently chose to protect themselves legally instead of protecting church attenders from sexual abuse. As one Twitter user put it, when something is outrageous, the proper response is outrage.

I’m outraged. I’m also not completely surprised, because I’ve already seen the dark side of church culture. Once I was an insider – a preacher’s kid who grew up to be a minister’s wife and a missionary. Then I became an outsider – someone with a chronic illness/disability that keeps me out of most church buildings because of the product choices people make. Believe me, the view is different from here.

The way that leadership treated the women who came forward with abuse allegations is eerily similar to the way that people with chemical intolerance or other illnesses or disabilities have been treated. As I put it in my book, if ignoring us doesn’t work, we’re labeled, blamed, viewed as a problem, beaten with the Bible, and judged like Job. Abuse survivor Christa Brown said that church leaders shunned and disbelieved her and communicated “you are a creature void of any value—you don’t matter.” I can’t count the number of times that someone in the chemical illness community has said the same thing.  

People in power are saying the right things now. Here are a few good quotes from denominational leaders. 

“This is the beginning of a season of listening, lamenting, and learning.”

“This much is clear: we have much, much work to do.”

“Every cry for help deserved to be heard.”

This is a time to deal with the issue of sexual abuse and to listen closely to what survivors are saying. I also pray that the courage and tenacity of those who came forward will change the culture enough that the disability community will be heard, too.  

As churches are wrestling with the report, I hope they’ll take a broad view when they answer these questions.

1.     Is it dangerous to come to your church? In the context of the report, the danger is sexual abuse, and it’s a real danger which deserves focused and intense attention. However, it’s not the only threat. When you don’t choose non-toxic options when you build, renovate, clean, treat your lawn, or deal with pests, you put people’s health and sometimes their very lives in danger. I know it’s hard for people who haven’t had to learn about the dangers to really believe that, but it’s true. For people dealing with chronic illness or disability, church can also feel emotionally dangerous, for reasons I’ve already mentioned and more.

2.     Who or what are you defending?  This is a question that has stuck with me since I heard a women’s minister say it during a forum on racial reconciliation.

The report indicates that leaders were defending the image of the church instead of defending the people that attended. Are churches doing that when they choose to build a building that looks impressive instead of one that doesn’t make people sick? What about when they say they can’t put a notice in the bulletin about coming fragrance free because it might offend people? Who are they defending? People who have power or the vulnerable and outcast? 

When I first became part of the chemical illness world and I started hearing the stories of how people were ignored, dismissed, or denigrated by their faith communities, my first reaction was to defend the church. At some point, though, I realized I couldn’t do that anymore. I still love the church and the people in it. In fact, it’s because I love it that I want it to be safe and accessible for everyone. I can’t defend it, though. Something is very wrong and we need to fix it.

SBC president Ed Litton is optimistic. He says, “I think the trauma of what we’re seeing at this moment is waking people up to the need for culture change.” May it be so.

Life and Death

I’ve discovered something about myself. It’s extremely difficult for me to write about people who lose their lives because of avoidable chemical exposures.

Of course, that category is very large when you consider the role that chemicals can play in conditions like cancer and heart disease. The long-term consequences of using common chemicals can be heartbreaking, but I don’t find them as difficult to write about as the more sudden deaths.

When I hear about people who have a chemical exposure that immediately takes their life, my writing muscles seem to freeze. I just can’t come up with anything to say. On this blog, I did manage to write about three different young people who all died after using spray deodorant, and in my book, I shared the story of two babies who died after pesticides were applied in a neighboring apartment and of workers who died after using a wax remover.

What I’m currently having trouble wrapping my words around is a different sort of life and death scenario. It’s the story of two women with MCS in Canada. Both looked for safe, affordable housing for years and had doctors and others advocating for them. Both were unable to find an affordable home that kept them free of chemical exposures. Feeling they had no other options, they applied for MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) and were approved. Sophia ended her life in February. Denise is currently still alive.

Once again I find myself freezing up, unable to find the words to express my horror at this. It’s not that I’m shocked when people with chemical illness choose to die. During the first six weeks after I moved to Tennessee, there were three suicides among my online acquaintances. The pace isn’t always that brisk, but it certainly isn’t a rare occurrence. What makes this worse is that it’s officially sanctioned. People in positions of power decided that it’s acceptable to help people die instead of helping them find a way to avoid the very preventable suffering they endure from chemical exposures.

Fortunately, I don’t have to come up with the right things to say. I can just paste in this link, which takes you to two video clips and a written account of Denise’s story. I really hope you’ll take a look.

I do have one small complaint about the otherwise good coverage. In one of the video clips a reporter says that Denise needs “incredibly specific living conditions.” She has mobility issues, which makes housing more challenging than for someone without them, but avoiding the chemicals that make her so sick she wants to die is completely doable if people care enough. The article says Denise needs to avoid cigarette smoke, laundry chemicals, and air fresheners. Sophia, who died in February, had a similar wish list. She just needed a place to live that was free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners.

These quotes sum up the issue.

About Sophia: “It’s not that she didn’t want to live. She couldn’t live that way.”

About Denise: “Denise says she does not want to die, but she can’t find a place to live.”

There are a lot of reasons to force myself to write this post. One is to ask people to pray that Denise will find a safe affordable place to live before it’s too late. Another is to say this: People with severe MCS don’t get symptoms that are simply uncomfortable or inconvenient. Reactions can be life threatening or so incredibly painful and hard to manage that people no longer want to live. We don’t practice extreme avoidance just for fun.

To a large degree you hold our lives in your hands. What you do in your home matters to people around you. It matters a lot if you live in an apartment building, but it can also matter if you live in a detached home. Fumes from your laundry products are pumped into the neighborhood from your dryer vent. The chemicals you use on your lawn fill your neighbors’ air. If you idle your car in the driveway, paint your house with a toxic paint, or spray the exterior of your home for bugs, everyone around you is affected.

Choosing products to use in and around your home may seem like a minor choice. Sometimes, though, it’s actually a matter of life and death.

I Hear Doors Slamming Shut: A Response to Tish Harrison Warren

I saw the headline “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services” and I felt myself tensing up. Would writer Tish Harrison Warren even address the issue of people with chronic illness or disabilities? What would her reasoning be for shutting the doors of access that had so recently opened? 

Because the New York Times opinion piece was behind a paywall, I wasn’t able to read it until Saturday, when a friend with a subscription shared it. As a result, I’m a little late to this conversation. On the positive side, the delay has given time for plenty of other people to say important things that I can quote.

First, here’s a brief synopsis of the argument Warren gives for dropping online services. She says that dropping the online option is “the way to love God and our neighbors” because our bodies “are part of our deepest humanity, not obstacles to be transcended through digitization.” She believes that online worship diminishes us as people because only in-person gatherings let us worship with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. She doesn’t think having both online and in-person options is appropriate, because “offering church online implicitly makes embodiment elective.”

Warren did address the illness/disability question. She said, “No longer offering a streaming option will unfortunately mean that those who are homebound or sick will not be able to participate in a service. This, however, is not a new problem for the church. For centuries, churches have handled this inevitability by visiting these people at home in person.”

I have many, many thoughts about what she has to say. Here are a few of them.

1.     When Warren asserts that dropping the online option is the way to love God and our neighbors, the question that comes to mind is the same one that the law expert asked Jesus in Luke 10:29: “Who is my neighbor?” The parable of the Good Samaritan, which followed the question, contained an account of religious leaders who ignored someone with a wounded body. They evidently didn’t consider him a neighbor, so the instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself” was one they could comfortably ignore. Am I your neighbor? Restricting my access to corporate worship is certainly not the way to love me.

I also truly fail to see how shutting people out is somehow the way to love God. Matthew 25:40 tells us a good way to do that. “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

2.    When Warren says that bodies “are not obstacles to be transcended through digitization” I wonder if she believes in trying to transcend our physical limits at all. Should we stop praying when we’re hungry or sleepy? Should we stop singing praise songs when we have an itchy mosquito bite? We find ways to transcend the challenges of our bodies all the time. Transcending is a good thing. If my body won’t let me in your church building (or, said another way, you won’t let me in by not making your building accessible), give me an online option so I can transcend.

3.    Worshipping with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength looks different to people with varying levels of physical health. When I worship from home, I AM worshipping with all my strength. My physical limitations and need for online access don’t “diminish” me and my online presence doesn’t somehow weaken the church.

4.    The idea that offering an online option makes in-person worship an elective only applies to people for whom it was already an elective before the online option arose. It was impossible for me to attend in person before online options came to be and it will be impossible if online options go away.

5.    No, the fact that there are people who are homebound isn’t a new problem, but we have new solutions, and when they’re already in place, it seems foolish (and greatly lacking in compassion) to remove them. I also take issue with the assumption that churches have met the needs of the disabled and chronically ill population by visiting people at home. There’s so much I could say on the topic, but I’ll simply note that only a tiny percentage of homebound Christians I know get any sort of in-person visit, and even when they do, they would still like to hear the sermon. Also, how do you reach new people? How do you identify the homebound who are shut out of your church?

6. A few months ago I read Warren’s book “Prayer in the Night.” In it, she talks about the vulnerability of joy — the idea that even in joyful moments, there can be a sense of melancholy because we feel their impermanence. I felt the vulnerability of joy when churches began to digitally open their doors to those of us who’ve been shut out. It’s ironic and sad that Warren is now advocating for making a joyful reality unnecessarily impermanent.

Other Voices 

These are some of the things I’ve read in response to Warren’s piece that I think are worth sharing.

***

A Baptist News article quotes pastor Marc Schelske who said that after going online “it only took a few weeks to learn that we were doing something we should have done years ago. . . . The view of embodied worship on display in the op-ed is only one that works for able-bodied people with weekends off work. There’s just no way around that. I love gathered worship. I love the comfortable practices and traditions I’m used to. But the pandemic has made it clear that those comfortable practices were also exclusionary, and I’m convinced that following Jesus must lead us toward hospitality and inclusion.”

***

A Religion Dispatches article entitled Ending Zoom church is a great idea for a column – provided you completely ignore the disability perspective includes some important insight from disability advocate Samir Knego. He says, “There’s something deeply condescending and ableist about the idea that proponents of online church options don’t believe or understand that ‘bodies . . . are part of our deepest humanity, not obstacles to be transcended through digitization.’ Bodies that require assistance are still bodies.” 

Knego also notes that he’s not surprised at the idea that people with physical challenges should be relegated to “an apparently inferior level of engagement with worship.” He says the idea “frames disabled parishioners as the objects of charity rather than allowing us to attend church on our own terms.”

“Disabled people are so rarely believed to have spiritual insight in our own right,” he adds. “At best, we’re an example for nondisabled people to learn from, or feel happy that they aren’t like us. . . . . If you don’t think—or care—that disabled people are part of your community, then perhaps it’s not surprising that you won’t feel the need to include or consider us.”  

***

A Religion News article entitled “Streaming online has been a boon for churches, a godsend for isolated” quotes from a Texas A&M report which found that “with the shift online, churches were shocked to discover the ways that an online service can become a wide-reaching net.” The article also reports on a study of the pandemic approach of 2,700 congregations from 38 denominations which found that “churches with a hybrid approach — with both in-person and online services — saw reported worship attendance growing by 4.5%. Churches that only met in person saw attendance decline by 15.7%.”

***

From a Sojourners article by Melissa Florer-Bixler:

“I care deeply about the embodied experience of people physically distant from the place where some of us gather for in-person worship. The people who utilize Zoom worship do, too. They would love to be near children running across the sanctuary and to feel the bass line hum in the air. They would prefer if dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and compromised immune systems didn’t keep them from pressing their palm into the hand of another or bringing a piece of bread from a common loaf to their lips.”

“Rather than shutting down our Zoom option, our worship commission met to discuss how we can creatively and intentionally deepen participation and fleshy community among those who are separated from localized worship and fellowship. We decided to have one of the weekly scripture passages read by someone on Zoom. We’ve asked some families to prepare special music, sung from their living rooms.”

***

And finally, in a post called Why Churches Should Continue Their Online Services, Danny Guldin says this:

“Yes, our bodies are important. Yet, they do not define who someone is or can be. Our bodies are fragile. The love of God is not.“

 “Many churches made technological leaps they would never have made had we not been pressed to do so. Online worship is not a problem to be solved; instead, it is a gift that empowers the church to reach more people than ever before and expand our idea of what the Christian community can truly be.”

Life in Bladeland

Once upon a time there was a land full of razor-sharp blades. They covered surfaces and flew through the air. There were big ones and small ones, sticky ones and ones that could be washed away. They were so much part of life in Bladeland that most inhabitants didn’t give them much thought, or they believed they were good or needed. The citizens assumed that their leaders would protect them from things that would harm them, so surely the blades must be safe.

Most of the inhabitants of Bladeland had an armor of sorts: a thick coating on their skin that protected them from feeling immediate effects when cut. People had different types and thicknesses of this coating, though, and everyone’s coating could get thinner as it was shaved down through encounters with the blades.

There was a group of people in the land who had very little defense from the dangers in the environment. Some of them were born with a thinner protective coating and some had originally had a thicker one, but it had been cut away. Life for thin-coaters was very challenging. They were constantly getting wounded, often very deeply, and with serious consequences. They spent most of their time, energy, and money trying to fashion or re-grow their protection or avoid the blades that threatened them wherever they turned. They studied and went to see experts. They learned about their bodies and the danger of the blades.

Thin-coaters saw the blades’ danger in a way that thick-coaters didn’t. They asked people to please remove them from shared spaces. They warned thick-coaters that they could easily end up with their protection cut down. Because thick-coaters had a different experience with the blades than thin-coaters did, it was hard for them to hear the warnings or believe the experiences that were shared. They sometimes saw thin-coaters as confused or exaggerating. The more that thin-coaters made their needs known or warned of the dangers of the blades, the wider the gulf between them grew.

Thin-coaters found themselves with no good choices. They couldn’t safely access most workplaces, medical facilities, schools, churches, or shops. They couldn’t generally join clubs or visit in people’s homes. They tried to make their own home environments as blade-free as possible, but it was hard to balance the physical need for safety with the emotional need for connection.

Sometimes thin-coaters had no choice but to venture out, or they decided the physical cost was worth the emotional gain. When they left their homes, they chose to go to spots with fewer blades, or more escape routes. Because thick-coaters paid very little attention to the blades, they didn’t see or understand the differences in the environments. It didn’t make sense to them that a thin-coater could go to one office building, shop, or home, but not another. Sometimes they told thin-coaters they were lying, manipulating, crazy, or just avoiding something they didn’t really want to do.

When thin-coaters were around others in blade-rich environments, they had a decision to make. Should they let people know how much they were being affected or should they hide their pain and try to manage as long as they could? Either way, they risked ridicule and disbelief. If they let their symptoms show, asked for accommodations, or took obvious steps to avoid getting cut, they were often accused of being selfish or attention-seeking. If they hid their pain, thick-coaters sometimes came to the conclusion that thin-coaters had been exaggerating all along, and that obviously the blades didn’t hurt them as much as they said they did. Thin-coaters wished others would believe them and trust their knowledge and character, but they didn’t know how to make that happen.

That’s how life was in Bladeland. Everyone was getting hurt by the blades, but some saw the effects more immediately or obviously. People fought each other instead of fighting to make Bladeland safer for all. Thin-coaters were deeply grateful for the thick-coaters who were advocates for them and the cause, but there didn’t seem to be many of them around, and the voices of the others were loud. Progress was slow. Would things ever change?  Thin-coaters were tired of the struggle, but what else could they do but keep trying to explain?  What else could they do?