Disability and the Image of God

Like I say… too predictable. Even he knows he doesn’t really mean it like it sounds. One note bands lose their audience.

@Patrick , thanks! And the same to you. Enjoy a walk in the sunshine! Some time, tell me more about your daughter, okay? Cheers!

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7 posts were split to a new topic: The Unrelenting Zeal of Virtue Without God

Well, speaking as someone who tried to swim against the professional stream and contributed to parliamentary consultations on both abortion and euthanasia, I can’t disagree with anything in the thrust of this. Not that I was that unusual - the Christian Medical Fellowship here also campaigned on a similar basis, and for a number of years I took the Journal of the Centre for Boioethics and Human Dignity, which regularly had articles making a similar case for the “imageness” of all humanity, including the disabled - against the prevalent direction of secular medical ethics, I should add. Knowing several friends with Downs Syndrome, who were spiritually incredibly mature and taught me a lot, helped.

  • His “in the image of the Image” is a concept I picked up from The True Image, by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes - and it underpins my concept of the creation of man as a christological issue. The fact that “the image” is ontological, rather than based on any human attributes, also informs my view of the creation of man - however it was done, it is to do with a holistic work of Christ, and not the addition of some “image factor” like rationality, or speech, to some random product of evolution.

  • The stress he makes on the corporateness of the image is interesting, because it does also actually also allow for those things about man that express the image - a man is not in the Image of God because he is capable of reason, or rule, but those things are neverthless the outworking of the Image in those capable of them, and there is no contradiction.

  • In that regard (as a side issue) I think he maligns Aquinas a little. I checked the context, and Aquinas is answering the objection (based on a warped reading of Augustine) that not all have the image. Aquinas replies that, even when the usual signs of reason etc are missing or damaged by sin, the Image is still there by nature (and he hustifies this by quoting from Augustine). It’s not quite the same as the idea that image is inviolable, but neither is it discriminatory.

  • I note that, in the light of the current “genealogy doesn’t mean much” discussion on BioLogos, genealogy actually has some bearing here too - to be born of man is to be in the Image of God, regardless of genetic health, etc, so it applies equally to the disabled, the embryo, and so on. I’m not sure of any other concept that earths that human dignity in simply being human by birth, ie by nature.

  • I particularly liked this:

Human rights are really God’s rights over humanity more than one person’s rights over another. God is every person’s creator, so God is the one to direct how people treat one another. People have rights; but contrary to much secular thinking, they do not have a right to those rights. Those rights flow from the God-given dignity rooted in creation in God’s image.

  • I used to use such a concept in counselling, not for the disabled (who usually don’t worry about such things) but for those who for various reasons considered themselves worthless. They could point to all kinds of good evidence of failure or weakness, but we often got round to the idea that “Your value is that God values you.” And that is all to do with his Image.

  • My main ambivalence was about some of his thoughts apparently suggesting the continuation of disability in the age to come, based on that concept of Christ rather than “health” being the norm. Whilst I warm to the idea that ones disability in this life might show signs (like well-won battle scars) in the life to come, analogous to Christ’s wounds, I think we shall all be restored to a new and faultless creation that swallows up even all our present disabilities into something new. Nevertheless, even those thoughts are valuable if they help us to see, and even wish to emulate, Christ in the disabled.

Funnily enough I was interviewing someone with quite marked disabilities (not cognitive, I must add) for church membership recently. Recognising the struggle she would have to contribute much to the work of the fellowship, she neverthless reminded me that “his strength is shown in my weakness.”

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My son was special needs, I wrote a lot about him in the discussion on abortion.

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Sorry; I misread you. You say “was;” has he passed away?
I don’t need imaginary friends, either. The real ones take care of that.

No, my son is 26 years old now. He is a computer scientist for a cybersecurity firm in NYC. I said he was a special needs child because of his being born long before he was viability for life. The complications were horrendous and were medically, physiologically, and neurologically unknown. His care and education from pre-school to high school was very one-of-a-kind requiring a lot of innovative methods as we were dealing with uncharted waters for just about everything during his first years of life. We and the medical and educational community were dealing with unknowns one how to handle as it was a first in history in so many ways. At an early age fMRI showed a very different processing brain. Even today an fMRI would be labeled “unique” and physiologically “different”. But as amazing as the brain is, his strengths now lies in those very differences. He is able to view computer code and determine immediately what type of person wrote it, if it was machine or human generated, country of origin, even the school of origin of the programmer. Details that our minds would filter over, pop out in his like someone looking through 3D glasses. We first recognized the ability early in childhood but it got more refined as he got older.

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My new post on The Hump explores how conventional evolutionary monogenism actually provides an inadequate basis for human equality, whereas descent from Adam does. Seems relevant to this thread.

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A hallmark of post-Judaeo/Christian society.
https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/were-nazis-more-tolerant-of-down-syndrome-than-some-european-countries-today/

This is really strange. Are they against all abortions or just abortions specifically related to Downs Syndrome?

What criteria do you use to decide that abortion is justified? The article cites Dawkin’s rationale; your thoughts? Can you see how the Christian view that “all people are made in the image of God” might guide such a decision, in anything but a strict “self-defense” rationale, where a continued pregnancy is a grave threat to the mother’s health?
As for the resulting public policy questions, we live in the wild, wild west in that regard, and I don’t necessarily think that laws can adequately address all the questions involved --so I will try to avoid sweeping generalizations.

I feel that any medical procedure one has (or doesn’t have) is fundamentally a private personal matter. I believe that a woman should be in full control over her body. Regarding Dawkin’s rationale, well it is one way to look at it globally and quite easy for an elderly man to proclaim. It happens to be in line with my thinking on the subject. But I wouldn’t force nor even give my views to say a daughter-in-law or any woman that I know. It is one of the most difficult decisions a woman can make. Whatever decision a woman makes, I would not blame or harm her (or the child) in any way. The one thing that all woman should have access to is information on the options, the reasoning, the choices.

Some medical procedures carry with them ramifications which affect others, or have known ramifications for those who choose them.
If I were to seek a medical procedure which would incapacitate me (a purely private matter?), so that I could be awarded disability status and receive disability social security payments (a public ramification) would you support that? Or, would you object on both public grounds and private ones, that what I sought was not even good for me?

ALL medical procedures carry with them ramifications which affect others, or have known ramifications for those who choose them.

No, I would not support public payment of the procedure nor the disability payments. But I would accept your right to have the procedure done at your choice. If you are sane, rational, and not depressed, I would recommend suicide in place of incapacitation as being more humane. I would want to prosecute the doctor who would do such a medically unnecessary and harmful procedure on you. And I would want you evaluated psychologically to make sure there is no underlying mental health issues for your seemingly bizarre desire. Your freedom to screw up your life is a fundamental freedom guaranteed in the US Constitution.

Actually, no, it’s not. People can be instutionalized under a mental health rationale against their will.

That requires a hearing proving mental incompetence. If deemed incompetent to handle one’s own affairs, the court assigns a guardian which must do things in the best interests of the deemed incompetent person. In that case, no guardian would approve such incapacitating procedure. Now if deemed competent, the person is responsible for his own liberty and pursuit of happiness. But I seriously doubt in any doctor would do an unnecessary harmful procedure. Unless the person is very rich, then he could get whatever he wanted.

But, that’s “governmental interference” into what you assert is a purely private, personal matter.
If I claim to be a “double amputee trapped in a normal body” (one of the many dysphorias available), and ask a doctor to cut off my legs, the doctor won’t comply because of a moral objection. How is that different from, say, compelling doctors to perform abortions even if they have a moral objection?
I’m guessing you don’t want to simply leave such things to whatever the prevailing culture finds currently fashionable?
Do you agree with Dawkins that giving birth to a Down’s child is immoral, even though you knew ahead of time?

In Florida, there is something called the “Baker Act” … .as in “… this morning, my friend Lucy was Baker Acted…”

It is relatively easy to obtain based on a policeman’s report.

If a person acts in a way that indicates he might harm someone or himself, he can be put under observation for 3 to 7 days, for observation and treatment.

Many states have some equivalent to Florida’s Baker Act.

I would say that the “double amputee trapped in a normal body” has some psychological issues that makes it immoral and unethical to do unnecessary surgery that will cause the person harm.

Very different. I don’t think it is proper for the government or an employer to compel doctors (or any staff members) to do anything that they find morally objectionable. However if a doctor signs a contract saying that he will do all approved medical procedures that a patient needs for their own well being, then I believe that the doctor is in a resign or do position. Any woman going for an abortion is facing enormous pressure. It is not the doctor’s job to be her pastor, her counselor, her friend. He is her doctor and should do the requested medical treatment in the most effective way that minimizes harm to the woman such as simple and safe “pill” abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Note that 93% of all abortions in this country are chemical abortions during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. An abortion in the 24 week of pregnancy, although legal, is very rare and very dangerous to the mother. A doctor doing late term abortions has to really understand why he is doing such procedures. Life of the mother is one. None viable fetus is another. Nobody walks into a hospital and requests a late term abortion because “I changed my mind, I don’t want to have this baby anymore.” That is why abortion should no longer be a public discussion item for this country. And Christians should stop talking about it.

Certainly not. Rule of law and employment agreements define what are unacceptable and what is proper actions.

In some way yes, I think it would be immoral. If a woman finds out, in say the 3rd week of pregnancy that the embryo has three copies of chromosome 21, and she knows the difficulties the child and the family would have to bear, I would find it immoral if she deluded herself into thinking that her God wants her to have this child and she chose that route purely on her faith. Now if she chose to have the child because she already loves the embryo and is prepared to be a good mother to the child despite its disabilities for its whole life, then it is her personal choice and I would not judge it as immoral.

I hear the distinctions you’re trying to make, but for me, your answer is just sad, and based upon ignorance of what raising Down’s children usually entails.