Texts that Perpetuate Prejudice*

Mark 1:29-34, 3:1-5, 10:46-52

What woman doesn’t cringe (what man either, I hope) at the text from Ephesians 5:22: “Wives be subject to your husbands. Just as the Church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, subject to their husbands.” And do not all of us cringe from the same diatribe in the next chapter of Ephesians: “Slaves, obey your masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart. Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord.”

In many circles these are referred to as “Texts of Terror.” There are a lot of terrifying texts in the Bible, especially if you are not part of the group in power. As we all know, the Bible is often used as a club to strike certain people down or to put them in their place—their “God ordained” place. These “texts of terror” may be texts that reinforce our prejudices or are easily used against a particular class of people. They may also simply be texts that we interpret, perhaps innocently, out of our biased preconceived notions.

As I said, these texts are legion, depending on who you are and where you are in the social strata.  The Old Testament text that for years was translated, “Black but beautiful” is one, perhaps subtle example. That translation (reflecting a translator’s bias) assumed that to be Black and beautiful (which is the appropriate translation) is the exception. Clearly it reinforced a cultural bias.

Certainly there are many texts of terror for women, in addition to those we mentioned. What about 1 Corinthians 14:34, “Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” (Obviously we don’t take that to heart!)

Texts about divorce, like this one from Matthew, can be texts of terror for divorced and remarried men and women. They are usually more so for women, however, as they are often still used in many literalistic churches, along with other texts about the subservience of woman, to keep them in abusive marriages. “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

We have become very familiar here at Plymouth with the texts of terror for Gay and Lesbian people. One is in 1Timothy, “Neither the immoral, nor idolater, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.” I am not sure that leaves any one left standing, but it is the “homosexuals” that are seized upon. And there is Romans 1:27, “Men giving up natural intercourse with women were consumed with passion for one another…and they received in their person, due penalty for their error.” There should be no denying that this is a text of terror.

I suppose if you are rich, a text of terror could be the one about the rich young man who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life and was told to give everything to the poor and follow Jesus. And the conclusion of that text in Luke 18, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” It is interesting, however, that we don’t see that one used very often as a “clobber text!” It all has to do with who is in power, doesn’t it?

So what do we do with texts like this? (I can just tell that many of you have some pretty good suggestions!) The truth is, we know what to do. We are pretty good Biblical scholars; we are pretty good at dealing with them appropriately.

First we try to get beneath the language, including trying to ferret out any translational biases, in order to see what the various communities were originally trying to communicate.

We try to understand what the original context of the passage was, as well as place it in the larger context of that part of the book, rather than pull out certain words or phrases. And we ask if the context or situation addressed by the passage is similar to our context or the issue to which we are seeking to address the passage.

We look to see if the passage is consistent with Jesus overall message, as he is the lens through which we interpret Scripture. We then, legitimately ask, “Does this text need to be thrown out because it is hopelessly incomprehensible or because it is locked in a different culture and world view so that it simply cannot be applied to our situation?”

We have become sensitive to many of these texts of terror, but are there others to which we are not so sensitive? Are their texts that we innocently interpret out of our bias or misunderstanding and thus they appear to reinforce those very biases and misunderstandings?

I suggest that many of the “healing” texts, like two of those read this morning are “texts of terror” for a whole community of people. That is, people with disabilities. These can be texts that perpetuate prejudice or misunderstanding, with the added power of Biblical “truth.”

Don’t we bring to these texts and other healing texts an overwhelming assumption, that, “Of course these ‘poor,’ ‘crippled,’ ‘blind,’ ‘paralyzed,’ ‘demented,’ and otherwise “diseased” persons need to be healed? Of course their lives were pitiable because of their cursed malady. They could not be whole, could not be fulfilled, they could not be contributing members of society, unless they were restored to able-body-ness.”

Thankfully, there are a growing number of people with disabilities and their allies, who are loud and proud, who are tired of being objects of pity, who are tired of being seen for their disability rather than their personhood. These are people who are challenging “Ableism.” That is, the defining of the world for and by able-bodied and “able”-minded people. The barriers they confront daily are not only physical barriers, but perceptions, lack of willing accommodation, the perception that they have little to contribute, being objects of pity, or as bad, heroes, for doing the same things that others do as a matter of course.

Indeed, these are texts of terror for them, as they reinforce cultural bias. Any person with a disability has too many such stories. I was talking to a woman just this week who uses a wheelchair. More than once she has had the experience of strangers coming up to her in a public place, like a shopping mall, wanting to pray for her—to be able to walk.

Any parent of a child with a disability will tell you of the awkwardness with which people deal with them. That is, either by trying to avoid the subject (which makes the child invisible and the challenges of the parent unacknowledged) or by making them objects of pity or heroism. That is, either super parents, or parents with a joyless burden. Many people think that you cannot love a child with a disability as much as another child. When our son died, there were even people who thought that his death wasn’t as deep and horrible a loss for us as is the loss of a child without a disability.

We able-bodied people are not apt to see it, so unless we consciously work at it, we bring an able-bodied bias to the text (as we do, or course, to the rest of life). Ableism is the sea in which we swim. Look at just a few small examples of how our perspectives are reflected in our language:

“The blind leading the blind.”

“That’s so lame.”

“Paralyzed with indecision”

“He was talking like a crazy person.”

“What a spaze.”

Deprecation of people with disabilities is routine, as shown in use of language.

Michael Oliver, a disability theorist, separates impairment from disability. (Though Oliver’s is neither the only nor necessarily the best theory, I find it a helpful beginning place.) He defines “impairment” as lacking part or all of a limb or having a defective limb, organ, or mechanism of the body. In other words, we are certainly not saying that there are not impairments that make it difficult or impossible for people with some disabilities to do some of the things that most able-bodied people do. We are not trying to deny or make “disabilities,” or in Oliver’s definition, “impairments,” invisible, quite the contrary.

Oliver defines “disability” as the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physical (or cognitive/ emotional/developmental/mental) impairments and thus excludes them from mainstream society.

Clearly we need to come to these Biblical texts with a great deal of sensitivity so that they don’t perpetuate hurt and prejudice—so they don’t remain texts of terror. 

We acknowledged last Sunday that it is not possible for 21^st century people to get inside the world of “demon” possession, illness, and cure in the first century. The focus, therefore, must be on what the result of having a demon or a debilitating condition was in Jesus time. That is, it removed one from community. The “ill,” “diseased,” or “possessed” person was not seen as whole and could not be part of the community, which included, but wasn’t limited to, its religious and cultural life.

Healing restored one to community. Though we cannot get inside it, we can get a sense of the difference in the understanding of illness, disease, and healing in Jesus’ day.

Medical anthropologist J. Pilch points out that we, in our time, look at disease in a biomedical way. That is, disease derives from an abnormality in the structure or function of an organ system in a person’s body. Disease affects individuals and only individuals are treated. He points out that the Bible, however, always looks at disease from a “sociocultural” perspective. It is concerned with persons in situations devalued by society. That includes, but is not limited to, disease and illness. From a sociocultural perspective, disease is not seen as just personal, it is social. It is disease because of its result, which is separation from society. (That is why “leprosy” in the Bible covered many skin ailments with very different symptoms. It really was not a diagnosis of particular symptoms, but of the societal result.) That, it seems to me, is very close to Oliver’s definition of “disability.”

Cure, then, can come not just from curing the person of their symptoms, but also from changing by the society that relegates that person to the margins.

If we look carefully at Jesus’ activity of healing, he is about restoring people to community. And it is not always by changing them.

Mark’s Jesus seeks to restore the wholeness denied to the sick by the social order. That is why his healing of the sick is nearly identical with his social interaction with them and other marginalized people. To one leper, here in 1:41, he offers a declaration of wholeness through eradication of his disease. To another, in Chapter 14:3, he simply offers the solidarity of table fellowship. There is no mention of cure; he simply has dinner at his house. Both restore those persons to community. Both challenge the prevailing social boundaries.

Clearly Jesus did not see the same things that others of his day did as causes for people to be marginalized. We see this in his association with any number of people pushed to the margins including women, even “fallen” women. Might that be the case with people with physical “maladies” as well? We have already seen it to be the case in his association with “lepers?”

Look at what he says to Bartimaeus who is identified in the story by his disability—“blind” Bartimaeus in the last text read this morning. Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and is brought forward. He stands right in front of Jesus, who, as far as we know, was able to see just fine. Bartimaeus, standing right in front of Jesus, is obviously blind and a beggar because of it. Jesus asks, “What would you have me do for you?” “What would you have me do for you?” Isn’t that remarkable! It appears that Jesus doesn’t simply assume that blindness is the problem.

Olive Schreiner, a remarkable South African woman writing over 100 years ago, in a book called Dreams, writes of a dream of heaven. In this dream, the people in heaven shine on the plants, from the glow of their bodies, to make them grow. She writes, “I asked God, what are they doing? God said, ‘they are shining on the plants that they may grow.’ And I saw that they were working in companies, some alone, but most were in twos, sometimes two men, sometimes two women, generally a man and a woman. I asked God why and God said it is because they shine a different light and different plants need different kinds of light to grow.”

She went on further and saw a blind man shining on some plants that needed his particular light. Further yet, she saw them carrying a man without hands or feet, and he shown on plants that needed his particular kind of light. “And I said to God, ‘This is a strange land. I had thought blindness and maimedness were great evils. But not so here.’

God said, “Didst thou then think that love had need of eyes and hands!” 

Amen.

  Plymouth Church, Rev. Doug Van Doren, 2-8-09

  *Reconstructed from preaching outline.