Biblical encuragement for the disabled

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As someone with Asperger's, I find John Chapter 9 to be really encouraging. Particularly its beginning and its ending:

and



I love those words!

Can you explain them further for those of us who have comprehension issues, understanding the wording and taking things to literally please?

During the 1-st century there was a widespread belief that disability is due to sin -- and in the first quote Jesus said no it wasn't. Indeed he made it into something positive thus making it clear that disabled people aren't inferior. I realize that nowdays you won't find people going around and saying that disability is due to sin, but "actions speak louder than words" so they still "act" as if it does by treating disabled as inferior (the way people ostracize aspies is a good example of it) -- and Jesus pretty much rebukes this kind of viewpoint.

In the second quote Jesus says that his main mission is to turn around the common understanding of who is superior and who is inferior. So the people that used to be viewed as inferior (the blind) would no longer be viewed that way, but the people that used to be viewed as superior (pharesees) would end up taking an inferior place that the blind used to take. This goes hand in hand with the passage where he said "first will become last and last will become first" (Matt 20:16) except that in Matt 20:16 it was more focused on religious leaders while in John 9:39 it is more focused on disabled -- so as a "disabled" I find my encouragement in John 9:39.

Last edited by QFT on 28 Jul 2019, 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Jesus is praising the meekness and innocence of those who are vulnerable, and who in this case, because of their disability, haven't witnessed so much of the depravity of the world.

Some other verses that can be encouraging to those of us who are less important.

And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.- Luke 5:31-32

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; - 1 Corinthians 1:26-27

And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness. - Isaiah 29:18

Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. - Luke 7:47

I think there is a difference between the verses you quoted and the ones I quoted. In Luke 5:31-32 as well as Luke 7:47 He explicitly acknowledged that the people in question are sinners. On the contrast, in John 9:3 he said that the man in question didn't sin. I think disability falls into the latter category and thats the point I was trying to make.

[quote="QFT"During the 1-st century there was a widespread belief that disability is due to sin[/quote]
why did people think that those days?

At the time someone wrote the Bible, autism, much less Asperger's, had yet to get into the Diagnosic statistical manual


While I am not telepathic, for some reason, it seems to me that, the disabilities referred to in the Bible were physical. Not developmental disability. Intellectual challenge. And certainly not mental illness. Christians have a lot of misconceptions about mental illness.


This is not a representative sample, but a lot of the Christians that interacted with me were nice and normal until they found out that I was autistic and transgender





Then they acted "holier than thou"

The manual didn't exist altogether, but thats a moot point. The concept of disabilities existed, regardless of whether it was documented or not. But even without the concept of disabilities, the point still stands. Jesus was opposed to sophisticated people (pharesees) judging simpler people based on their abilities to follow some social rules. NT-s judging autistics based off of that is the same exact concept. We can "call" them disabled -- but their only disability is inability to fit into the mold, which is the exact thing Jesus went out of his way to defend.



You missed the allegory. The passage talked about blindness (as opposed to, say, bone fracture) for a reason. It was alluding to an analogy between physical blindness and mindblindness. Look at the very last verse I quoted in the original post: "if you were blind you would have no sin but now you say I see therefore your sin remains". The one who is "blind" would be an autistic, who is mindblind, and they have no sin since its not their fault they made some mishaps. The person who sees is an NT, and that persons sin remains since NT is making calculated decisions to take advantage of others. And no, you don't need to know the word autism to say what I just said: this concept can be restated without that word.



Maybe they are looking down at you due to transgender thing rather than autism thing.