We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

disabilities

Does God Inflict Physical Disabilities?

In Exodus 4, we find Moses claiming that he could not be used by Yahweh to get the children of Israel out of Egypt because he was “slow of speech and tongue.” To this Yahweh replies, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD” (Ex 4:10-1)?

However, this is not what we find in the teachings and life of God’s ultimate revelation in Christ. Without exception, when Jesus confronted the crippled, deaf, blind, mute, diseased, or demon-possessed, he uniformed diagnosed their affliction as something that God did not will. Often Jesus or the Gospel authors specify that it was evil forces (Satan or demons), not God, that were causing the afflictions (see Mk 9:25, Lk 11:14; 13:11-16, Acts 10:38).

How then should we assess this passage in light of the uniform view of Jesus, the NT and early post-apostolic church that all such infirmities are directly or indirectly brought about by Satan and his minions and are against God’s will?

To begin, it is exegetically significant that the passage from Exodus 4 does not suggest that Yahweh determines which individuals will be deaf, mute or blind, “as if God entered into the womb of every pregnant woman and determined whether and how a child would have disabilities,” to quote Terrence Fretheim.[1] The afflictions mentioned in this passage are spoken of in general terms and simply reflect that Yahweh is the Creator and Lord over a creation that unfortunately includes such things as deafness, muteness and blindness. This is closely related to the ANE concept of a kingdom as a king-centered corporate whole, which also could be plausibly appealed to as a means of accounting for this passage. And one could argue that the need for God to over-emphasize the importance of creational-monotheism to his people at this early stage in the progress of revelation and/or perhaps even the metonymy of the subject could also be appealed to along these lines.

Yet, we see how this passage bears witness to the cross, as I argue in my recently-released Cross Vision, only when we interpret it through the lens of Calvary. As he did on Calvary, I submit that Yahweh is here communicating to Moses in a way that reflects his willingness to assume responsibility for all the afflictions that unfortunately take place in his demonically-oppressed creation, despite the fact that every one of these afflictions are contrary to his will, as Jesus’ ministry makes clear. And Yahweh in this particular instance is speaking this way in order to reassure Moses that his speech-impairment is hardly an insurmountable problem for him—though, much to the chagrin of Yahweh—Moses continued to refuse this assurance, resulting in Yahweh accommodating Moses’ stubbornness by letting Aaron serve as his spokesperson (Ex 4:13-6).

Join us next week at the Cross Vision Conference to explore questions like these further.

[1] T. Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1992), 72.

Photo credit: ILO in Asia and the Pacific via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Related Reading

When Jesus Referred to Canaanites as “Dogs”

Last week I discussed Paul’s harsh language regarding his opponents, the worst example being his reference to certain opponents as “dogs” (Phil 3:2). I suggested that such language simply reflects the fact that Paul wasn’t perfect, as he himself admitted. Several people pushed back on this suggestion by pointing out that Jesus once referred to…

Why Did God Heal or Not?

In 1996 a 27-year-old man in my church named David was diagnosed with an inoperable brain cancer. The doctors decided to send David to the Mayo Clinic to receive some experimental treatments on the slim hope these might at least prolong his life. The night before David left, I and a dozen other people went…

Podcast: Defending the Manifesto (5 of 10)

Greg responds to challenges by William Lane Craig from Craig’s podcast “Reasonable Faith.“ Craig argues that Greg’s model of reading the bible through the lens of Jesus Christ is simply Greg’s way of rejecting the dictation theory of inspiration—which everyone does. Greg denies this and claims that his view of inspiration is more than simply…

How the Church is Tempted to “Do Good”

The previous post spoke of God’s call to the church to be resident aliens: a holy, distinct people who are set apart and peculiar when compared to the patterns of the world. The holiness of God’s kingdom is cruciform love, which constitutes our distinct witness to the world. Preserving this holiness and resisting the Devil’s…

When God Endorsed Polygamy

We often find God acting as if he supports things we know, by other means, that he does not. For example, though his ideal was monogamy, it’s clear in the biblical narrative that, once God decided to permit men to acquire multiple wives and concubines, he was not above bearing the sin of his people…

A Response to Tony Campolo on Fighting the Powers

While I have nothing but admiration for Tony Campolo, I differ with his views on how Christians are to be change agents in the world. He has always been a strong proponent of Christians bringing about change by political means. I, on the other hand, am not in principle opposed to Christians engaging in politics,…