Perfection and imperfection

As I have stated elsewhere in this blog, Kathi and I have adopted the practice of bringing friends of ours with intellectual disabilities to the Introduction to Special Education class when we teach it. We will bring 3 or 4 friends, interview them briefly, and then just allow our students to have the chance to sit down with the folks, grab a bite to eat and talk about whatever they want. The guest speakers know that they are there to help students understand the lives of people with disabilities, and are prepared to answer any question. At the end of the evening, students write a brief statement of reflection on the evening. Kathi is going through these reflection statements (hundreds of them) and looking at common themes.

In one of the papers, a student wrote,

why else would something perfect create imperfection but to set an example for us to follow

This is the type of thing students will often write, it is interesting from a variety of perspectives, some correct but mostly it is wrong. It is a platitude about disability and who God is.

First, the assumption is that those of us who do not have some recognizable, some diagnosable disability are somehow perfect and that those who do have a disability are somehow imperfect. That is the type of perspective that too many people have about who they are. They see themselves too much as "God's gift" even though they are drowning in their own sin, or trapped in their own vices, or just self impressed people. People with these characteristics are the "perfect" ones and those with some form of disability are the "imperfect" ones. In reality, we are all "imperfect" ones.

Second, God did and does create imperfect people and we all have the opportunity to observe it, from the example of imperfection in each and all of us. Perhaps we who are intellectually at a particular level deny our imperfection and those who are below that number do not have the ability to deny their imperfection. Even if they do, we intelligent ones find it cute or refreshing. We, however, are in more ways than not, identical to those with measured disability though we deny our imperfection.

So, third, in that way, those with disabilities are an example to us of us.

People with disabilities are not an example of imperfection to the perfect. They are an example of imperfection to the imperfect who think themselves perfect.

In that way, they are the example in a refreshing, nonthreatening manner. They do not come to us in their imperfection and say, look at me, follow my example. They come to us in their imperfection, and as we grow to know them and love them and in many ways become like them, we say, "We are all the same." I am imperfect as you are imperfect. But you are also a creation in the Image of God as I am a creation in his image.

Fourth, people with disabilities are just people. This is the profound lesson that I have learned after 30+ years of interaction mostly with people with intellectual disabilities. They are not here to teach me lessons any more that I am here to teach them lessons. They are just people living their lives, and through the living of their lives I have the ability to benefit and learn from them in the same manner that I have the ability to benefit and learn from anyone else. However, to say that they are placed on the earth solely to help me learn something, is once again the result of my prideful self-impressed nature where I see the world revolving around me, and I see myself as perfect and they as something other. I have said elsewhere in this blog, people with disabilities are indispensable (ala 1 Corinthians 12:22), however, their lives have total value in themselves, not because of what they bring to me.

The notion of God creating imperfection is also very subjective. Is intellectual disability, for example, imperfection? It is certainly different. People with intellectual disability cannot do many of the things that people who do not have such a disability can. I am not one of those who denies that intellectual disability is disability. However, I am increasingly understanding intellectual disability more as difference. People can be successful in life with a wide range of ability levels. People also define success in a wide variety of ways. As a Christian, success is very antithetical to society's definition. Increasingly, I am understanding success from a Christian perspective, and I find that intellectual disability often becomes simply a difference relative to that success. It occurs to me that in his wisdom and his kindness, God sets the "success bar" at a level that is accessible to the majority of people, and simply says that to whom much is given much is expected (Luke 12:48). With that in mind, one must reexamine the notion of imperfection. If I haven't been given the intellect or opportunity to be a university professor, for example, am I imperfect? If I haven't the ability to build a wall straight, am I imperfect? If I haven't the ability to hold a family together because I cannot set the emotional tone, am I imperfect? If I haven't the ablilty to love others like a person with intellectual disabilities will often do, am I imperfect? I can choose a standard for perfection that I will succeed at and then use that as my plumb line, or I can use the plumb line that God provides for success and allign myself with that. The notion of perfect and imperfect looks quite different when I allign myself with God's notion of success or perfect.

It is funny that when I do the interviews I mentioned at the beginning, I ask one friend if he has a disability. He typically says, "I don't think so." I then ask what would a person be like if he had a disability? My intellectually disabled friend doesn't talk about wheelchairs, or blindness, or inability to do something. He says "They can't get along with other people, swear a lot and get in fights." You could put a team of experts in disability in a room for a month and they probably would never come up with that criteria as the definition of disability. But I would have to say that my intellectually disabled friend's definition is probably much closer to what God would hold out as disability, as imperfection.

McNair