No One has Received More Care Than You
https://www.ambest.com/directories/bestconnect/DeeGeeArticle.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20939141/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-ugly-laws-disabilities-chicago-history-flashback-perspec-0626-md-20160622-story.html
https://bolesblogs.com/2007/05/01/enforcing-the-ugly-laws/
https://largertable.com/2020/07/04/thirty-years-later-the-church-and-the-ada/
https://reader.mediawiremobile.com/accessibility/issues/206459/articles/5fb56f1d8a5a6c275345273f/reader#:~:text=The%20American%20Church's%20historic%20relationship,Church%2C%20have%20aggressively%20resisted%20participation.
In the mid to late 1800s laws sprung up through the United States called “unsightly beggar ordinance” later recognized as Ugly Laws. The first Ugly Law appeared in San Fransisco in 1867. These laws made it illegal for people with “unsightly or disfiguring” disabilities to be in public. Ugly Laws did not begin to be repealed until the mid 1970s with the Chicago being the last to repeal in 1974.
Chicago Municipal Code, Section #36034 read:
“No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly, disgusting or improper is to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under penalty of not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each offense.”
While my family went through the process of ultimately removing ourselves from our former church, the most common response to our pointing out the sin of ableism was,
“No one has received more care than you.”
Verbatim almost every time.
The first time I heard it, guilt and shame washed over me. I almost missed the subtle oppression in those words delivered in a tender tone.
The second time, I was so triggered that it was as if I were plunged underwater. Those words hurled at me like a brick disguised as a life preserver taking me deeper into a blackout.
The third time, I recognized it for what it was: an ignorance of generational sin passed down a few generations so that the speaker didn’t know they were elevating an abusive system while disregarding my sacrifices and the service of my gifts — including the gift of prophesying the sin of ableism that the community could not see.
The last time the phrase was directed at me, it was coupled with polite exile.
No one received more care than me because no one’s experience was not accommodated as much as mine.
I was numb in disbelief.
‘By now they should understand, right?’
‘Shouldn't this have made sense without me having to explain it repeatedly?’
‘How could these men who call me dear treat me so callously and call it love?’
I truly wanted to believe they simply didn't understand the abuse I endured from the church body collectively and them individually.
Whether it be ignorance or willfulness, at a certain point, their refusal to take me seriously was the denial of a reality that doesn't affect them. No matter how much they said the words, “I love you,” or “You mean the world to me,” their actions told me their love was conditional to fitting within their mold of wisdom. It was a repeated abuse that literally almost killed me. And I am not the only one.
So I echo the words of Hosea 4:6,
“my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also reject you as my priests;”
Disabled saints are regularly put in this position. We are forced to wrestle with what fellowship looks like when our pastors who, by rejecting knowledge of the Disability experience, have disqualified themselves from being shepherds to us. Our sibling saints who choose to believe the non-disabled narrative of us have disqualified themselves from being friends to us as well.
It shouldn't be this way.