In the Midst of Deception: The Illusion of Disability
03-22-2016
By Eddie Rosa-Fuentes
“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Acts 10:15
We live in the culture of perfection. We are asked to be perfect. Our work needs to be perfect. Western culture keeps asking from humanity, and following the idea of Capitalism, having more, more and more. For this reason, we now have machinery doing the work that humans used to do. Because of perfection. It is said that robots and machines do not make mistake; if there is any mistake it was the mistake of the one who programmed it.
However, we need to ask, what is perfect? How do we define perfect? We cannot forget that the idea of perfection is a social construction. For Western culture, perfection has to do with flawlessness, faultlessness, being unspoiled, unaltered, precision, ability, etc. I would say that to achieve perfection for many is to achieve a Godly image. It is true, that almost everybody will tell you that humans are not perfect. However, our everyday lives are ruled by the different ideologies presented by media to achieve the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect body, the perfect clothes, the perfect eyes, mouth, nose, or ass, even many are constantly looking for the perfect size of penis. Does size matter?
What would society look like without the word perfection? Or maybe I should say where perfection is not a value or a virtue? What does it mean to embrace our “brokenness”? Or what if perfection means “brokenness”?
We are constantly bombarded with an ideology of perfection that is trying to deceive us from reality. The ideology tries to keep us focused on what we need to be perfect than to love who and how we are. Even the media and the system’s ideology uses people with “disabilities” to encourage “those who do not have ‘disabilities’” because—“if they can do it I can do it.”
Sadly, we have fallen in the illusion of disabilities, where we look at the other as un-able to do what I can instead of seeing what that person is able to do. We keep focusing on what they do not have instead of celebrating what do they have and who they are.
People with “disabilities” have other abilities. They are able to do many things with the body and mind they have, the same way people without “disabilities” do things with the body and mind they have. God made us, all of us, perfectly broken, where with my different abilities and the different abilities of my neighbor we can be together the Body of Christ, and create the Kin-dom of God on this earth. So help us God.
Eddie A. Rosa Fuentes was born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Wildlife Management and is now finishing his Master of Divinity at McCormick Theological Seminary.