We have a new pastor at our church. As part of the Methodist crowd, like Jenna, we are undergoing change. I haven’t spent that much face-to-face time with her (the first woman to senior pastor our church), but what time I have, I’ve really liked her.

Her sermon yesterday (the first of two parts) was based on Luke 8:26-38. I cite this because, even though this passage is unfamiliar to many, I’m betting that other Christian parents of disabled children (especially those with mental impairments) have stumbled on this before. It is the account of Jesus healing a demon-possessed man.

But I’m not going there…not into the debate of whether or not mental illnesses are demon possessions. I just needed to place this in context. Her message started by explaining that as Jesus approached this town he was met by this demon-possessed man who had been sent out of the town to live among the tombs, naked and chained (he had broken the chains), obviously with no food…sent there to die. (Sounds like the disabled Iraqi children Sandra has reported on.) Jesus noticed this man because he was shrieking at the top of his lungs…you get the picture.

And from meeting this man, Jesus could surmise a great deal about the town and the other people there. The scripture tells that the man had been chained hand and food and guarded until he was driven to even more solitary places…in other words, sent to the tombs to die. Our pastor’s point was that while there were likely efforts initially to help this poor man. And that at first the village kept him chained and guarded close by, that from this account, it was apparent that the town had “sent him away” to live among the tombs, and to eventually starve to death.

She went on to talk about the disabled among us, those who we may try to help sporadically, or when convenient. But that, often like this village, we become frustrated when they become worse (or at least don’t get better), and we just look for ways to pass them off to someone else; to eventually exile them.

This message rang true in so many ways. I thought of LuLu’s experiences in China, being confined to a crib and sporadically fed, definitely malnourished and neglected, and she may have been one of the “lucky” ones. And I thought of our experiences since then, in the richest country on the planet, where her school system was ultimately exiling her to a place that the children refer to as “kiddie prison”, a school where children with various psychological, developmental and emotional disorders are warehoused together (until they drop out, go to residential treatment centers or do something to be admitted to juvenile justice). And I thought about poor Sarah, the young girl here in Georgia who died of a bowel obstruction in a state mental hospital…in the so-called most progressive city in the South. How can this be?

The pastor went on to describe that archeologists make judgments on how compassionate and successful a society was by what condition they find the remains of their disabled citizens in. That in societies where disabled people are loved and cared for, their remains will show proper nutrition and health care. I wonder what historians will say about us?

There is no doubt in my mind that LuLu would not be alive today if left in the Chinese orphanage. This thought was NOT my motivation for adopting her, but is the truth as I realize it now. Yet it angers me that even in our wealthy (and supposedly compassionate) country, there are still those we chain up, push away, exile and wish for them to disappear.

As the parent of one, I live in the middle of this daily.

But how much are the parents at fault when disabled children are discarded? Where does the responsibility (and moral obligation) lie when a town, a country, a society exiles the disabled? Is it solely up to their parents to "save" them from this fate? My thoughts in my next post.


Photo Credit: Cage used for mentally ill in asylums pre-1850.