It’s OK to Call Evil ‘Evil.’

Last updated on: June 1, 2012 at 6:00 am by Rachel Marie Stone

It’s OK to Call Evil ‘Evil.’ 2012-06-01T06:00:11-04:00 Rachel Marie Stone

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I highly recommend that you read my friend Ellen Painter Dollar’s recent post on disability and goodness.

It’s called”Do I Hate My Life? No. But I Do Hate My Disability.”

In the post, Ellen dismantles some of the cultural (and, specifically, Christian-cultural) myths about suffering generally and disabilities specifically.

Sometimes I feel troubled by the way certain theologies–including ones I once held–try to insist that ‘whatever happens’ is good and God-intended and meant to be received with gratitude. This world is full of evil and brokenness, and I think God desires that we struggle against those things as we participate in God’s efforts to make all things new. Death is a bad thing. (See my CT post on why a funeral is not the time to rejoice.)

Ellen writes:

OI [the genetic disorder Ellen and I share] is an example of the world’s brokenness. I have come to believe that illness, disability, and disease are neither fundamentally good things disguised as bad (thus not the intentional work of a loving God who works in mysterious ways) nor value-neutral manifestations of human diversity. Illness, disability, and disease are, quite simply, the result of life in a world that does not work as God intended.

[…]

I believe it’s permissible for me to hate OI with that perfect hatred for the things of this world that are broken, fallen, not of God. God designed bones to shore us up and protect our tender bodies from all that would assault them. Bones are not supposed to crack under the weight of a laptop computer. They are not supposed to snap when a little girl is simply dancing in her living room. A routine fall from a scooter should not land a child in the emergency room with multiple fractures. Forty-something-year-old knees should not be completely stripped of their cartilage. No matter how much good (wisdom, love, understanding, compassion) comes out of living with this capricious disorder, the disorder itself is not good.

Read the rest here.

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