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Suggesting that blindness and paralysis are conditions worth alleviating is now an act of discrimination.

A Christian school has been forced to apologise for asking kids to dress up as disabled people that Jesus healed… you know, in the Bible.

Apparently, even compassion needs a diversity impact assessment these days.

Quick Bible lesson:

When John the Baptist wanted proof that Jesus really was the long-awaited Messiah, the disciples presented compelling evidence, telling him,

The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

So there you go.

Jesus going around healing the sick and disabled isn’t a footnote. It’s fairly key to the story. You might even call it part of the job description.

When Teaching Compassion Becomes Offensive

With that in mind, the good folk at Flinders Christian Community College on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula had an idea.

Why not teach the kids to care for the disabled the same way that Jesus cared for them?

They planned a walkathon to raise money for disability charities.

And to help the kids understand why they were doing it, they had them dress up as people that Jesus healed.

So the kids were to come dressed as blind people or as lame people… and the walkathon was to be called Walk in Their Shoes.

You know… raising money for disabled people while teaching our kids to have empathy for those not as well off as themselves.

It was a rather old-fashioned idea.

Do something kind for someone else. Without first consulting a committee of professional offence-takers.

Well, what’s that old saying? No good deed will go unpunished?

Was Jesus Wrong to Heal the Disabled?

Disability advocates were outraged.

One told The Herald-Sun,

“The event was ‘offensive’ and that people with disabilities should not be portrayed as needing to be ‘fixed by Jesus or anyone else’.”

Tell that to the blind guy 2000 years ago who had no family and no social security.

Or to the lame beggar sitting by the side of the road.

Or to the leper who had to yell out “unclean, unclean” so that people could duck for cover as he approached.

How terribly insensitive of Jesus to suggest the leper’s leprosy was something worth healing.

Perhaps he should have offered a pamphlet on celebrating your limitations instead.

The disability advocate continued:

“It’s not respectful to people with disabilities to urge kids to pretend to be them. Embracing difference is a better philosophy than, ‘We’ve got to heal them’. It’s offensive.”

Offensive. Really?

So if I go to a doctor with a bung leg — mine, not his — should he tell me that he can operate and fix my dickie knee? Or should he refuse to treat me since that would be disrespecting my difference, or, as I like to call it, my inability to stand up without falling over.

‘We’re not going to disrespect you by fixing you, sir. That would imply there’s something wrong or abnormal about you always toppling over. You’re not vertically challenged. You’re horizontally gifted. Embrace your inability to stand up. Bulk bill? Are you joking? That’ll be $250. I can help you reach your wallet.’

Apparently, the greatest act of kindness is now to leave people exactly as they are, regardless of whether they’re suffering.

Or what about this reaction, reported in The Herald-Sun:

A former parent of the school, which has about 1700 students and charges up to $11,960 per year, said it was akin to asking students to dress up as Hitler for a history event.

Is she comparing disabled people to Hitler?

Of course not.

But notice how easily we can manufacture outrage when we apply the same bad faith to critics that they apply to everyone else.

Other parents described the dress-up charity walk as, and I quote,

“unjustifiable,” “othering,” and “wrong on so many levels”.

Why? Because it suggested blindness and paralysis might be impediments?

Well, yeah. That’s rather the point. Which is why Jesus healed people and why the school wanted to raise money for those living with disabilities.

Outrage Undermining Genuine Compassion

But in modern Australia, the very suggestion that suffering might be relieved can apparently constitute an act of discrimination.

When you believe the compassionate thing to do is to affirm a disability rather than to fix it — and this might just be me — but I think you’re doing compassion all wrong.

Predictably, the school apologised.

To be honest, in some ways, I don’t blame them. Is it really worth being crucified? Not that there’s anything wrong with being crucified, of course.

The school issued a statement that said:

“While the event was well intended, aspects “fell short of the dignity, respect and inclusion” expected.

“We unreservedly apologise to people with disability, their families, and everyone in our community who has been hurt.”

And so another perfectly well-intentioned attempt to teach children compassion has been sacrificed on the altar of people who confuse acknowledging hardship with demeaning those who endure it.

And there’s something rather sad about that.

The Difference Between Dignity and Disability

There is a difference between affirming the dignity of a disabled person and affirming their disability.

The first is compassion. The second, taken to its logical extreme, risks turning suffering into something we are no longer allowed to alleviate.

A blind person is no less valuable because they can’t see.

A person in a wheelchair is no less worthy because they can’t walk. Their dignity is not up for negotiation.

But that doesn’t mean blindness is a gift, paralysis is an opportunity, or that wanting to restore someone’s mobility is somehow an insult.

We can celebrate the person without celebrating the condition that makes their life harder.

Indeed, that’s precisely why we have doctors, medical researchers, disability support services, charities and — as it turns out — Christian kids doing a dress-up walkathon.

Compassion doesn’t mean pretending the problem doesn’t exist. It means caring enough to do something about it.

And yet professional offence takers see that as a bad thing to teach school kids.

Which reminds me of another old expression?

There are none so blind as those who cannot see.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being blind.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Adobe.