Thread by @Imani_Barbarin

I’m going to do this one and I’m going to preface this by saying that many faith traditions have this issue, but I can only speak to my own with Christianity. Also, I used to work for evangelical missionaries and my father still works for the church, so I’m going to be delicate.

https://twitter.com/the_kris_guin/status/1089161773817741312

I grew up in a traditionally African American, American Baptist church in Pennsylvania. It’s literally all I’ve known. While many people think that my church would make me into inspiration porn, two factors stopped that from getting too out of hand. 1. My mom never let anyone put

Me on a pedestal and 2. A lot of the black women in the church who secretly ran things had a hand in raising me as well and would treat me like most other kids in church that acted up. I was disciplined like everyone else. But, as I grew older, some little things would come up

Like parents yelling at their kids and pointing to me as to why they didn’t have an excuse. Or people who weren’t too familiar with my family making the assumption that I was some little angel (haha, no). By in large, my experience being turned into inspiration porn happened

Outside of my own church and mostly happened when I would visit others or mostly, when I was just in the street minding my business. When I would visit, people would try to get me to be healed by their pastors or if I walked by pro-life evangelicals, they would shout at me

Telling me I should be greatful my mom didn’t abort me.

Probably what got to me the most was when people would tell me that the reason I wasn’t healed was because I didn’t believe hard enough or have enough faith. That it was my fault for not doing enough to not be disabled.

And they would have all of these stories about someone they knew who was healed and how faithful they were and how if I really dedicated my life to god, I would be too.

This would lead to me crying on my bedroom floor pleading with God to be healed bargaining with him to give

Me a sign to show me I was worthy. It never happened.

When I started working for the church, those instances went into hyper drive, not in the office, but at the events I would have to go to as a part of my job. Once I was prayed over to be healed 12 times in one day.

At one prayer retreat, I expressed how harmful it was as a teen to hear people say that I, and my bad faith, was to blame for my disability. Subsequently I was followed out of the venue by some of the same people I had just spoken in front of and they prayed for my healing.

But, one of the best pastors I know said something that made him one of the respected people in my life. We were eating lunch and talking about heaven and I flippantly made a comment about how everyone thinks I’ll be healed in heaven.

I’ve never met a man that thinks so deeply

Before he speaks, but he took several moments before answering and said. “Well, I don’t think that’s true. In heaven, you are the most perfect version of the person you are on earth. If you go everywhere on earth with your disability and with your crutches, why wouldn’t they

Be there with you in heaven?”

I was shook. I couldn’t focus for the rest of the day. And he went on eating like it was nothing.

In less than a minute he had dispelled what Christian randos (and some family members) had told me my entire life.

I got sidetracked, but I want

To say this: disabled people aren’t s litmus test for faithfulness, either yours or their own and weaponizing inspiration using them or against them often undermines the very goal of building a relationship with the church or God.

I often don’t speak of my faith because of this

Very reason. I still remember what it’s like to cry on the floor of my bedroom wondering what I had done to deserve my disability.

Build relationships with people. That’s literally all it takes.