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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Sophie's Thoughts / Beliefs versus Needs

Beliefs versus Needs

Written by Sophie on Sunday, May 28, 2006

What does being transabled mean for people with different beliefs? With the vast variety of people in our community we are all often challenged in terms of our beliefs and I have sometimes wondered if I am expected to discard my Christian Beliefs altogether.

As you know I struggle with a lot of issues. Issues with depression, being transabled, fears and barriers Iâ??ve had to overcome in the past. I have not kept secret the fact that I am a Christian on this site and being a Christian can be very challenging in this community. Our community is made up of people with different sexual orientations, fetishes, beliefs; the one thing binding us together is our mutual "interest" in wheelchairs. My own beliefs have been challenged many times. I grew up in a Christian home, and went to the sort of church where "We donâ??t hate the person, but we hate what they do" was a common saying. I did various mission trips locally and once overseas, and I always felt I was very close to God. Lately Iâ??ve been struggling with the issue of "What if I go to hell when I die because Iâ??m transabled?" I do talk some about it with Sean, but I donâ??t have any Christian person to talk to about it as such. My friend that I went to visit in Wellington (see The Loner in Wellington story) is a Christian, but she doesnâ??t have regular internet access so my communication with her is rather limited. She sees no issue between my transabledness and my relationship with God, but I am always plagued with the thought of what if I got it all wrong? If I donâ??t have it wrong do my parents and the people who raised me have it wrong? Obviously the bible doesnâ??t specifically say "thou shalt not want to need a wheelchair" but the bible doesnâ??t say a lot of things clear as mud. The bible does condemn some "lifestyle choices" but I donâ??t want to go into that lest I open up a big debate that would never be resolved.

I went to church tonight. I havenâ??t been going to church for a while simply because I havenâ??t felt like going anywhere. I went to a ball last night and since I wasnâ??t at home "raiding the parentsâ?? fridge" (I claimed thatâ??s what Iâ??ve been doing other weekends) I had no excuse not to go to church. One of the ministers there did a summary of Genesis through to the book of John. Many of you will have heard the one verse John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that all may not perish but have eternal light." That really got me thinking. Jesus didnâ??t just come to earth for the people who have it all together, the good people who follow all the rules. On the contrary he spent nearly all of his time with the social outcasts of the Jewish societyâ?¦and in a way Jewish society is WAY more condemning than Christian society. Never in the New Testament does it say "I have come that only the â??goodâ?? people who do everything the church says to, have life and life in all its fullness".

No one can ever know exactly what the bible is saying. As Sean has pointed out to me many times the bible that we know today is a translation of a translation of a translation. It is not the original text word for word. What if the people translating it didnâ??t know their Greek or Hebrew too well? Just like the guy who translated the Treaty of Waitangi made critical errors, there are two versions of the treaty and legally in NZ they are both valid, which leads to a lot of confusion. I guess these are things I will only ever know when the time naturally comes. Until then I can only live my life in the present. How I got here does not matter to me as much as how Iâ??m living my life now. The reasons why Iâ??m in a chair do not matter as much as what I make of my life in it.

Tags: Beliefs, Christian, Faith, Community, Transabled, Depression, Wheelchair, Blog