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I apologise for being a bit of an interloper here, since I am not a Christian. But it seems a wonderful and beautiful thing that Elisabeth and I share such similar ideas on the relationship between BIID and our respective, very different, religions. “Accepting my BIID as coming from God, as his precious gift, as my way of growing closer to him and to others.” No, these would not have been my words, but they portray exactly my sentiments, albeit coming from a different world view. What Elisabeth has expressed goes beyond Christianity and touches me at a deep level. It brings me joy that we can come to the same understanding, having arrived from our own separate paths.

Thank you, Elisabeth.

To me BIID is a disability as real as any, does not totally incapacitate me but does impair my enjoyment of life. A long time ago, at a time when I was going through some physical pain and incapacitation, a very wise person explained to me that suffering increases our capacity for compassion. My experience of life has taught me the truth of that. Well if there’s anything our world needs it’s a lot more compassionate people, so I’m content to life with this crazy disability if it helps me help others walk the road of that suffering that is bottom line inescapable sooner or later in some way or other.

Although I know some BIID sufferers who show no compassion whatsoever with anybody, I think that in general you are right, Brice.

BIID is an impairment, it does lower my capacity to concentrate, work, feel with others etc., but on the other hand it has taught me that I don’t know what others might suffer secretly.

“Majority of Protestants believe that through original sin our nature was fully corrupt and our free will removed.”

I was never taught this. I was taught that God gave us free will to worship him (listening to angels who have no free will is boring) and this includes our capacity to sin. If he’d taken away our capacity to sin he’d have taken away our free will. Becoming a Christian isn’t just about the initial act of being baptised or asking Jesus into your life, it’s about the ongoing life you lead. Or at least that’s what I believe.

@ Sophie: Most Christians, Catholic or Protestant, are not taught too much theology. The teaching of free will is a very complicated one and is connected with predestination. What it means, if you study Luther, is that humans don’t have the free will to accept God’s salvation. God predestines who is going to be saved. We can’t really choose that. After we are saved (not by our free will but by God’s choice), our will is fully submitted to God and if we do anything good, it’s again because God makes us so. In Luther and Calvin, there is no place for free will. So ultimately it doesn’t matter if you sin or not because your destiny has been decided already.
You might argue with me that this teaching doesn’t exist or that I am wrong. I have read Luther and it gave me goosebumps. Just google it up.
If you believe that the ongoing life you lead as a Christian does count, a bit of Catholicism crept into you. :-) Because Protestantism was built on two pillars – sola Scriptura (Bible only, no Tradition) and sola Fides (only faith, no deeds count). Your good life as a Christian shows others that your God is loving and good but has no influence on your salvation. According to Luther. According to Catholic tradition, your daily response to God’s grace and calling counts while faith is a gift that we have freely accepted.
Sorry, I am preaching here but we often know very little about certain aspects of our faith. My Baptist friends were often amazed at what they really should believe had they knew teaching of their faith. And some of it they didn’t like.

Thank you so much for this post. I’ve been dealing with similar conflicts myself. I feel like BIID goes against Christianity, that it’s a sin, a desire, that I shouldn’t dwell on but turn away from. Is wanting to be disabled considered sinful? I am a Christian, but I want to be a paraplegic. I sometimes feel that I’m supposed to be glad with, even grateful for, the body that God gave me and that the desires to be paralyzed are wrong and that I should block them out and just forget. But it’s hard. Sometimes, I can get so distracted with things that I do forget (for a time), but if I happen to see or think about something related to being a paraplegic, the need comes back. Sometimes, I come to terms with BIID by thinking that it is suffering that God is using to make me a stronger Christian and bring me closer to him. Sometimes, I just don’t know. Any thoughts?

I agree with Sophie that God gave us free will to believe in and follow him. Being a Christian is about choosing to trust in Jesus, knowing that we can’t do life on our own. As Christians, we’re supposed to turn away from sin and give Jesus our lives. But the problem is that it’s so hard to turn away from sinful desires.

What we don’t will can never be sinful. BIID was not my idea. I don’t believe that treating it by using mobility aids is sinful either. Not feeling the need for amputation, I can’t speak to that. Since I am much closer in time to the Pearly Gates than the day of my birth, I can’t help having the thought that the Almighty would do me a great favor in the life to come by handing me the crutches I’d need to make use of the partially paralyzed legs I have longed for all through this life. Is that sinful? Dunno. Will find out soon enough I guess.

Sorry to be so ignorant about Christianity, but there’s something I’m not understanding here. If God gave us our bodies then God must also have given us our BIID, right? So, if rejecting our bodies the way they are is sinful, then rejecting our BIID must also be sinful. Is it sinful for someone born with one leg to use a prosthesis? Isn’t that a rejection of the way God made you? If someone is born with a foot attached to a very short leg, sometimes the foot is amputated to facilitate the use of a prosthesis. That must be sinful, right? If God gave us the genes that predispose us to breast cancer, and we have the breasts removed prophylactically, then that’s sinful? What if we already have our God given cancer? Is it really sinful to have the cancer removed because God made our body that way? I’m just not bending my mind around this idea, and thus completely missing how BIID could be considered sinful.

I’m reminded of riding on the intersex float in the gay pride parade. I stared, mystified, at the group of Christians on the sidewalk holding placards saying that we’re all going to Hell, we’re an abomination, etc. Hold on a minute. Didn’t God give me this hermaphrodite body? Are they saying that he made a mistake? Or is it just his way of having fun; to make people who are automatically condemned to Hell, because of the configuration of the bodies they were born with? And why would God give me a female gender identity if he didn’t want me to be female?

I am seriously interested in understanding where all this is coming from, because I honestly don’t have a clue.

I fully agree with Brice. We don’t choose to have BIID, so it can’t be sin. Like homosexual inclinations are not sin. Now the question about living it can be tricky. Using mobility aids doesn’t harm us or others so no sin in it. Amputation, paraplegia? Would that be sin? I really can’t tell. I am not trying to think about it as it doesn’t pertain to me. It would take a real moral theologian to tell if teaching of double effect would apply to it.
I am lucky that I am Catholic. My priest told me very clearly that there is no sin in either having or living BIID. He just confirmed what I believed.

By the way, I firmly believe in free will and that we need to turn from sin. But I was trying to show both views of Christianity on those issues.

I am also a Christian, and by Elisabeth’s definition I would be classified as protestant (because I’m not Catholic) However my views on free will are basically the same as Sophie’s. My church has taught me that free will is a very complicated subject and there is much debate over whether or not we choose to become Christians. However we always maintain the ability to choose right or wrong, God always knows what we will choose but it’s still our choice. I have heard this likened to an adult in a group of 5 year olds. If the adult offers each child the choce of chocolate or a raw potato then every child will choose the chocolate. the adult knows that, right? But if a child chooses the potato the adult will still give it to him. In the same way as the children we have choices on how to live our lives, God just knows us well enough to know what we will choose.

As far as my BIID and my faith together, this is an area that I have thought a lot about and never really come to any conclusions.

I do not believe that my desires are sinful. I do not choose to have them and I cannot stop them. It’s what I do with them that makes the difference.

I would like to think that treating my BIID by using a wheelchair would be perfectly acceptable in the eyes of God. Sometimes I do think that, but sometimes I think of all the lies that have to be told, sometimes in words and sometimes by allowing others to assume and not correcting them, in order to live as a wheelchair user. Wheeling may not be a sin but lying is.

I know that I am supposed to be happy with the body I’m in. But doesn’t that include my BIID? and if that is the case then doesn’t it include my body in a wheelchair? Or is that one jump too far?

The attitude of the one Christian friend I’ve told about my BIID was that it’s a sinful thing and a sickness. I must pray for forgiveness for the times I have given into it and for healing so that it does not affect me any longer. If my prayers for healing do not work then I’m not praying hard enough and do not have enough faith.

I disagree with my friend though. I feel that BIID is more of a blessing. It helps me to understand other people and potentially it could put me into a position where I can change the accessibility of my church. i.e. the attitudes of some of the members. It’s not surprising that we have so few disabled church members when those who do come are made to feel that their disability shows some lack in their ability to successfully pray for healing.

Sorry for the essay, this is an emotive topic for me. I could keep going but I’ll stop here.

@Beth: If we believe that our true selves are disabled, then is it not the bigger lie, and therefore the bigger sin, to present ourselves as able bodied?

Between the ages of 7 and 18 I was, for the most part, bullied by adults into presenting as male. I always felt this to be a lie. Since I have a female gender identity it would be a lie for me not to present as female. The same applies to BIID. It feels like a lie to be without leg braces or wheelchair.

I am also reminded of my polio survivor friend, who was brought up Catholic. She was dragged around many shrines when she was a kid. She was told that the reason she couldn’t walk was that she didn’t have enough faith and wasn’t praying hard enough. To me that is meanness, plain and simple. It’s tough enough growing up as a polio survivor, without being told that it’s your fault too. Fortunately she had enough smarts as a young child to understand the reality that her polio just had to be accepted, and wasn’t going to be cured through faith.

I’m not saying that the acts you carry out after you become baptised/give your life to Christ are what make you a Christian, God knew we couldn’t be good children and our good acts could never get us into heaven. I’m saying good things should follow on from your relationship with Christ.

If I sound catholic I’m not :P I’m Anglican (aka church of england to some people). I honestly don’t understand the need for a lot of the traditional stuff the catholics do.

Good discussion, I was told I would ruffle a few feathers.
The truth is that in the end, no matter what our churches are telling us (some if it helpful and some of it not) and no matter what the attitudes of our fellow church goers are, it’s between God and us and ultimately we need to follow our conscience.
I like what Chloe said: if we believe that our true self is disabled, isn’t it a bigger lie to present ourselves as able-bodied?
I am glad that I was able to solve the whole lie problem for myself. I never lie about my wheelchair. I never pretend to be a para. Not telling the whole truth is not a lie.

@Sophie: Ever read C.S.Lewis’ “Problem of Pain”? He is one of the best writers Christianity, and in this case Anglicanism, ever gave us. Anglicanism is very close in teaching to Catholicism as the split occurred over moral teaching (divorce) and not over dogma. We share the same sacrament, our liturgy is almost identical etc. As to lot of traditional stuff Catholics do, believe me, I don’t understand that either. :-)
@Chloe: It is true that many Catholics will have a wrong attitude about suffering and impairments. I see it with some of my friends. Today I just told one of them that wheeling makes me happy and walking causes agony. So the wheelchair is enabling me to live better. Wonder what she will make out of it. One thing is pain, we should try to relieve pain so that it doesn’t take fully over us. Another things is impairment that doesn’t cause agony. I wheel because I can’t take the pain any more.

“If we believe that our true selves are disabled, then is it not the bigger lie, and therefore the bigger sin, to present ourselves as able bodied?” Right on, Chloe! But my life\’s course had developed too far before I found I was not the only biid sufferer in the world. To come out in my true body at that (or this) point in my life would do an enormous amount of social damage to others. So, the lie is the lesser evil.

I, too, am a committed Christian, a fellow sufferer of BIID. Thanks so much for this post! So often I think of this affliction as the “thorn in the side” that Paul wrote about- something to keep me humble and mindful of my human/flesh/sinful nature. I’ve tried for 46 years to combat these feelings, and until 1992 I thought I was the only one on earth with these thoughts. I still don’t know how to deal with this at times. I doubt that there will ever be an answer for us…

I wrote a previous post, then felt compelled to post again- sorry I didn’t include all this the first time. As I said, committed Christian- and I spend way too much time weighing my words, attitudes, actions, and outcomes. I do a lot of soul- searching and pondering whether I’m personally in the right or in the wrong. Here are the sins that I feel I’m guilty of:
Self indulgence (yes, I give in to my desires).
Lying (portraying myself as something that physically am not- but what of my inner being? Is it still a lie?)
Not appreciative of the body God made for me (mutilating the body for my own purposes?)
As I’ve said, I have a very complex procedure of self examination- and a few times I’ve been to the edge of suicide from the spiritual and emotional conflicts. Complex issues. My theory is that a complex mechanism will be prone to a greater degree of malfunction than a simple one. One thing I’ve noticed with other BIID people is that we’re very high in cognitive abilities, complex thought processes, and therefore more likely to have an anomalous quirk or eccentricity. Often we are cursed with our gifts. A source or cause of these issues will never be found in my opinion- again, I tell you it is the thorn in our sides.

BTW: Anti-Spam answer for “What color is snow”- is “sometimes yellow” acceptable?

Hi Mark,

if you are a Christian, why do you think you are allowed to judge what is good or evil, what is sin or not?

Don’t judge, or you will be judged.

This “right or wrong” is not Christian. Not rules, but love. And love has no rules.

Don’t stick to the words of the Bible, but to the deeds of Christ and his whole character.

Phil, actually, “judge not” were the words of Christ. Christianity seems so simplistic, but as you learn about it, it becomes far more complex than you – I suppose I mean “I” – ever expected.
Mark – God knows every sin you’ve ever committed, even before you committed them. Acknowledging your sins and being forgiven for them is another way to draw closer to God. There is no need to punish yourself.

And no, I don’t think BIID is a sin. But then, I’m left-handed…

@Sylvie: What do you think why I quoted these words?
No, it is not simplistic, but simple.
And “it” is (in my eyes) not “Christianity” (for me a dead and dusty THING), but “it” is living life following the example and teachings of a man whose name means not judge, but savior, helper, liberator.
Has he taken sin away – or not?
For me the core of his teachings is not a religion of law, but of love.
Man is not there for the sabbath, but the sabbath for man.
(Maybe for woman, too… ;-))

The whole point of Jesus coming and dying on the cross was because God knew we couldn’t get into heaven following the laws of the old testament.

Folks, while I don’t censor discussions, I would very much like if any theological debate was kept in relation to BIID.

Thank you

Hey guys,
I will have another post soon about BIID and my priest’s take on it. I fully agree with Sean that we should keep our theological discussions in relation to BIID. Thanks.

I’m sorry to disagree but I think this is all kept in relation to BIID. The ultimate question many people are asking is is BIID a sin? If it is what are the consequences and how can we incorporate BIID into our daily life without getting into the uncertain “murky” parts of our faith?

Yes, Sean, honestly, these theological musings are VERY MUCH in relation to BIID. We can’t understand if BIID is a sin if we don’t have a good understanding of what actually constitutes a sin. My struggles with BIID have often revolved around my own understanding and researching of basic theology. It’s vital, if you’re a Christian, and troubled by these questions. Trust me on this please. Nothing that has been said here is irrelevant.

@Claire. I see. I don’t disbelieve you. As I said, I’m not censoring the discussion.