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Christians, prayers, and Body Integrity Identity Disorder
Written by Sean on Monday, July 21, 2008
I’m angry. I’m fuming! Nothing new, you’ll say, but this time, the trigger is not something I’ve discussed here before. I’m going to discuss the problems caused by some people who call themselves Christians. Mind y’all, I’m not against Christianity (regardless of what "type"), I’m not against God. My post is not anti-religious. I must say this, because it is an important distinction to make. While I do not share religious beliefs with Christians, Muslims, Hindhus or any other organised religion, I am very much of a live and let live kind of mindframe. But sometimes, people, as best intentionned as they are, are managing to do a whole lot of damage. One of the most damaging is to first intimate that Body Integrity Identity Disorder can be “cured” through prayer, and then to cut someone off from all support other people with BIID can provide.
How did this post come about? Well, I was told by the mother of a teenager that I was not to contact him again, and that his salvation would come through prayers and giving himself in to God and Jesus. I was further preached at for a very long email about the Glory of God and Jesus.
Well, I’ll say this here and now: I don’t force my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) on you, don’t force your religious beliefs on me. Ok, now, that’s out of the way…
There are major problems with this attitude that prayers can get us rid of BIID. One of them is that BIID is a DISORDER, it’s not a whim, it’s not something we’ve chosen. We no more chose to have BIID than people chose to have cancer.
As Claire (who is Catholic) wrote:
To deny people with BIID the right to treatment is utterly lacking in the compassion that Christians are supposed to have for the sick and disadvantaged. The Lord tells us that we are to care for the sick and relieve suffering. Make no mistake about it, BIID is suffering. When we see someone suffering from cancer, we don’t tell them "it’s okay, you’ll feel better once you’re dead" as [this person] just did. That would be utterly contrary to the compassion that is supposed to be Christian (but seems to be so lacking among Christians, why is that??). No, we take the steps necessary to relieve the suffering even if it means the removal of a limb. Jesus didn’t just coldly tell the paralytic and the blind man that there would be no more brokenness once they were in heaven. He simply relieved them of their suffering.
That’s the thing. BIID is suffering, beyond belief. BIID is a Disorder. I believe BIID is a mental illness (with supporting evidence from published articles). There is evidence it might be a neurological disorder, or a psycho-neurological disorder. But whether it is a psychological condition, or a neurological one, it is real.
It cannot be handled by prayers alone.
Contrary to the belief of some people, a mental illness is not a sin. Father Joe, a popular Catholic blog author, says so himself.
Of course, some more fundamentalist Christians take a different view, and pages such as the one on bible.ca express it very clearly! According to that page, mental illness doesn’t exist, it’s all the result of sin, and the person is fully responsible. Chemical imbalance in the brain is a myth, it’s the Spirit that makes the body ill. Heck, mental illness is a myth, we’re just suffering the consequences of sin in our lives. Of course, we are responsible for the way we feel, entirely our own fault, because we are sinners. And the list goes on. It’s not enough for us to be suffering, we have to be made to feel guilty because it’s all our fault.
I’m sorry, but nothing anyone can say will ever convince me that at the age of 3 or 4 I was so full of sin that I deserved to start having BIID.
Michael, from Stingray: a blog for Salty Christians has a good point:
A spiritual weakness — this is the view taken by websites like Spiritual Schizophrenia and by several who have argued with me at Free Republic. The idea is that people who have [a mental illness] aren’t letting the Holy Spirit in their lives. That argument sounds nice but the logical conclusion is that everyone who is not a Christian should have [a mental illness] since only Christians have the Holy Spirit operating in their lives. In fact, you can extend the logic even further by concluding that every person until Pentecost had [a mental illness] because we did not have the gift of the Holy Spirit until that time. Those taking this view often say that reading the Bible more and praying is the only way to treat mental illness.
Michael also recommends action. He writes:
[...] direct the sufferer to good medical attention. Seeking out a doctor does not mean that you don’t trust God — God frequently uses doctors to heal people. A mentally ill person often needs both medication and counseling.
This is an important point. We are suffering from a very real and dangerous condition that can lead to suicide. We need assistance. Besides, doesn’t "God help those who help themselves"?
It is unfortunate that counselling and medication do not really help those of us with BIID. But that is a separate matter.
A very dear friend has told me that I need hope in my life. She is not wrong. She believes (and Believes) that this hope will come to me if I become Christian. I don’t begrudge her that belief. But she also does not attempt to shove it down my throat.
People like the mother of this teenager is shoving her beliefs down my throat. It would be one thing to offer that belief in God would see me right, and another to rant and go on telling me the errors of my way. Of course, one might accuse me of proletising about surgery as an option for BIID the way some Christians preach the virtues of Christianity. To these people, I will say again that there’s a difference between expressing one’s opinion once, and shoving one’s beliefs down someone else’s throat.
But what scares me most is that narrow-mindedness that will do damage to that poor kid. He does need help. Prayer is not sufficient. I have no doubt this woman loves her son and is doing the best she can, but it’s not enough.
I just hope that he doesn’t end up killing himself because the pain got too much and he was denied access to effective support. I went through my teenage years, as most other people with BIID, alone, lonely, thinking I was the only weird person with the feelings I had. Teenagers nowadays have access to support through websites such as this one, or through medical professionals who are starting to get a better idea of what BIID is all about. To refuse a kid access to that support is unforgivable, by any benchmark one choses.
To paraphrase Claire: If you call yourself a Christian, show Christian values!
Tags: BIID, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Christian, Counselling, God, Medication, Mental Illness, Prayers
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5 Comments
This reminds me of the time when I was pretending and some Christian missionaries were trying to use my “handicap” to convert me. They were pretty much going like, “If you convert, God will heal you and make you useful again.” As if people with disabilities aren’t useful. Hmph. Anyways, that’s something for another time.
I’m not highly religious by any means, and am not a Christian, but isn’t the point of most religions is to lead people to live happy lives and be good people?
By cutting off the only support available, the “happy” part is certainly going to be compromised, and as Sean suggested, it might lead to more extreme measures such as suicide, which then compromises the general meaning of a “good person.”
Prayer is supposed to be something you use to ask your god (or goddess or what have you) for guidance, but you can’t really expect your god to do everything for you; you have to pick up some of the slack too. Cutting off the only support available is not “picking up the slack.”
People like that give religion a bad name. I recall one day I was flipping through the channels and came across some televangelist hollering “My uncle’s in hell!” I sent a message to the Almighty, “Remind me not to join that dude’s church.” Unfortunately folks like that have *all* the answers, got them from Above, you know, so are impervious to reason or compassion. I feel for that kid! One thing for sure, if he makes it to adulthood he’ll likely be cured of religion.
When I was little, it seemed that many Christians thought I needed prayer to get myself over rock & roll, staying up late, kissing girls (I’m male), love of Richard Pryor, etc. I’m used to prostheletizing, and that’s what I’ve actually wound up getting over (Hurrah!).
I have come to think that all of us in English-Speaking countries, even Catholics, have been touched by Puritanical ideas, such as the “Hands to work, mind to God” soundbyte, that seem to make toil and hardship sacred.
Although we kicked the Cromwells out, the influence of their kind is still pervasive. I think the emphasis these ideas put on productivity has helped make English-speaking countries industrial giants and, at the same time, helped make physical disability seem worse than it is.
I’m not sure what to do with this (as yet incomplete) hypothesis; I just figured I’d throw it out there.
Hey Sean,
I am so sorry to read that, both for you and the boy. I am a believer myself, but I stay away from churches most of the time just for that reason: I don’t want simple answers shoved down my throat, thank you.
I found that the problem often is that the answers in the bible are oversimplified by church leaders. Everything is easy. You’re sick in any way? Pray. You’ll get healed. I am sick myself, I believe in healing, absolutely, but I am on a way with God in that area for many years now. Not because He couldn’t do it, but because it’s complicated, not easy, concerning the whole human being, it’s not like a switch you turn over. I have heard that sometimes it works like that, though, and I don’t want to judge either way, I just know that simple answers aren’t for me and what I have found: they aren’t for God either. He is so incredibly patient with me where his “earth gang” isn’t at all! I have had so many people put their hands on me, sometimes even without consenting, praying loudly and sounding kind of “anointed”, but it’s all their simple solutions. They need it that way, they are way too much on the surface considering the bible’s content and would have to dive much deeper to understand that GOD is much deeper. It would probably make many people quit believing in God would they honestly compare their reality to their surface beliefs so they tend to repress it all. Once they can’t repress anymore, for example because reality becomes louder than their inner mantras, they often have a real faith crisis. I don’t blame the “little sheep”, I blame the loud preachers who make it seem so incredibly simple.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense to you. I just want to say I understand what you’re talking about even though I am a Christian ;) not all of us are weirdos. Many are, though. ;)
Love, Jule
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1 On 22 July, 2008, Claire said:
Michael is right: the Lord uses other people to do his work, including counsellors and doctors. I believe in miracles, and prayer can, sometimes, be sufficient to cure someone. But that’s rare. More often, healing, and the answer to prayer, is accomplished in other, more subtle ways. It frightens me that someone might cut off the support that one needs to deal with an illness, and turn to prayer alone to heal it. It’s like taking a cancer patient off chemotherapy and simply praying for healing from cancer. That is, in my opinion, actually depriving the patient from the answer to the prayer.
We don’t have a cure for BIID, but we do have a support system and methods (that don’t require surgery) that help to deal with the symptoms of BIID. We’ve all tried to repress our BIID and make it go away, and we all know that repression only makes BIID stronger. Just read the comments to this post.
I believe this kid’s mother is frightened by the insistance that surgery is the only way. I can’t blame her. It’s scary. And I don’t think it’s the *only* way for most of us. There are ways to cope, and that is by spending time as the person you feel you’re meant to be, and by talking to others who share your feelings.