My wife has a deathly fear: blindness.
It is only natural. She’s been deaf all her life, and everything she’s ever learned has come to her through her eyes. Vision is everything.
She reads voraciously. She accessorizes with colorful scarves. She loves light: sunlight, Christmas lights, beautiful lamps, and tiny candles. She can lip-read, if she must, but greatly prefers the living, fluid beauty of sign language.
I was born hearing, but I’ve been losing it bit by bit over the years; the loss started in early childhood and continues today. I’ve noticed a similar fear of blindness as my dependence on visual communication increases. I own, for example, 5 sets of safety goggles for use when I am grinding metal or working on my woodlathe. Why 5 sets? I’m always concerned I’m going to lose a pair and be unable to work.
I know guys who wear tough aprons and leather gloves then they work, but I’ve never been one to use those things usually. But work without safety goggles, when a single sliver of metal or splinter of wood could cut off communication with my friends and my wife and my kids? Never.
For the deaf, blindness is more than simply a loss of vision. There’s the isolation from friends, of course. The tie that binds most deaf communities together – a unique language – is lost. The most common deaf past-time (socializing for hours on end) is over. The low literacy rates among many deaf communities worldwide mean that blindness cannot be overcome simply by shifting to the printed word (in Braille, of course). On an emotional level, I cannot imagine any other sensory loss with as great an impact. And if you’d like to try to convince me otherwise, don’t. I won’t believe you.
So when news reports out of Belgium indicated that two Deaf brothers opted for assisted suicide because of a progressive loss of vision, Stacy and I had the same response: tragic, unnecessary, contrary to God’s call….and pretty understandable.
According to the reports I’ve read, these were two intelligent, hard-working deaf brothers who shared a home, living without dependence on others. They communicated through sign language and enjoyed good jobs. Blindness, in their view, was the end of all of that. As they perceived it, their future held increasing isolation, severing of relationships, loss of everything they ever treasured, and eventual institutionalization. Stacy and I think they were right: that was their likely future.
Among my deaf contacts in the United States, I have seen two basic responses. The first response comes from deaf adults who have struggled with the same problem of increasing blindness. They have found coping mechanisms that often center on support centers and access to specialized equipment and personnel; even so, it is a long, hard, daily battle. The second response comes from deaf adults who perceive a hearing agenda at work in all of this; deaf people are broken, deaf people need hearing folks to make decisions for them, etc.
What is our response as Christians?
For starters, we can acknowledge the obvious: life is precious in God’s sight, and we lack the moral right to end it in such a fashion.
We cannot stop there, though. We must take the additional step of attempting to understand what drives people to end their lives. This case is about more than euthanasia. There were heart-broken, well-intentioned individuals involved who saw this as their best choice.
The next step in the process is to show that we have a great hope. This will make a greater difference in a hurting world than simply opposing euthanasia. For non-believers, “Cuz God said so…” is insufficient. For the average non-Christian, any God who might exist is far away and inaccessible, unaware of human agony. The only way of explaining our hope in hopeless situations is to show our hope.
How does this apply to these men?
I cannot fathom, even a little bit, the heartache of blindness when I rely on my eyes for so much. For these deaf brothers, united by shared experiences and a unique language, the horror of dependence and isolation was too much, and I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them too strongly. Even so, I do know they committed a terrible act.
I also know that Christians suffer at the same rate as non-believers. As I have already mentioned in other posts on this site, there is service to be found in our response to our circumstances. Milton wrote in a sonnet about his own blindness, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” These two men lacked an understanding that even in sitting, isolated, there is a chance to serve our God and His purposes.
Maybe there is a need to be just a tiny bit more transparent with the lost world around us. If people knew our pains and saw our struggles, they might have the chance to comprehend the strength that He gives us to go on even when there is nowhere to go. Perhaps they can only understand how great our hope if they see it triumphing over our deepest despair.
I read that story and it seemed so hopeless. Such despair. I appreciate your reflections.
This post has gotten way more tweets and Facebook likes than it has comments.
I think part of the problem is the way society (and the church) treats those with vision or hearing problems. So many look down on them as helpless and insignificant, as a burden upon others. This coldness naturally leads to feelings of loneliness and depression.
I personally have had the joy, if not privilege to have gotten to know a young lady who was blind. I first met her when she and her husband were visiting her brother-in-law in our dorm when I was at seminary. Her husband, brother in law, and I were all major Super Smash Brothers fans and often would get together and play, and this time she was there too. I walked in, we were introduced, I nodded and said hi, and she did too, and all 4 of us got to playing. I thought she was just one of those girls who did not really know what she was doing, just button smashing. I got annoyed because one of the others would hit me right into one of her button smashing attacks and I would fly off the screen. Then during one break between matches I noticed I was almost sitting on a stick. “What is this?” I asked pointing to the stick. “Its Ashley’s,” they responded. “She’s blind.” Needless to say my jaw dropped. Here it was, I had just spent the past 2 hours talking to and hanging out with this girl, and I did not even realize it. Later after I moved out of the dorm and into on campus housing, it turned out they lived right next door, and I got to see Ashley in action. She would regularly go down 2 flights to the basement to do laundry (sometimes her husband would forget, lock her out, and I would have to climb over the balcony railing to go into their apartment and unlock the door for her), she would go out down the street and get her mail occasionally. She would go out and get in the cab to go to work (yes she worked at a city shelter ministering to women). She is quite possibly one of the most awesome and inspiring people I have ever met. My view and understanding of people with hearing or vision problems have been completely changed just by meeting this lady.
I dare say what sets her apart from these men in Belgium is her faith. She is on fire for Christ Jesus, and does not let her blindness slow her down. Indeed she uses the fact that it has not slowed her down to help minister to others about Christ Jesus. People wonder why she is not down and depressed because of her blindness and her “helplessness”, and she responds that God has given her everything she could need. Indeed, beyond those with similar “handicaps”, how much can we “normal” folk take her lessons to heart. How much do we let our lives and our difficulties bring us down, make us depressed, lead us into despair, and yet when we really get down and compare “problems”, we simply dont compare. It is just like why places where poverty and persecution are so extreme that the gospel grows the quickest. And yet we, safe in America, simply dont get it.
Thank you so much for writing such an insightful and compassionate article. I work at an ophthalmology office. There is a housing community of deaf individuals nearby, so a number of our patients are deaf. Although I recognize that the vast majority of all of our patients count their eyesight as precious, I shamefully admit that I had never stopped to consider the tremendous impact of visual loss to a deaf person. Blindness is not only in the eyes, is it? So thank you for waking me up from my own blindness to the suffering of those around me. I pray that the Lord would use me at our office to give compassion along with medical attention and to always point to Him as our greatest joy and strength. I also appreciate your ending comment calling us to transparency in all of our trials. To me, Christ is indeed glorified in the lives of those who cling to Jesus and follow Him through their struggles. Their perseverance demonstrates the supremacy and worth of Christ. Thanks again for your insightful article.
On the one hand we can ask what idol we value more than life. On the other, we know that there are chemical processes in our brains that can go awry and affect our moods in profound ways.
I’ve known of wealthy people who, after losing their fortune overnight in a stock market crash or some other such thing, have taken their otherwise healthy lives. I’ve also known people with very little who experience life with great joy. As for deafness and blindness, we can all point to Helen Keller. Search the Internet for blind and deaf and you can find multiple stories of people who have blindness and deafness, often accompanied by other exceptional ailments. My favorite is Titus Daily ()father’s blog, video), who would closely resemble my oldest son at that age aside from the issues that have given him a distinct ability to show joy. And you can see the joy when he senses the closeness of his family. If nothing else, he knows his family.
So I am reminded to find joy in my heavenly Father and gladness among my spiritual siblings. If Titus can, I can. We all should.