Many of us who are in churches that trace their heritage to the Protestant Reformation know how pivotal of a role the book of Galatians played in the Reformation era. The Reformers repeatedly drew upon the argument of the apostle Paul in Galatians to contest some of the teachings and practices that they observed in their day.
What we are less familiar with is the role that disability seems to have played in the apostle’s relationship with the Galatian people. In Galatians 4:13, Paul tells his readers, “You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first.” The circumstances surrounding Paul’s initial evangelization of the Galatians were determined by this “bodily ailment.” It is difficult to know all of the background behind Paul’s words here, but the upshot is that Paul hadn’t intended to stop in Galatia, at least not at the time that he did, but his plans were altered due to his physical condition. Paul then goes on to express his disappointment with the Galatians’ drift away from his gospel, and tellingly asks them, “What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me” (Galatians 4:15 ESV). For this reason, many commentators have identified Paul’s bodily ailment as an eye condition.
As the husband of a wife with a chronic eye disease, I know how this can happen. Flare-ups occur, and what is no problem one day can be all but impossible the next. On more than one occasion we have been down to the wire in deciding whether or not to cancel a planned trip. We’ve changed travel plans often, and ended up in places we didn’t intend to go. I find solidarity with the apostle Paul in this.
It was disability that first landed Paul in Galatia. And it was the compassion that the Galatians extended towards him in his physical weakness that established a special bond between the apostle and the Christians there.
When Paul writes to the Galatians with such impassioned language, we must recognize that part of his “astonishment” at their desertion of the gospel is that he had experienced their Christian love so profoundly (Galatians 1:6). The passionate language about justification by faith and not works of the law, so finely conveyed in this epistle, flows from a relational context colored by disability.
For the sake of instruction, we can draw out the implications of this imaginatively: Paul might never have written a letter to the Galatians if his travel plans hadn’t been derailed by a bodily ailment. Even if he did write to this group of believers, we might not have a letter with such persuasive power if disability hadn’t shaped the relationship between Paul and the Galatians. And if we didn’t have the letter of the Galatians, we would lack some of the essential insights that the Reformers emphasized.
Disability is often at odds with our plans. It often derails our will being done, and sometimes it seems like it is derailing God’s will being done, too. But I’m encouraged by reflecting on Paul and the Galatians. Sometimes the inconveniences of disability have holy consequences that echo throughout church history in magnificent ways.
Hunter and Amberle Brown help lead an organization called The Banquet Network that is based in Baltimore, MD. The Banquet Network primarily works with church plants to inspire, equip, and resource them to reach people with disabilities who are on the margins of their communities. Hunter works full time at Goucher College and is a part-time Masters of Theology student at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute in Baltimore. Amberle works full-time for World Relief, an international health and development NGO, and is passionate about helping churches include and reach people with disabilities based on her own experience of becoming visually impaired and her encounters with people with disabilities in her work in developing countries.
