Illness,
Disability and Caring
By
Bernadette Meaden
DAY ONE
Hello, and welcome to the
latest instalment of the DLT eBook Club, a virtual book study group from
Darton, Longman and Todd designed to help us connect, interact, read and
reflect together during this time of social distancing and self-isolation.
This week’s featured book
is Illness, Caring and Disability by Bernadette Meaden, the latest
release in our How the Bible Can Help Us Understand series. Bernadette
has selected a short extract from her book for each day of this week, from
Monday to Friday, and added some questions at the end to prompt further
reflection and discussion.
Please feel free to post
your thoughts in response to each day’s extract in the comments below, or where
we have posted the link on Facebook (@dltbooks) and Twitter (@dlt_books).
It is not essential to
have read the full book in order to take part in the DLT eBook Club, but we
hope it might make you want to do so. Look out also for our new eBook site, www.dltebooks.com, from where you can buy
this week’s featured book and many others, all at half price until further
notice.
***
How the Bible Can Help
Us Understand: Illness, Caring and Disability by Bernadette Meaden will be released in print in the
summer, but you can download the eBook now from DLT,
or from Amazon
for Kindle.
***
Day One
God created man in
the image of himself,
in the image of God
he created him,
male and female he
created them.
Genesis 1:27
This statement, that human
beings were created in God’s image, is the foundation of our belief that all
human life is sacred, and this applies to every human being without exception.
It confers upon all people an inherent and inalienable dignity and worth. I
like the expression used by Quakers, that there is ‘that of God in everyone’. It
surely follows that all people are of equal worth, and no illness or disability
can change that.
Humanity contains endless
variety. We know that every single person ever born, and every person yet to be
born, has been, and will be, genetically unique. Disability and illness are one
manifestation of this infinite variety.
Indeed, if we look at the
whole span of a human life, categories such as disabled and able-bodied, or ill
and healthy, are seen to be shifting and fluid. Even if we are born in perfect
health, very few of us will get to the end of our lives without experiencing a
serious illness or acquiring a disability. Whether one is injured through an
accident, develops a mental illness, or is diagnosed with a debilitating
disease, we will almost all, at some stage, have to cope with a physical or
mental health difficulty that makes life more of a challenge. At times we will
need support and care - at times we may give support and care. We are all
interdependent.
Unfortunately, rather than
accepting this diversity and interdependence, human society has a tragic and
enduring tendency to divide people into groups, viewing some as superior, some
as inferior.
This view was taken to its
extreme with terrible consequences in Nazi Germany. Hundreds of thousands of ill
and disabled children and adults were systematically killed in the Aktion T-4 programme,
which took its name from Tiergartenstrasse 4, the Berlin address from which the
programme was coordinated.
In pursuance of this
policy the regime told the German population that disabled people were a burden
they could not afford, ‘useless eaters’ and ‘life unworthy of life’. Hostility
and resentment were deliberately incited through propaganda, and disabled
people were stripped of their humanity.
One such propaganda device
was a poster bearing a picture of a disabled person with a white-coated
attendant, and the text: ‘60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from
a hereditary disease costs the People's community during his lifetime. Comrade,
that is your money too.’
Thus, people were
persuaded to see sick and disabled people as an unaffordable and unwanted
burden. The money spent on supporting them was, it was said, being taken away
from the poster’s target audience - the person who would probably be described in
the UK today as ‘a hard-working taxpayer’.
One may think that such
propaganda has been consigned to history, but in the UK in recent years, there
has been a growing tendency to divide people into ‘workers and shirkers’, or
‘strivers and scroungers’, with a consequent increase in stigma and suspicion
towards people who are not in paid work, or may be in receipt of social
security benefits. People who are temporarily or permanently unable to do paid
work due to illness or disability can be portrayed as not making any
contribution, as a drain on society. The tabloid press, and even senior
politicians, have circulated false and misleading stories about disabled people
and the support they receive.
This has served to erode
solidarity and leave many disabled people subject to suspicion, abuse, and even
hate crimes. As I was writing this book, a woman taking her children to school
was abused in the street by a man who, seeing her four-year-old daughter in a
wheelchair, shouted that she should have had an abortion because her little
girl was going to be a drain on the NHS. Around the same time, parents of
disabled children with special educational needs were angered and upset by an
article in The Times which was headlined, ‘Pupils lose out as £400m
schools funding diverted to special needs’, implying that disabled children
were taking resources away from those who were not disabled. After protests the
headline has since been changed to ‘Schools struggling to meet the costs of
special needs support’.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES
****
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