DLT eBook Club - How The Bible Can Help Us Understand.

Illness, Disability and Caring

By Bernadette Meaden

DAY TWO

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.

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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.

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Day Two

Now the kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard. He made an agreement with the workers for one denarius a day and sent them to his vineyard. Going out in mid-morning he saw others standing idle in the marketplace and said to them, “You go to the vineyard too and I will give you a fair wage.” So they went. At about noon and again in mid-afternoon, he went out and did the same. Then not long before sunset he went out and found more men standing around, and he said to them, “Why have you been standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You go into the vineyard too.” In the evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with the last and ending with the first.” So those who were hired not long before sunset came forward and received one denarius each. When the first came they expected to get more, but they too received one denarius each. They took it, but grumbled at the landowner saying, “The men who came last have done only one hour, and you have treated them the same as us, though we have done a heavy day’s work in all the heat.” He answered one of them and said, “My friend, I am not being unjust to you; did we not agree on one denarius? Take your earnings and go. I choose to pay the last as much as I pay you. Is it not permissible for me to do what I like with my own? Or are you envious because I am generous?” Thus the last will be first, and the first, last.

Matthew 20:1–16

If we believe that everybody is equally precious in the eyes of God, then of course we must strive for equality. But true equality doesn’t mean treating everybody the same. It means treating every person as an individual, in the way which enables them, with their different abilities and disabilities, strengths and weaknesses, to live their life to the fullest. It may be complicated in practice, but in principle it is really as simple as this instruction from Jesus:

Treat others as you would like people to treat you.

Luke 6:31

The social model of disability holds that people are often more disabled by the barriers that exist in society than by their impairment or illness. Such barriers can be physical, like inaccessible housing and public transport, or can be caused by people's attitudes, like wrongly assuming that someone with a disability is incapable of doing a certain job or activity. Recognising and removing these barriers creates progress towards equality and makes it possible for disabled people to take part in society on an equal footing.

So steady all drooping hands and weak knees and straighten the paths for your feet; then the injured limb will not be maimed, it will be healed instead.

Hebrews 12:12-13

However, when these physical and attitudinal barriers are combined with poverty, the suffering and social exclusion can be very acute, and in the UK, disabled people are more likely to be living in poverty than the general population. A report commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2016 found that 44 per cent of disabled young adults are in poverty, and two-thirds of single disabled people living alone are in poverty.

When considering these issues, I have found the parable of the workers in the vineyard, cited above, very significant.

In his book The Upside-Down Bible, Symon Hill shared a selection of passages with groups of people who were not familiar with the Bible or traditional interpretations of the passages they read. Their responses to this parable of the labourers in the vineyard varied greatly. Some readers were angry with the landowner and saw him as a bad employer, whilst others felt that the situation described was in fact quite a desirable one.

One of the readers, Samantha, said:

I would have to identify with the late arrivals. As a person with a disability, I have often had to claim benefits because of being unable to keep up with normal ‘hardworking’ people.

Pointing out that in the parable, at the end of the day everyone got what they needed to live on, she felt that the parable is about social justice, saying:

I think the point Jesus is making is that to resent others receiving the same financial support, comfort and – ultimately – respect as you, and to consider them to deserve less of these things than you, is not a loving attitude towards others.

Jesus says at the beginning of the parable that this is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like – everyone gets what they need to live, with no exceptions made. Those who did not work a full day, for whatever reason, were not deprived of what they needed.

It is perfectly possible to create a society like this, where everybody receives what they need to live a decent life, regardless of what they are able to contribute in terms of paid employment.

The experience of a global pandemic has shown that, for all of us, our health and our livelihoods may be more fragile and precarious than we previously thought. The idea of a Universal Basic Income has been proposed as one way of making society more resilient to such shocks. Do you think the parable of the workers in the vineyard is relevant to this debate? 

ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES

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