There I was in all my glory . . . or, more accurately, the lack thereof. I couldn’t look away from my reflection, in a train-wreck sort of way. This is God’s craftsmanship? This is God’s image?
I don’t think so.
It had been a long time since I’d seen my whole naked body. My reflection that night in 2022 was the result of a spinal cord injury from diving into a pool in 1995, when I was 15 years old. But on this night, 27 years later, the brief glimpse of my body—as my wife and a nurse rolled me in a hospital bed, prepping for a procedure—undid me. What I saw disgusted me.
Was this reflection really me? I hoped to God it wasn’t: skinny legs whittled down to skin and bone, a protruding belly lacking muscle and form, bleak arms that barely worked, uncontrollable fingers that curled up in spasms, and a head disproportionately large compared to my frail, withering body.
Surely this broken body I saw through tears of shame wasn’t me.
Offer I Couldn’t Refuse
On August 11, 1995, I stretched a double into a triple after hitting a line drive off the outfield wall more than 300 feet away.
Only a month later, my occupational therapist cheered as I used limp hands to slide children’s blocks into a hole while a chest strap kept me from face-planting on the therapy board in my lap.
A year later, I was riding the dreaded “short bus” as a junior in high school.
I was in full identity-crisis mode.
That is, until an offer I couldn’t refuse gave me an identity apart from disability. A year after my injury, a well-meaning loved one simply said, “You are not your disability. You are not your body.”
I hated my disabled body, so this was all I needed to hear. Finally, “I” didn’t have to be disabled anymore. Dignity awaited. All I had to do was disembody my identity.
Like an impulsive 16-year-old not counting the cost, I unconsciously dove headlong into a disembodied identity to escape the shame of disability. After all, my mind was still sharp; only my body was broken.
The Physical Matters
That night in the hospital in 2022, however, reminded me that disembodied “dignity” is fleeting. After decades of banishment to meaninglessness, my body cried out like Abel’s blood from the ground seeking justice: “I have meaning! I am you!”
“No!” I shouted back. “You can’t be. If you are me, it means I’m worthless.” I closed my eyes to silence my body’s deafening cry.
My immaterial identity had finally collapsed. My body was fighting back. Why?
Because the physical matters.
Scripture teaches that the body is essential to the imago Dei and, therefore, central to my identity. My body is not mine; my body is me. I don’t have a body; I am a body. I realized that night in the hospital that while I may be more than my body, I’m certainly not less. I’m soul and body as one, never meant to be separated—my dignity dependent on an identity God gave as a gift when he created me.
My body is not mine; my body is me.
The “dignity” offered by the “you are not your body” comment turned out to be a fraud. It was based on the bogus teaching that autonomy is the source of dignity. Unlike the scriptural view, disembodied “dignity” depends on working to autonomously build an identity using immaterial abilities like reason, self-consciousness, and will. Any hindrance to unfettered choice in this project compromises dignity.
In this view, we can see our own bodies as hindrances to “who we really are.” We don’t choose our body’s characteristics or limitations. God does, even when we’re sick or disabled. The body represents a God-given design that imbues meaning to identity and limits self-construction. To be embodied, disabled or not, is the strongest evidence that the will is not, nor should be, sovereign.
Jesus bids,
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28–30)
The Lord’s yoke is easy and restful. But it’s still a yoke.
Make no mistake, it’s his yoke. He’s the carpenter who crafted it. It’s easy only if we yield to its fitting. It’s restful because Jesus carries it, not us.
‘Autonomous’ Slavery
The cost of disembodied “dignity” is rejecting God’s sovereignty and staking claim to my own. It’s the rebellion in Eden all over again.
I tried to disembody my identity because I believed my dignity depended on it. But this untethered me from God’s image, which is the source of human dignity. I became a lost “sojourner on the earth” seeking a new identity without God’s guiding authority as my counselor (Ps. 119:19–24). As a fallen sinner, I was left captive to the “passions of [my] flesh” and the “desires of [my] flesh and [my] mind” (Eph. 2:3).
I tried to disembody my identity because I believed my dignity depended on it. But this untethered me from God’s image, which is the source of human dignity.
I became a slave to the fear of shame. I spent 27 years driven by this merciless taskmaster to anxiously prove my worth. I went to college, graduate school, and even law school. I became a lawyer, got married, and had children. I desperately tried to be perfect for my family in every nonphysical way—to make up for everything my disability deprived them of.
Yet the shame persisted because I was constantly constructing and carrying my own yoke. It was only a matter of time until I could no longer carry the burden of my pitiful self-made dignity.
First Disability, Then Exaltation
Disability isn’t sinful and doesn’t compromise my dignity as God’s image. Scripture says the Lord makes me disabled (Ex. 4:11) and that I’m his craftsmanship (Eph. 2:10). I am a body, and I am not my own (1 Cor. 6:19–20).
I’m neither “my body” nor “my choice.” All of me is the Lord’s.
I’m made in God’s image, but I’m distorted by sin. My identity is “in Christ” in the sense that I’m being restored as God uses my disabled body to conform me (and others) to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29), who is the perfect image of God (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3). Had Jesus rejected his disability on the cross, he would have disobediently rejected his identity as the perfect image of God. Similarly, to reject my disabled body would be to reject my identity in Christ.
I’m neither ‘my body’ nor ‘my choice.’ All of me is the Lord’s.
God “highly exalted” a healed Christ at his resurrection because he first embraced the disability God intended for him on the cross (Phil. 2:5–11). I’ll do likewise with my cross (Luke 14:27) and will participate in the same resurrection (Rom. 6:5). Though healed, Jesus eternally bears the scars of physical disability (John 20:27), as will my resurrection body.
Jesus is forever the “Christ crucified” we continue to preach today (1 Cor. 1:23). Disability isn’t incidental to his eternal identity, nor is my disability incidental to mine.
The horror I experienced that night in the hospital wasn’t due to a disabled body but to my denial of an identity in Christ and the dignity he freely offers in his humanity, disability, and resurrection (1 Peter 2:24). Insisting I’m a “person with a disability” presumes I must distance myself from my disability. It’s a return to the fear of shame that held me captive for nearly three decades.
No, thank you. Being a “disabled person” suits me just fine.
The Gospel Coalition