Don’t Blame Children for Their Medical Conditions: A Christian Perspective

by Amanda Upton

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”- John 9:1-3

I have clung to that passage so many times in the last five years. There has been more than one time since having my daughter Jillian that someone either insinuated or outright asked what I did to cause the girls to be sick. It is heart crushing to sit at a party and hear the next table over talking about you and your kid and coming up with the laundry list of things they thought you did wrong to cause her medical needs.

My prayer for my girls since before they were born is that God uses them for His glory and I see Him doing that all the time. I am someone who in the past few years, especially since being involved in a college ministry, has started asking big questions. I have thought more about the Bible past the surface. It got me wondering about this passage.

But there is one thing I just don’t understand. Why is the Church not teaching John 9:1-3? Did we forget about it? I mean, I see so much “feel good Bible” online, and this verse fits in with feel good Bible memes, so why is this getting lost?

There are tons of Bible passages that we leave out of normal life. Most people can quote John 3:16, but ask someone to quote you a verse from Leviticus and they will likely have a harder time. It’s a big book, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be in it and reading it, and there are always going to be more popular sections.

So why does it matter if we are highlighting John 9:1-3? Because I have heard the story over and over and over from so many special needs families that the opposite is preached all over the world.

Blame

Imagine you are a family with a little boy who loves to ride on trains, so you get tickets to a church’s Christmas Train. You are all excited to go and get on the train, and then on this train ride they start showing pictures of people who are sick and malnourished and then say that if these people had faith this wouldn’t happen to them. WHAT!? Now imagine you are sitting on that train with a little boy who is sick, who has a feeding tube, and needs organ transplants.

Imagine if you are going to church someplace and you get the results back that your child needs open heart surgery. You go to your church looking for love and support. They say they will pray for you but don’t want to get involved in helping with the needs the family has during this time, like help with meals or other kids. Instead, they pray for a miracle for your child and insist that you get another echo done right before surgery to see if their prayers worked. But then when the child still needs surgery, the church abandons the family. What the church prayed for didn’t happen, and they only wanted to be involved in this family’s life if they could use it as “inspiration porn.”

Imagine you are a family who has a baby who is born with a rare genetic disorder and the baby dies very shortly after birth. Now imagine you are at your baby’s funeral and the preacher says that if the family just had the faith of a mustard seed, their baby would not have died.

Imagine those stories, and now realize they are all true stories. Each one of them. Shared with me from different families, from different areas who didn’t attend the same church or even the same denomination.

How would those situations make you feel?

All of those situations pushed the families away from the church. In times when those families needed the church the most, they were pushed away and their faith was mocked. Being pushed away from your church because you have a sick kid sounds like the opposite of what Jesus says.

This approach also makes it so that you would feel as a Christian that you don’t need to do anything to help the widows, orphans, or sick, because if those people just prayed hard enough and had faith then they would no longer be hungry, cold, lonely, or hurting. We are rather quick at blaming someone for his or her problems instead of loving, and loving is what the Bible calls us to do. He has the whole world in his hands, every person, and it is our job to pray for His will. Sometimes we go through hard stuff, and going through hard stuff doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love someone. God isn’t sitting in the sky looking to cause you pain.

Another Approach

God has taught me so many things in the midst of hard stuff. But sometimes the church portrays that once you accept Jesus, all the hard goes away. That is not Biblical; instead, now we have God to walk with us during the hard and help to ease the burden. One of the places that should be helping to ease the burden is the church.

So my goal now is to share the John 9 story with as many special needs families as I can. I do go to a church that does preach John 9, and I have seen how it works when people support others with the view of this passage. I also watched the relief on a family’s faces recently as they were telling me their story and I shared the John 9 passage. They had just heard from churches that it was their fault for their child’s sickness, but this verse was a change from the guilt and a freeing of chains. Special needs parents blame themselves for so many things already and are always wondering what more they can do for their child when they are already giving over 100%. The last thing they need is the church saying it is their fault and they don’t have enough faith.

I get the want to pray for healing, but sometimes in that then we miss the amazing people these individuals are. We discount them because they are sick. My kids are still amazing people despite their genetic disorder, and because of their disorder they have learned things many kids at their age have not. Jilli is so compassionate! She understands doing things you don’t want to do. Her differences have shaped who she is today.

I want to help love people and lighten their load. I’m not always good at it, but I try to focus my eyes back there.

We need to remember ALL PEOPLE are children of God. He loves each one and longs for them to be close to Him, so let’s love people more so that they see the Father working in us. So, if you know a special needs family please share the John 9 passage with them and let them know that you are there to support them, love them, and do not judge them.

Practical Strategies

I genuinely believe most people want to be loving people, and most people in the Church want to be the hands and feet. Here are some practical ways you could do that in addition to praying:

  • Bringing mail into the house
  • Mowing the lawn or taking care of snow
  • Putting meals in the freezer or offering meals when they get home
  • Hospitals often have gift cards or meal tickets that can be bought from the gift shop and sent to the child’s room
  • Help with child care for other children
  • Gas cards
  • Laundry help
  • Cleaning at the house
  • Bringing food to the hospital (it costs a lot to eat at the hospital)
  • Bring movies or entertainment to the hospital
  • Visit the hospital (but know yourself and if you are someone who is not emotionally going to be able to handle being supportive while being in a room with a sick child, skip the visit)
  • Send a Facebook message or text asking how they are
  • Offer to help with things you know they were signed up to do (serve at church, lead something at their child’s school)
  • Bring a basket of goodies at the hospital (such as a blanket, hair ties, snacks, reusable cup, water flavoring, thank you notes, travel body wash and shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, journal, colored pencils)
  • Toys for the kiddo to play with in the hospital (something that can be played with in bed)
  • A nurse thank you basket (candy, doughnuts, small gifts)
  • Feeding pets
  • Cleaning out the fridge (when we come home from the hospital the milk has typically gone bad because we just don’t think of that)
  • Picking things up from a store

I encourage you also when offering to help, offer the specific thing you are offering to help with. Often, the family doesn’t know what they need or they don’t know what level of help you are offering, so it is best to contact them and ask if you can help them with something specific.

Author: Amanda Upton • Date: 3/13/2018

About the Author

Amanda is married to Brent and has two children, Jillian and Lydia. They are both still considered undiagnosed although it is thought that there is an underlying muscle issue with a maternal genetic inheritance as Amanda has many similar symptoms, just not as severe as the girls. They both have GJ-tubes and Jillian is on oxygen and has leg braces. They are the happiest kids, and they both love making people at our local children’s hospital smile. Jillian’s favorite things revolve around pink, purple, glitter, and tutus, and she is ok with all the medical stuff as long as she can make it girly. Lydia loves smiling and cuddling. They are a big Disney family and planning trips to the parks is their stress relief.

Amanda has a degree in early childhood education in both regular and special ed and taught 4K until Jillian was two years old, when she became a stay-at-home mom to help protect Jillian’s lungs from germs. They rely on their faith, friends, and family to get them through the hard aspects of being a medically complex family. Her blog can be found at brownandpinkpolkadots.blogspot.com.

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