Right in Sight, Left Unseen
a call to love all of our brothers and sisters in Christ
By: Michelle Liu
This article is part of the Claritas fall 2024 issue, Margins. Read the full print release here.
Michael had helped our mom every day of Vacation Bible School, visibly present in her room as the youth counselors rotated through her classroom with their younger charges. The week before, he had worked tirelessly to transform the rooms into ocean scenes, hanging jellyfish from the ceiling tiles and taping cardboard fish cutouts to the blue streamers floating against the walls. Yet at the “thank you” dinner, all the youth counselors sat together, while Michael sat with our mom and the adults. None of the youth counselors asked him to sit with them. These were high schoolers he saw every Sunday at church and many Saturday nights at youth group, but not one person asked him to sit at the youth table with them. Not even the seniors he had known for all seventeen years of their lifespans thought to invite him over. It was as if he were invisible. He ate his meal sitting next to our mom, ever her silent shadow.
My younger brother has always existed on the margins–overlooked, ignored, or quietly whispered about by society, schools, and even churches. He has been diagnosed with a myriad of disabilities and medical conditions, including apraxia of speech, autism, and epilepsy, to name a few of the better-known ones. Thankfully, he has mostly avoided the verbal and physical abuse that can be inflicted by ignorant peers or even adults, but only because we have all fiercely protected him from circumstances in which he would be more vulnerable. From a protective enclave of doctors and therapists, he went on to attend a special needs preschool. Although he is only three years younger than me, he is five academic grades below me, despite being at a special school for children with learning disabilities.
Yet even institutions that claim to be inclusive often fail. Perhaps it is because institutions are made up of fallible human beings who all fall short of the perfect goodness and glory of God. [1] Schools, churches, government, and other organizations regularly fail people like my brother. Even specialized private schools created for the purpose of benefiting students with learning disabilities do not always provide the nurturing and protective environment that children like my brother need in order to safely learn and thrive. Three years into what was known to be the “best” private school for children like my brother, he would often be found crying under the table in his classroom. Instead of soothing his fears and anxieties, the teacher, who had no prior experience working with children with learning disabilities, seemed to push his buttons and intensify his stress. Our mom pulled him out and homeschooled him for the next three years, driving him to different therapists and providing a loving and supportive environment in which he could learn and grow. He is now at another school for students with learning disabilities, autism, and ADHD, but even that environment has been far from perfect. However, our family has long since accepted that life will always fall short in this world.
At my highly competitive private Christian high school, I would wager that few, if any, of my classmates were cognizant that their intellectual acumen and social savvy were blessings to treasure and not simply prerogatives. Institutions of higher education, such as Cornell and other Ivy League universities, select for those who are arguably more ingenious and resourceful than the general population. Worldly successes such as academic accolades and future career prospects are pursued, idolized, and, once obtained, taken for granted. Surrounded by these values, we are often inadvertently influenced by them. Instead of valuing the intrinsic worth in our neighbors and respecting each person because we are all created in the image of God, we value and reward human striving, respecting those with power and wealth more than those without. When we come across those who are unlike us and are in need of understanding, compassion, friendship, and love, we pretend not to see them and invariably cross to the other side.
Too often, we seek out and befriend those who are not only like-minded but also like-abled. When we enter a room, are we not drawn to the life of the party like a moth to a flame? How many among us who claim to follow Christ enter a room and look for, let alone notice, the person standing awkwardly alone? My brother has taken to haunting the stairwells of our church. In those painful thirty minutes between the end of the worship service and the beginning of Sunday school, instead of sitting alone in a room full of chatty, upper middle class, highly educated Christians, he goes to an empty stairwell and sits at the bottom step until it is time for Sunday school. Invisibility in a crowded room has become too painful even for my brother, who does not pick up on every social cue. I almost wish he were less aware, so he wouldn’t have to endure the pain of being overlooked and excluded time and time again.
Unfortunately, this scenario is not just limited to my brother’s life but is a recurring pattern in the lives of so many people, and not just those with disabilities. I recognize that countless groups are made to feel invisible–new immigrants who struggle with English, the elderly, the physically disabled, the homeless…The list is depressingly long, but I am most familiar with the pain my brother suffers as he sits alone in a stairwell or with our mom at a table full of middle-aged adults–uninvited and most likely unnoticed by his peers.
Mainstream representations of people with disabilities often sanitize their lives, neatly tying a bow on top and hiding most of the daily, weekly, and yearly difficulties inside a box that is never opened. A prime example is the character Auggie from the breezy, popular novel Wonder, who triumphantly overcomes the struggles of living with facial disfigurement. The books that don’t end in happily-ever-after, like Flowers for Algernon and Of Mice and Men, were more challenging for me to finish because they hit a little too close to home. Flowers for Algernon, a novel about an intellectually disabled young man who undergoes an experimental surgery that makes him highly intelligent yet who eventually reverts back to his previous state, is written in the first person point of view, with incorrect grammar and most words misspelled, since Charlie’s IQ is only 68. My brother Michael’s grammar is better, but his spelling is on par with Charlie’s.
As Michael has grown taller and stronger, he has become a veritable Lennie from Of Mice and Men, often unaware of his strength. I still remember one celebratory day when he threw his arms around our older sister to give her a hug, but our mom’s face was in the way, and his fist connected with her eye. After days of complaining about “gray” vision, my mom went to the eye doctor and found that his punch had separated the vitreous from the back of her eye, resulting in untreatable “floaters.” He did not mean to injure her, and she knows this. She has accepted her “floaters” and many other consequences of life with Michael as par for the course. Needless to say, my older sister and I both feel like we take turns being George by watching over Michael when our mom is not around, not only to keep him safe, but to keep others safe too.
Most of us seek and value others who are similar to ourselves, blessed with intellect and social discernment, but the Bible calls us to a different standard. In Matthew 25:40, Jesus says, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” [2] This verse speaks directly to how we are to treat those on the margins, including those with disabilities both visible and invisible. As always, Jesus sets the ultimate example of how we are to interact with our less advantaged brothers and sisters. With boundless compassion, he heals the blind, makes paralytics walk in Capernaum, raises the dead son of a widow in the town of Nain, and heals lepers everywhere–not from a safe distance, but by defying social norms and touching them. Of course, we cannot miraculously heal the blind, deaf, or leprous, but we can do what Jesus first did: see them, recognize their existence, and then help them. He was not too busy or filled with self-importance to attend to their needs. He saw them and helped them. He did not move to the other side of the road and pass them by.
Scripture repeatedly reminds us that we are not to show favoritism by elevating and befriending the wealthy and successful while ignoring the sick and downtrodden. James 2:1-4 warns us against discriminating based on status: “Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” [3] Similarly, in The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, "Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are." [4] Thus, we are to refrain from judgment and instead show love and grace to our neighbors, our brothers, and to my brother should you ever meet him in this world.
Furthermore, the Bible teaches that every part of the body of Christ is valuable. 1 Corinthians 12:22-26 emphasizes that “those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” [5] My brother’s worth is not diminished because of his disabilities; he is valued just as much by our heavenly Father as a chess grandmaster or two-time Olympian. Furthermore, his presence prompts us to remember the deeper call of the gospel to love and care for those on the margins. That begins with seeing him and recognizing him as a person of value, just as God did with Hagar in her distress. [6] Our God is El Roi, the One who sees us–the meek as well as the mighty–and loves one no less than the other. He loves my brother Michael no less than those of us with IQs that humans consider to be “gifted” and no less than the hedge fund CEO who has achieved what the world defines as “success.” God knows what we, in our human frailty and sin, often fail to see–that everyone has worth, and that worth is not based on our intellect or achievements but on the sole fact that we are created by Him in His image.
Yet despite these clear teachings and examples, the Christian church often struggles to live up to this standard of loving those on the margins. While most churches promote inclusion and try to follow Jesus’ example, there are still too many moments when people like my brother sit alone, excluded oftentimes out of ignorance rather than malice, but it hurts him just the same. I often reflect on Isaiah 1:17, which commands us to "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." [7] As the hands and feet of Christ, we are called to embrace and care for the vulnerable, the overlooked, and the invisible, for they are not invisible to God. The youth counselors at Vacation Bible School should have invited Michael to sit with them at their table or engaged him in friendly conversation. In Matthew 18:10, Jesus says, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven." [8]
Despite the brokenness of institutions and the challenges my brother faces, I find hope in my faith. God sees him and others like him, and while human institutions, including churches, may fail, God does not. Like “the birds of the air” described in Matthew 6:26, Michael will never “sow or reap or store away in barns.” Jesus reminds us that if our heavenly Father feeds the creatures in the fields, will He not feed us? “Are you not much more valuable than they?” [9]. So I know that our Heavenly Father will provide for Michael, just as I know that He has a plan for Michael’s life, plans to prosper him and not to harm him. [10] I place my hope in His eternal, unchanging words of truth, and that hope is grounded in the belief that God is redeeming all things, including the broken institutions that have failed my brother thus far. It is this hope that gives me the strength to continue advocating for a world that is more inclusive and loving, where people like my brother are no longer on the margins but are seen, valued, and loved.
Sources
[1] Romans 3:23 (NIV)
[2] Matthew 25:40 (NIV)
[3] James 2:1-4 (NIV)
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. (New York: Macmillan, 1959)
[5] 1 Corinthians 12:22-26 (ESV)
[6] Genesis 16:13-14 (NIV)
[7] Isaiah 1:17 (NIV)
[8] Matthew 18:10 (NIV)
[9] Matthew 6:26 (NIV)
[10] Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)