As I have thought over the issues surrounding the restraining order placed by the Catholic Church on the family of Adam Race, the autistic son of a devout Catholic woman (see Greg’s last blog), I am drawn back to an article I read a few years ago by Stanley Hauerwas entitled Gestures of a Truthful Story. The article deals mainly with the approach most churches take on Christian Education. His perspective is that in our teaching we focus too much on knowing about God’s story and not enough on being in God’s story.
He writes, “The primary task of being educated religiously, or better Christianly, is not the achievement of better understanding but faithfulness… One of the tasks people concerned with religious education have taken for themselves has been the attempt to find ways to help people better understand what it means to be a Christian. This most often has naturally taken the form of encouraging greater study of Scripture and theology, the assumption being that we will be better Christians if we simply know more… Such an emphasis excludes in a decisive manner a whole group of people from participation in God’s Kingdom. For what do you do with the mentally handicapped?
It is certainly true that the mentally handicapped may not be able to read the story; nor are they always able to “understand” the “meaning” of the story; nor do they know what the social implications the story may entail. But what they do know is how the story is embodied through the essential gestures of the church. They know the story through the care they receive, and they help the church understand the story that forms such care… They know that they too have a role in God’s people as they faithfully serve God through being formed by a community that is nothing less than the enactment of that story (Theology Today, 42 no 2 Jl 1985, p 187-88).”
More than any curriculum or any series of sermons or any detailed analysis of scripture, accepting Adam into the family and into the congregation is the one act that can teach Adam, his family, and the church what it means to be a part of God’s Kingdom. What is taught when the church does the opposite?
May we all find ways of learning that engage the body, mind, and soul.
June 11, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Shay,
Thanks for taking the conversation one step forward. This shift from learning to being is an important one. Adam’s place in the story is in being the marginalized who receives the grace of Jesus. Can’t give a lot of grace through the court system.
I think of the mentally handicapped or those suffering from mental health issues to whom I serve communion. Each time they come to receive I pray earnestly for the reality of God’s grace to be known to them as they experience that which they can’t understand. In those moments God’s love seems very clear to me.