Fearfully, wonderfully made

My brother felt the ‘shame’ of his disability. The idea that some bodies are better than others is deadly.

Kevin O’Brien with Will O’Brien in 1993, about a year before his death. — Courtesy of Will O’Brien Kevin O’Brien with Will O’Brien in 1993, about a year before his death. — Courtesy of Will O’Brien

I grew up in an Irish Catholic family with seven children, a typically large brood for that era. My oldest brother, Kevin, was born in 1955 with spina bifida, a severe spinal disorder. He was not expected to live more than a few years, but he did. As he grew older, Kevin lost the use of his underdeveloped legs. Initially, he used crutches and braces. After a spinal fusion surgery, he used a wheelchair. As an adult he got along quite well, with an apartment, a job, a car.

Kevin never lived with us full-time. My parents found specialized institutions for him, and he came home for summers and holidays. I looked forward to his visits, but his relationships with the rest of the family were fragile.

My mother cared deeply for Kevin, but she died early. My father and stepmother were, to put it generously, not very comfortable around him. My father was almost constantly irritated, impatient and on edge around Kevin.

There were no special supports in our split-level house for Kevin, nothing that created better accessibility for him, not even a ramp for his wheelchair.

I came to realize that my parents, especially my father, were ashamed of Kevin.

Kevin O’Brien, about 1985. — Courtesy of Will O’Brien
Kevin O’Brien, about 1985. — Courtesy of Will O’Brien

Granted, it was an earlier generation, and societal views of people with disabilities were narrow and ill-informed. But I still shudder when I think back: It would have been unthinkable to put a ramp on our house. Some of my siblings would feel embarrassed in front of their friends when Kevin was present. My father was visibly upset trying to help Kevin negotiate curbs or other obstacles.

Kevin grew up in a family — and a society — that was ashamed of him and his “crippled” body. He, in turn, struggled with internalized shame. He had friends who shared in the experience of disability, but there was no disabilities rights movement to challenge social attitudes and promote public policies to be more inclusive and accessible.

In the Irish Catholicism of my rearing, any matters corporeal were deeply fraught. Addressing matters of our bodies could devolve in a fire and brimstone sermon. As I developed a more sophisticated theology, I learned that the Bible affirms our bodies. Psalm 139 says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Paul, often considered a flesh-despising prude, tells the Corinthians that the body is a “temple of the Holy Spirit.”

Our society is obsessed with bodies — gorgeous celebrities, special diets and workouts. All of which communicates a dark subtext: “You are not good enough. Your body is not beautiful enough or strong enough.” Because few of us have such culturally desirable bodies, we can easily feel shame about our very selves.

In 2023, The Washington Post published an article by Ian Russell in which he shared that his daughter was driven to suicide by social media. Like many 14-year-old girls, she had been, as her father writes, “pushed into a rabbit hole of depressive content.” His tragic account echoes the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, which describes the psychological impact of Instagram, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). It indicts social media companies whose algorithms multiply harmful content directed at audiences like tween and teen girls.

Much of that content promotes a hyperfocus on our appearance and the idea that our bodies convey our value. Desperate to measure up to impossible standards, people succumb to self-loathing.

Idolatry of bodily desirability is literally deadly.

The Christian church contributes to dysfunctional ideas about the body. It has infused Western culture with moral teachings of bodily sin and impurity. My early theological training about my body was steeped in shame and guilt.

Christian concern with matters of the flesh almost always centers on sexuality. As a vehicle of sex, the body is a domain of temptation, a land mine of iniquity. Even Paul’s image of the temple of the Holy Spirit is usually wielded as a cudgel against temptations to “impurity.” Much religious training regarding our bodies is a catalogue of “thou shalt nots.” The answer to “How do we honor God with our bodies?” is usually, “Avoid sexual impurity.”

Of course, sexuality is an essential arena for discernment about values and behaviors. But limiting our discernment about bodies to matters of sex diverts us from understanding what it means to honor God with our bodies in other ways.

One who speaks powerfully to the matter of bodies is Baby Suggs, a character in Toni Morrison’s novel ­Beloved, which portrays a community of formerly enslaved African Americans in post-Civil War Cincinnati.

Baby Suggs, who “busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue” during her enslavement, is a spiritual elder to this community. In one scene, she gathers them in a place in the woods known as the Clearing.

“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just a soon pick ’em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you!”

Baby Suggs continues through other parts of the body, each of which the White Man despises and violates — and each of which, therefore, the community must lavish with love.

I acknowledge that I am part of the heritage that despised and violated Black bodies — and continues to do so. I wonder if there is a connection: As the Western church taught those of us of European extraction that our own bodies were suspect and even shameful, maybe it became easier to vent our shame by perpetuating violence on other, non-White bodies.

As Luke Powery, dean of Duke University Chapel, observes: “When bodies don’t matter, we can torture them, shoot them, behead them, objectify them, brand them, hang them, make fun of them, ignore them and abuse them. The love we should have for bodies is turned to hate against fellow human beings’ bodies.”

God gave us bodies that are good — so good that God’s own self chose to inhabit one. The first step in honoring God with our bodies is to love them, to throw off any shackles of shame and fully embrace that our flesh is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Paul’s image of the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit should not be a warning to avoid impurity but a celebration of the sacredness of our fleshly reality.

To love our bodies is to love others’ bodies. With that love, we stand against any cultural messages that some bodies are better than others. It is a lie — a deadly lie — to say that any body is not desirable enough, not the right shape, not the right color.

To despise any body — including our own — is to reject God. When we abuse or demean any body, we destroy the sacred image and likeness of God.

We need to tear off the lenses that cause us to view the bodies of people of color, people with disabilities and people of different gender expressions as inferior.

Remember Paul’s other body imagery, in 1 Corinthians 12, that we together are the body of Christ, that every part is valuable and that if one part is hurt, the whole body is hurt.

In another passage on bodies, Philippians 3:20-21, Paul strikes a slightly different tone: Our home is in heaven, where our Savior, Jesus Christ, will change our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body.

Kevin was among the first generation of people with spina bifida to live into adulthood. He died at the age of 39. We might take solace in saying his lowly body was transformed in heaven. But Kevin’s body was always glorious. We were just too blind to see it.

Will O’Brien coordinates The Alternative Seminary, a grassroots program of biblical and theological study. He lives with his spouse, Dee Dee Risher, in the Vine & Fig Tree community in Philadelphia and attends Germantown Mennonite Church. He has served as interim pastor of two Mennonite congregations.

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