I am going to share this two part revelation based on Lev 19:14, a verse which is etched deeply in my mind.
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Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.
Now, even most bullies won’t mess with the disabled in the PC environment of the US, and I have to say that’s one area of political correctness I am grateful for as a special needs mom. But this verse goes deeper than it would appear, because in scriptures blindness and deafness are also equated with the spiritual concepts of not being about to hear or perceive the Words of God. So how are we to treat them? Do we mock them and trip them up? Or do we assist them as we would someone who is physically deaf and/or blind? Is there any honor at all in creating barriers between God and the people who are spiritually blind and deaf to His Word? Is it not God who controls who sees and who is blind, who hears and who is deaf?
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Ex 4:11 And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?
When we mock those with closed eyes, do we not sit in judgment of the One who could lift the veil and restore their sight and cause them to hear? Do we dare make fun of someone who has not been the recipient of God’s mercy? Did we obtain mercy by merit? Were our eyes and ears opened because we earned it? Mine were not. And are we wise enough to always know the difference between those in actual rebellion to what they know, vs rebellion to what we are telling them? If they do not believe us because they cannot perceive the truth in what we are saying, are they to be equated with those who know, intimately, the truth and have walked away? Do we dare mock them?
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When we mock the deaf and trip up the blind, are we not falsely representing the character of the One who came to open ears and eyes?
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Isaiah 35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Why on earth would we mock the people who have not received this blessing? Why would we even risk it with our angry, self-righteous presumptions?
I have been laid terribly low with a dream that I had this morning. I will share it here, the dream was two-fold.
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In the first part of the dream, I was preparing foundations for living quarters in a house. Beds and bathrooms had been placed in rooms that had no floors, and I was planning and counting the cost of building those foundations. Some of the rooms had refrigerators with good and bad foods in them so I had to get rid of the bad foods. As I was going through the house making plans, I walked outside and into a courtyard where I saw a great many refugees. They were cold and so I went and got the blankets off the beds in the foundationless rooms, assessed people’s needs and handed out the bedding that was available, covering people according to their level of risk. I never asked why they were there, or who they were, I just handed out coverings so they would be warm.
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In the second part of a dream, a former ally became an enemy to myself and my companions – because we were not giving him leadership over us, we refused to hear his words. That former ally desired to compromise us. I was the last person that he tried to attack, and he did so by making cruel and taunting accusations about my disabled son (who as many of you know, is also adopted) in front of a crowd of people. As he did it, even though some of the accusations were true or could be true, I rose up and addressed his audience. Full of passion and wrath I did not know existed, I explained my son’s situation, I pleaded his case, I appealed for mercy – no, I demanded mercy by the forcefulness of my defense. I never mocked the man who was attacking my son, I simply defended my son so ardently that his audience was forced to recognize my son’s merit. The man attacking my son lost in a stunning public display.
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What are we called to do?
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Are we called to acts of mercy? Are we called to minister to the wretched within the reach of our grasp, those we can see around us? Are we to assess their needs and fill them? I tell you the truth, in one way or another, every single one of us is like those refugees in my first dream. In one or more (or many more) areas of our lives we are naked, cold and filthy. If someone is able to keep me from dying, should they not cover me? Or should we yell at people and tell them how cold and naked and filthy they are. The second is a lot easier to do. It appeals to the flesh. It seems like righteousness. But what does YHVH require of us?
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Micah 6:8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Do you love mercy? Do you walk with such humility that you hate it on those occasions when you have to rebuke? Are you so concerned with justice that you agonize over whether you are tripping a blind man or saving a rebellious one? God requires all those things of us. Nowhere does He require us to mock people. And just because someone in scriptures is recorded as doing it does not make it right. All of the forefathers sinned, sins that were not called out as sin in the text, but were indeed sin. We cannot use the acts of men to excuse our actions. We cannot equate their situations with ours so easily, in order to justify ourselves.
Now for the second dream. I sometimes think that I was made an adoptive mother not only as a blessing to myself, but so that I could understand the passionate love between parent and adopted child. I believe I was made a special needs mom in order to bless and refine me, and to help me understand our condition before our Heavenly Father. The man in my dream who was mocking my son was retaliating because we were not listening to him. His intention was to wound and conquer so that people would listen to him and follow him and agree with him. But he made the mistake of attacking my child, based on how his disabilities compromise him – without explaining his disabilities at all but only focusing on his behavior. He withheld the information that would have moved his audience to mercy.
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But it was the very things that compromised him, that I rose up and used in his favor. I was filled with such outrage, such love, such overwhelming wrath and grief. Everything I said was borne out of loving my son, defending him from unfair accusations born out of a lack of mercy. The man accusing my son should have attacked me instead. You do not attack someone’s disabled child without facing wrath. As I told the crowd about my son, about his challenges, the crowd came to see the humanity of my son (whereas before they were snickering) and they came to have compassion on him.
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I woke up with the realization that when we attack our brothers and sisters, the adopted children of God, when we accuse them and mock them we never take into account why they are doing what they do. We never stop to wonder about the unseen disabilities. Is the person drowning in an endless sea of false teachings that they are too afraid to let go of? Were they beaten or molested by their father and unable to embrace a religion that is centered around a Father figure? Are they dedicated to being good, yet with unopened eyes and ears because their time has not come yet? Were they rescued from a perverse Hollywood lifestyle and now desperately cling to and defend what they see as their life-preserver, sometimes in wrong ways but with good intentions? Are not all these people disabled children? Do we want to risk incurring the Father’s wrath by touching them with our merciless scorn? Do we want to assume willful rebellion? Do we want to presume what they do and do not truly understand? Do we ever want to be laid low by an angry Father who rises up in defense of His disabled child? Do we want to hurt Him, the way I was hurt in that dream, on behalf of my son?
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Let me tell you, I do not love the way He does. I wouldn’t even want to face my wrath, the way it was meted out towards that man. I am not God, my wrath pales in comparison to the efficiency and purity of His. I do not want to provoke His wrath and anguish by mocking His disabled children.
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I don’t ever want to mock anyone ever again.
