Every man touched by disability in his family who is near the Twin Cities should plan on attending this free event on October 17.

Pastor Kempton Turner, a father with a disabled child, will again be the keynote speaker at a special breakfast event for fathers at Grace Church in Eden Prairie.  It will be held on Saturday, October 17 at 9:00 a.m.

Kempton has a powerful personal testimony of God's sovereign goodness in giving him his child with significant disabilities.  And it is good for men to get together to encourage and build each other up!  The breakfast is also first-rate.

To register for this free event, contact Chuck Peterson at 952-361-9789 or by e-mail at chukkarn@infinityathome.net. Deadline is October 8, 2009

If you are still not convinced, please consider listening to an earlier presentation he made to fathers that can be found here.  After hearing him, you will want to attend!

For the past year several of us at Bethlehem Baptist Church have sought to express our joy in and dependency on a God who intentionally created some to live with disability.  That blog was hosted here as the BBC Disability Ministry blog.

This past week we introduced The Works of God as the new site for Bethlehem's disability ministry blog. 

We did so to improve accessibility for you.  All are welcome to read and to comment.  Please do so! 

We try to post almost daily, but I recommend using RSS or subscribing to have it sent to you via email.  That way, the content will come to you as it is posted.  Abraham Piper provided a very helpful tutorial on RSS here.  The buttons for email subscription and RSS can be found on the home page for The Works of God.

 We'll be posting identical content to both sites for a couple of more weeks.

We hope you find the new site useful.  More importantly, we seek to bring glory to our sovereign, good, righteous, merciful God.

Tom Shakespear, writing in his article "Arguing about Genetics and Disability" in the book Theology, Disability and the New Genetics, makes the classic academic move to appear objective.  He is writing a dialogue between two 'sides' of an argument, and ends his introduction this way:

 The author's own views are a composite of both characters' positions. (p. 67)

My antenna immediately go up on statements like that.  I worked on a college campus for nine years and learned that many faculty of the highest credentials live with fear of looking foolish before their colleagues.  Thus, some will argue over the smallest matter of definition or school of thought, becoming very skilled at cleverness and subtlety, and will never fully reveal what they believe about something.  

So, what am I to believe about this 'composite' of two positions? 

Self-deception appears to be the main problem, particularly if he believes he is being objective in creating an argument.  His dialogue quickly shows us where stands on a core moral issue that is central to the 'argument.' However, both of his characters agree on that moral issue.  Agreement means there is no substantive argument actually taking place.  

And if he knows what he is doing, that his dialogue really is just a nuanced conversation in support of a controversial (and I would add, horrendous) moral positioning and not an argument at all, than his above statement about a 'composite' is dishonest.

I am not arguing that he can't create his dialogue between two different sides of an argument.  Using such literary devices serves a useful purpose and can be very helpful.  I have also been watching different authors engage each other, such as Pastor John's The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright.  Pastor John clearly disagrees with N.T. Wright, but attempts to present Bishop Wright's arguments fairly.  Some have argued he didn't understand Wright completely - but at least we know what he believes and why he has engaged Bishop Wright.  I would suggest that this type of engagement is a much higher statement of respect for Bishop Wright than trying to play both sides to appear smart.

This notion - of living in nuance and subtlety, being able to illuminate on a subject without revealing where one stands, playing on the edges of two sides of an argument - is a powerful incentive to place intellectual engagement above righteousness and what God has to say about a subject.  And it leads to sin.  

After all, we are not called to be clever, but to place our trust in Jesus and be called by the world as foolish.

And when the subject is as serious as abortion and pre-natal screening, which is the point of the 'argument', disabled babies are placed in the cross-hairs for termination, no matter how one side argues against pre-natal screening.  It is, after all, just another morally acceptable choice; the two sides have already agreed on that.

Please, don't play games like this.  That choice is not morally acceptable. Reveal what you believe, no matter the cost, especially when real babies are being aborted because of disability.  The arguments should be just as stark and final as the termination of a pregnancy.

For all of us with school-aged children, the day after Labor Day is when it all begins again.  An army of people, all listed on my son's IEP with their official titles and the number of minutes each week he will work with them, will attempt to help him develop skills as much as he is able.  

But his favorite part of the day is the enormous bus that will pull up directly in front of the house to transport him to his school, and then back again.  He loves the bus.  So it's pretty easy to get him going in the morning - a reminder that the bus is coming is usually enough to have him pop up from his bed.

He's been getting on that bus since he was three years old.  And every year I worry about the bus driver and the bus aides.  I won't let him on the bus with a sole adult, even with credentials and a clean track record - my son is just too vulnerable.   

So, every year I am confronted with my responsibilities to him as his dad, and the command to not be anxious:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:4-7

I must do both: carry out my fatherly responsibilities of protection; and not be anxious about anything. This is not a balancing act.  

So, in a couple of hours, I'll put him back on that bus.  And pray like crazy. 

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.