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 Focus on deafness, not religion January 15, 1998
10 out of 29 found this review helpful
Once again two historians have attempted to do the job of a theologian. In the their book A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Communty in American, John Vickrey Van Cleve and Barry A. Couch attack the Judeo-Christian view of deafness from a secular and biblically uninformed point-of-view. Firstly, is their supposition, as taken from Exodus, Chapter 4:10-12, that God created deafness. God created man generic in the form of the first man, Adam. In that regard, God can be seen as the Creator of all men--the hearing, as well as the deaf--through their common ancestry in Adam. However, deafness, sickness, and disease came into the world as the result of the first man (Adam's) sin, and not due to Gods creation of the affliction. Adam, in fact, by his sin caused deafness to come into the word, and not God. God, in his sovereignty, had instructed Adam to "tend and keep the Garden of Eden", which he failed to do. When Adam chose to disobey God's directive, Evil entered the world in the form of sickness, disease, genetic defect, etc. Therefore, if the authors want to blame someone, then accuse Adam, not God. Secondly, God must be insane, by the authors' construct. I would ask the authors two questions, "If deafness is the creation of God, why then would He sent a savior, redeemer, and comforter to rid mankind of the malady? If God wanted the deaf deaf, why did He make provision for them to be healed?" (Isaiah 53; I Peter 2) The two authors rational is flawed in that they assume that God is a schizophrenic--that he creates disease so that he can sacrifice His only Son to heal mankind of something that He brought into existence in the first place. No person in their right mind would do this thing, let alone a God who is suppose to love his people. Thirdly, the authors' contention that the New Testament treats the deaf unfairly and harshly is untrue. The first and greatest Commandment of the New Testament is to "love the Lord God with all one's heart." If a Christian man who has believed in God all his life receives a heart transplant from an atheist does he, therefore, lose his salvation. No! Love and faith are spiritual things, not held capture by physical laws. "Faith that comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" is, therefore, not based on a sensory organ, but on an open mind and heart to hear--however, that hearing might come about. (A point the two authors might well mediate on) God the Father used Jesus the Son not to condemn the deaf person as demon possessed, but to show the deaf that he had power over the Evil which caused deafness. Finally, the word hearing (i.e., Akoe, Gk.) in the New Testament Greek text has seven different possible meanings: hearing, ears, fame, rumor, report, audience, and two miscellaneous meanings which have nothing to do with the sense of hearing. These seven meanings different are used a total of twenty-four times throughout the of the Testament and are dependent on context for their meaning. Hearing--as taken from the passage fromRomans 10 that the authors' use--means to hear and UNDERSTAND the gospel of Christ. The word, as used in Romans, implies a spiritual meaning to that heard. Any well trainedtheologian could have told them this. It is truly a same that they were not consulted before the authors wrote down their own biases and beliefs. Steve Rosenoff, Evangelist\Pastor
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