We hear a lot about acceptance and diversity these days. But what happens when acceptance is inconvenient?
As you may know, Chuck Colson’s grandson, Max, is autistic, a diagnosis he shares with the son of a friend and colleague of mine. Max got Chuck to thinking a lot about what Christians mean when they talk about human dignity.
I can’t help but wonder what Chuck would have made of a recent story from Sunnyvale, California. There, the family of an autistic child has been sued by two of their now-former neighbors for creating a public nuisance. Actually, it was their son, who is now eleven, who was regarded as the nuisance.
To be fair, the child’s autism, as the Washington Post put it, poses “social and behavioral challenges.” This conduct, in its most extreme manifestation, included “hitting, kicking and other aggression against adults or their children.”
The boy’s parents insist that they take the concerns “seriously and that either they or a caregiver provide one-on-one supervision at all times.” They also insist that portrait of their son in the complaint is “wildly exaggerated” and that their neighbors’ reactions amount to a “modern day witch hunt against a disabled child.”
Maybe the parents have a point, given that the lawsuit has continued even after both the family of the autistic child and one of the plaintiffs moved away from the neighborhood! What’s more, the complaint claims that issues with the child have had a “chilling effect on an otherwise hot real estate market.”
Jill Escher of the San Francisco Autism Society called the lawsuit “preposterous and an affront to public policy.” She called the proposal to declare a disabled child a public nuisance “extraordinary” and “unprecedented.” Well, I call it sad, and tragic.
The judge is urging both sides to settle, although having left the neighborhood, I wonder what else he thinks the autistic child’s family can do.
As you can imagine, this story hit close to home with my colleague. It’s an exaggerated version of the countless times people, often strangers, reminded him that his son didn’t fit the norm; that he, and people like him, were incorrigibly “other.”
In this case, a person is being treated as the equivalent of a barking dog, improperly-disposed of trash, and an overly sensitive car alarm.
Think about Emily Colson’s experience with Max at the movies [see below]. As in Sunnyvale, the message was that these kids shouldn’t inflict their “otherness” on the rest of us.
In other words, they don’t possess inherent dignity and worth. They are tolerated, not accepted, much less welcomed.
A few weeks ago, I told you about the Greek word sunago , which is translated “welcomed” in Matthew 25. It means more than hospitality; it means to gather in and make part of your own.
We honor a person’s God-given dignity when we look beyond their “otherness” and we treat them as one of our own. Our culture consistently fails this test. It’s a huge part of the reason why 90-plus percent of all Down syndrome cases diagnosed in utero end in abortion. For all of our culture’s babbling about “diversity” and “authenticity,” there are limits to how “diverse” and “authentic” many people are prepared to tolerate.
Chuck understood that being pro-life, not only anti-abortion, required welcoming people like Max even when it made us uncomfortable. It required walking alongside their families in the hard task God has seen fit to assign them, instead of treating them like a neighbor with a noisome pet.
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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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“Distraught mother reveals how theater audience turned on her autistic son,” by Daily Mail Reporter, March 21, 2014, < http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2585911/Emily-Colson-reveals-cinema-audience-called-autistic-son-Max-Colson-retarded-jeered-left.html >
A Massachusetts mother has been jeered out of a movie theater because her autistic son was annoying patrons, one of whom called the young man ‘retarded.’
Colson said in the blog that their problems started when Max, who often gets frightened at the beginning of movies, shrieked ‘I want to go home,’ during the first preview and said it again once the film started.
‘We hadn’t even gotten past the previews. I know most of us, as families of children with disabilities, have all these plans in mind, but we couldn’t even get there,’ she later told the Patriot Ledger.
That’s when the crowd turned on them.
‘Are you going to make him be quiet?’ one woman said, according to Colson’s blog.
When she was informed that Max had autism, the woman hit back, ‘I know he is, but why should the rest of us have to suffer?’
Her husband then allegedly chimed in with, ‘If you don’t make him be quiet I’m calling the manager.’
And things got worse from there, with ‘ugly’ remarks coming from all directions.
When the mother finally decided enough was enough and got up to leave, she claims the theater erupted into applause and patrons shouted ‘don’t come back’ and ‘he’s retarded’ as the family made their way to the door.
But before she left, she felt compelled to speak to the jeering group, she said in her blog.
‘There is a lesson here. A lesson that is so much more important than anything you will learn from this movie,’ she said she told them.
Now a woman Colson goes to church with, Renee Watson, is hiring out an entire movie theater for children with special needs after being so moved by the mother’s painful experience. Watson, a mother-of-three, was so touched by the story that she organized ‘Movie With Max’ on March 27 at a local Regal Cinema and nearly 300 special needs kids will watch ‘Muppets Most Wanted’ together without fearing they’ll be bullied to leave.
The popular event was expanded from a 94-seat cinema to one three times the size and has now sold out.
‘I just thought that if it were my child, I would have to find a way to make this right for him,’ Watson said.
And this time Colson knows she can enjoy the movie with her son. ‘There are so many families (with special needs) that are very isolated,’ Colson said to the Ledger.
‘(This) has generated a huge amount of conversation about our families in the community, and I’m so thankful for that.’