The Deaf: A People to Evangelize, Not a Disability to Cure

Introduction

"I'm not a typical pastor." Rémy says it with humor, and he owns it. He lived in Paris for forty years, and as a pastor he spent a long time working alongside his ministry, serving for years as a special education worker. "I have never been able to give as much love as when I was a special education worker." Today he serves with his wife Myriam in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, where they have been for six years.

Invited to the Assemblée de Dieu de Montpellier Richter for a missions weekend on the occasion of International Day of the Deaf, he opens this Bible study with a message that can be summed up in two words: disability and love. A service in French Sign Language (LSF, langue des signes française) is planned for Sunday afternoon, and he invites everyone to come and spend that time with the deaf.

The thread of his message is a verse from Paul in Romans 10:14: "How will they believe in him whom they have not heard?" How do we bring the Gospel to entire populations who live among us, whom we rub shoulders with, but who have no access to the most basic elements of understanding it? Rémy does not present himself as an expert. He shares what he has lived, what he has understood, and the zeal that is his.

Message Outline

1. A Special Education Worker Turned Pastor Committed to the Deaf

• Before meeting the deaf, Rémy worked for years with autistic adults who do not speak, or who do not use speech the way we do. Even among so-called high-functioning autistic people, "words do not have the same meaning for them."
• Then he met a deaf colleague at the facility where he worked. "The language barrier was immediate, the impossibility of communicating was immediate." But he told himself that something could be done.
• This question of speech and deafness weighed on him because of Romans 10:14. Wearing his two hats as pastor and special education worker, he asked himself how to bear witness to those who have no access to the Gospel, "certainly the most beautiful gift God could have given us."
• He worked in the Paris region, with fellow pastors and with deaf people present in the churches, in particular a church in Sarcelles that wanted to bring them the Gospel. One day, he was able to step onto the platform at a convention and tell all his colleagues how important this work is.
• Difficulties appeared very quickly. "When you take part in missionary work, there are always battles." It took him time to understand and accept that this really was missionary work: bringing the Gospel to a people in their own right.
• A few months ago, everything that had been built seemed to be slowly collapsing. He said to his wife: "I don't know if I'm the right person." He was praying that the baton would be passed elsewhere. Then, at the March convention, the pastor from Montpellier came to see him: "We want to work in Montpellier, there are convinced brothers and sisters here." At the end of August, another call: "For International Day of the Deaf, we have to do something." He said yes, moved his schedule around, and here he is.

2. Disability Must Not Be the Filter Through Which We See People

• Disability is a medical fact and an administrative reality, and in France a law governs it. When a church is renovated, this question forces it to adapt. It is also a situation that always creates suffering, whatever the nature or severity of the disability.
• "But it must not be the filter through which we look at those who live with it." When it comes to communicating the love of Christ, there is often a kind of obstacle that keeps us from going toward these people: worries, fears. Rémy wants to place this way of seeing in our hearts, for evangelism as well as for everyday life, because that is where love shows itself.
• He recalls the scene in John 9: Jesus sees a man with an affliction, the disciples ask whether it is because of his sin or his parents' sin, and Jesus answers, in essence, that it is so that the glory of his Father may be revealed. That man was healed, "but sometimes God's glory is revealed even through these things."
• He reads an article published in the magazine Pentecôte. In France, disability is approached through the notions of limitation, restriction, lack, and inability to do, to speak, or to live, compared with the normality of the majority. Several laws have been passed, especially in the last twenty years, with requirements for adaptation, accessibility, and inclusion.
• These laws have brought real progress in recognition, accessibility, and financial compensation. But the author observes that they have not lessened, or only very little, the suffering, the guilt, and the sense of injustice associated with disability.
• This is where God's children have something to offer: the message of Jesus Christ must be able to answer this guilt, this sense of injustice, and this suffering, which is often far more emotional and psychological than physical.

3. A Unique and Wonderful Creature, Loved by God

• Ten years with autistic adults and his ministry among the deaf lead Rémy not to see them as disabled, even if they are in the eyes of the law. "They are different, but no more so than the rest of us, the 'normal' people."
• Adapting the Church to the difficulties linked to disability fulfills a legal and ethical obligation. "But that doesn't seem to me to be a sufficient answer." The real question: "Could we see the person with a disability as unique and wonderful?"
• It is not obvious. The severely disabled autistic people he lived with do not relate to others, to themselves, or to cleanliness in the same way. "And yet, can't we see them as singular and wonderful people? I say yes. It isn't easy. It challenges us."
• He reads Psalm 139:13-16, which has worked deeply in him over these years: "For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." We apply this psalm to ourselves and to those we love. We could also apply it to these people: a creature loved by God, for whom he has spiritual plans, in spite of everything.
• He has met such a person. In a facility that took in young people with neurodegenerative diseases, a young man of his own age, barely thirty, with muscular dystrophy, asked to meet a pastor. The director, who knew his employee was a pastor, told him to go and see him one evening.
• The young man had already given himself to Christ. He tells how he met Jesus, how he asked God for forgiveness in a moment of great distress, and he asks: "What do I have to do to become a Christian?" Rémy tells him he already is one.
• His body was broken: a tracheotomy, almost lost eyesight, lying down permanently, deformed by the disease, only a few fingers still working. One day, at the youth meeting, they prayed for the sick. Rémy fidgeted in his chair, convinced that the young man would come forward. He did not move. A few days later, the question was burning on his lips: "Why didn't you come forward for prayer?" The answer: "Rémy, it is thanks to the disease that I met Jesus."
• Rushed to the hospital, on a ventilator, placed in a rarely used wing, he had lived through a power outage. On respiratory support, that means death within seconds. "I felt myself dying." He cried out to God: "God, if you exist, do something." The power came back. That day, he gave his heart to Jesus.
• "Rémy, I don't want to be healed of my disease, because it is thanks to it that I am saved, that I met my Savior." Rémy admits that this broke him humanly: he, who had always been in great shape, overflowing with energy, was not able to hear this.
• The young man went to join his Savior a year later, after more than thirty years of illness. Humanly, "he didn't draw the winning ticket." But he communicated the joy and peace of Christ to all the nurses as no one else could have: he welcomed them with a smile, even when they removed his cannula every two hours, thirty seconds of agony, and he thanked them with a smile. "A wonderful creature."

4. The Deaf Are Not Disabled, They Are Foreigners to Us

• If we want to share the Gospel with the deaf, we cannot see them as disabled. They do not see themselves that way either. "There is almost nothing more insulting to a deaf person than to be looked at as disabled."
• Yes, they have a sensory impairment, they cannot hear or hear very poorly, and French law considers them persons with disabilities. But even if they have no access to our speech, they have another means of expression that is just as effective: sign language.
• So it is no longer a matter of normal people (the hearing) and disabled people (the deaf), but of people who are foreign to one another. "Imagine landing in Japan or China." Not only do we not speak the language, we do not even understand the writing. We are simply foreigners to one another.
• This barrier can be broken down by LSF. And since we hear and speak, and that works rather well for us, "maybe it is up to us to go toward them," especially if we want to share the Gospel with them.
• It is not easy. Rémy does not speak LSF, he has not had time to learn it. It is a language in its own right, which must be learned and practiced, otherwise it is lost. When he spends a few days immersed among the deaf, he starts speaking a little with his hands again, then quickly forgets.

5. A History of Rejection, and Healing Is Not the Path to Salvation

• The rejection of the notion of disability is rooted in history. The deaf were long considered by the Catholic Church to be people without a soul, because they did not hear and had difficulty expressing themselves. Without a soul, therefore less than human, therefore potentially deprived of salvation: no point in caring about them. This view prevailed throughout the Middle Ages.
• It was not until the end of the 18th century that an abbot, a man of God, took an interest in the deaf and their education. He founded a specialized school where what would become LSF and other sign languages developed. This approach spread across France, around the world, and especially to the United States.
• Then a congress of educators preferred the oral approach to sign language. Rémy cannot say why. The consequence: this language, which allowed the deaf to communicate with each other and gain access to education, was gradually erased from teaching until it disappeared.
• Advances in medicine later led doctors to believe they could cure them. No. And this is a very important point: "The question of healing the deaf is not the way to bring them to salvation."
• As a pastor, Rémy knows that Jesus healed deaf people. But we are no longer in the time of Jesus, the context and the history are not the same. Many deaf people have told him: "Rémy, I don't want to be healed." One of them even said: "I don't want to hear. It must be horrible to hear noises." The little he had access to was already overwhelming him.
• It is disorienting, and God may have a path that Rémy does not know. "But what matters is not whether they hear or do not hear. What matters is that they be saved." If we have to set aside for a time the desire to display God's glory through a miracle of healing, it is worth it: God's glory is always revealed in the lives of those who draw near to him. The paths God takes are different for each person, but his love remains the same.
• These decisions caused the deaf a great deal of suffering: no more healed than before, excluded from society because they were deprived of education, rejected once again. LSF eventually came back, but it was not until the end of the 20th century that their need to speak their own language was recognized. It is still not written into the Constitution alongside the regional languages. "There is still work to be done."

6. A Deaf People, with Their Own Culture, Language, and Humor

• Despite this history, or because of it, the deaf have drawn closer together and formed very tight-knit communities, even across national borders.
• Why speak of a "deaf people"? Because they share a history, a culture, and a language, and that is what defines a people. They have their own values, morals, rules, traditions, and identity.
• What first unsettled Rémy about his deaf colleague, and made him want to meet him, was their humor. "The deaf have a lot of humor, I assure you, and a rather subtle humor."
• Their cultural and linguistic identity was recognized by the UN in 2006.
• We should not look at them as people in need, with deficiencies: they have some, "but perhaps no more than you and I." His first battle with his fellow pastors was to say: let's stop wanting to heal them at all costs.
• We ourselves do not always seek healing. "You all wear glasses, don't you? And we live very well without having our eyes healed." Thanks to these very effective prostheses, we live well with what could leave us completely disabled. "Without my glasses on the road, you would not want to be next to me."
• Not all deaf people are educated, because they were deprived of access to French and everything that goes with it. But they are no less intelligent. "Education and intelligence are two totally different things." Rémy has known highly educated people he could not consider intelligent, and uneducated people who were sometimes more intelligent than he is.
• They do not necessarily need us to assist them more than others, and they do not necessarily want it: for centuries they felt despised and rejected by hearing society, by us. When we say to them today "come, we'll help you," it is understandable that they are cautious.
• Their cognitive functioning is different from ours, built on images rather than on speech. This leads to thinking differently, and therefore to addressing them differently. Meeting an occasional need, such as translating a sermon, is not necessarily the answer, because they do not conceive of things the way we do. "We need to be able to reinvent ourselves." Forcing them to adapt to us is sometimes experienced as an insult.

7. Becoming Deaf with the Deaf: A Missionary Work

• Rémy concludes with 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. Paul, free from all, made himself a servant to all: a Jew to the Jews, under the law to those under the law, weak to the weak, "that I may by all means save some."
• This text should instruct and inspire us when we think about the deaf and about disability in general. In what way will we make ourselves servants of others, true servants who consider others as superior, who accept that they lean on us to rise up, even if we stay lower? Becoming disabled with the disabled, deaf with the deaf.
• This is what he pleaded with his colleagues for, asking for national recognition of this evangelism: "My brothers, do not see the deaf as disabled, but as a people. And if we see them as a people, we have a people to evangelize, and we must work in a missionary way."
• It is not only a matter of including the deaf in the Church to meet a legal requirement. It is a missionary work in which the Church of Montpellier has chosen to take part, just as when it proclaims the Gospel to the men and women of the city. But here, we are addressing a people who seem to have the same language as we do and who do not: the same words can have a different meaning, and they have their own culture and their own identity.
• The work to be done with them, for them, and among them will therefore be that of a missionary work: preaching the good news of the Gospel and of salvation in Christ.
• Among the things Rémy dreams of and prays for: planting and growing churches, training disciples and servants of God, translating the Bible into sign language. Jesus is coming back and the whole earth must be reached by the Gospel. Translators are working in every language, sometimes impossible dialects. LSF and the other sign languages are languages in which the Gospel and the Bible must be available. "For how will they believe in him whom they have not heard?"
• He prays that Montpellier will become a missionary hub for the evangelization of this people, not the only one, and that the Lord's name will be glorified in their eyes and in their hearts.
• In his closing prayer, Rémy blesses God because one day, at a camp, a man of God took the time to come to children like him, and the Holy Spirit found the way to his heart. For each of us, God has prepared a place, a moment, and men and women who carry the Gospel. He prays that God will create these conditions for the deaf, and that each of us will take part in our own way, so that they may be saved and in turn become messengers and witnesses of the most beautiful gift: salvation by grace.

Key Takeaways

• Disability is a medical and administrative reality that creates suffering, but it must never be the filter through which we look at a person.
• The law provides for accessibility and inclusion, but it answers neither guilt, nor the sense of injustice, nor suffering. Only the message of Jesus Christ can.
• Every person with a disability is a unique and wonderful creature (Psalm 139), loved by God and someone for whom he has spiritual plans. This young man's testimony shows it.
• The deaf are not disabled but a people, with their own language, history, and culture. What matters is not that they hear, but that they be saved.
• Bringing them the Gospel is a missionary work: becoming a servant to all, deaf with the deaf, in order to win some (1 Corinthians 9).

Personal Application

1. What is the first thing you see in a person with a disability whom you meet: their limitation, or the wonderful creature God has formed?
2. Are there fears or worries that keep you from going toward people who are disabled or deaf, in your church or in your everyday life?
3. Does this young man's testimony, that he did not want to be healed because the illness had led him to Jesus, challenge the way you pray for the sick?
4. How could your church move from inclusion out of obligation to a missionary approach toward the deaf in your city?
5. With whom, concretely, could you become a "servant," even if it means learning a language or a way of thinking that is not your own?

Verses Cited

• Romans 10:14
• John 9:1-3
• Psalm 139:13-16
• 1 Corinthians 9:19-23

Frequently Asked Questions

Why say that the deaf form a people and not a group of people with disabilities?

For Rémy, what defines a people is a culture, a history, and a language. The deaf share all three: a history marked by centuries of rejection, a language in its own right (LSF), and their own culture, with its values, rules, traditions, and humor. Their cultural and linguistic identity was recognized by the UN in 2006. Seeing them as a people changes everything: we no longer try to include them out of obligation, we go on mission toward them.

Do we need to pray for the healing of the deaf in order to share the Gospel with them?

The preacher knows that Jesus healed deaf people, but he affirms that healing is not the way to lead them to salvation. Many deaf people have told him they did not want to be healed. What matters is not whether they hear or not, but that they be saved. If we must set aside for a time the desire to see a miracle, it is worth it, because God's glory is always revealed in the lives of those who draw near to him.

What does it mean to become "deaf with the deaf"?

It is an application of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, where Paul becomes a Jew to the Jews and weak to the weak in order to win some. For Rémy, it means becoming a servant of the deaf, going toward them, learning their language and their way of thinking rather than forcing them to adapt to us. Translating a sermon is not enough: we must accept reinventing ourselves so that the Gospel reaches them in their own language and culture.