Does God Hate Disabled People?

Tough Questions for Christians #21—God Hates Disabled People
Tough Question #21

AZ changed the format on the questions, and I have to say, I don't care for it. I don’t like the new music, and the new format is longer. But I’ll keep answering the questions. This question begins at 12:30. Please ignore all the ignorant, bitter preamble in the video.

AZ quotes Leviticus 21:17-23 where God says that he doesn’t want people who are handicapped or injured or who have a skin disease to enter into the sanctuary because it would “profane” the sanctuary. He doesn’t mention that the sanctuary is also off limits to children under 13, all non-Israelites, anyone with a Canaanite ancestry and all women. They would also “profane” the sanctuary. So, AZ asks, how does a disable person make the sanctuary profane? What’s wrong with them?

First of all, the idea behind this has nothing to do with sin, but has to do with laws of cleanness. This is ritual cleanness that has to do with culture, not with what is good or bad in the sight of God. Just like we don’t consider a person “clean” if they haven’t washed their hands after using the bathroom (even if they didn’t touch anything dirty), the fact of them being actually dirty isn’t the problem. The problem is if it were known they didn’t wash their hands they would be known as “dirty”, just as a person who might be very clean but has lice is considered that. No one wants to be around them because they have a cultural uncleanness. The way the Law deals with this issue is to just exclude those who are culturally “unclean”, even as any public building might exclude people who have lice. No one else wants to catch it, even if it doesn’t hurt anyone.

It is interesting that Jesus denied most of the laws of cleanness. He said that God isn’t as interested in a person being clean on the outside as He is on the inside. Actually, the prophets and psalmist agreed with this as well, when they denied that sacrifice without repentance is less than meaningless. This is one of the areas the New Testament clearly saw the problems with the Law and sought to correct it. They denied all the ritual laws, because the implications of them were not according to God’s true nature, His love and mercy.