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From: Diane.Oliff@p0.f197.n253.z2.fidonet.org (Diane Oliff)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Bible
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Date: 5 Jan 90 03:40:39 GMT
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In a message to Peter Baker <12-14-89 05:23> Lana Berrington wrote:

LB*>   I once had a friend who told me that developmentally
LB*> disabled people are the way they are because they sinned in
LB*> some way and were being punnished.  If that isn't one of
LB*> the most off the wall statements I ever heard I dunno what
LB*> is!

Well, your friend could look at it like that or you could look at it like 
this:

I have two physical abnormalities. One, an extra toe on my left foot, recurs 
in most girls in my mother's family over the last hundred years (and 
probably before but we don't have records for that). In our family, then, if 
you have a group of us girls, people without eleven toes are pretty abnormal 
and obviously got in some real deep sinning back then.

I was also born without any external ears. Looking back in the family 
albums I'd say that on both sides (Mother's and Father's) my ancestors and 
relatives have small crumpled-up ears where you can see them, so I guess 
that's hereditary too. I've been told that it is unlikely that any children 
I have would inherit the same condition I had - it certainly won't stop me 
from having children if I can (that's another question and I will know some 
more about that when we have the results of some tests back).

But in any case, I don't see it is anything to do with God. My normal 
condition is to be like I am - I feel better to dress up a bit to look like 
other people when I am out because they have a problem with me when I don't 
- I don't have a problem with them looking how they do (I used to but I have 
been helped a lot lately and have overcome it).

But to people like the one that told you that, I feel I want to get out all 
my little differences and wave them in his face and yell BoogaBoogaBooga 
from dark corners at him, because its not you that has any problem, but 
your friend if he or she really believes that.

I *think* I can believe in God, because I have life and that is a miracle. 
I'm not oppressed, I'm not shot at by the police, I'm not forced by others 
into vice, I'm not having my world destroyed by a greedy man like the 
Amazonian Indians, who are as disAbled as any of us without the slightest 
chance of help.

But I don't think God sat up there and decided 'Diane's great grand-daddy 
was a Bad Man so I'm going to pull her little ears off'. That's silly, and 
whatever else God may be, I don't think silly is it.

Love and good things to you for 1990

Diane Oliff  
 

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