Babies Perfect and Imperfect

Still in view of Proposition 2 in Michigan, I'd like to write about Amy Julia Becker's article, Babies Perfect and Imperfect, in the November 2008 edition of First Things.

She writes that she gave birth to a Down syndrome baby--Penny. She reports that on the day of the birth the emotionally troubling experience upon finding out that she had a Down syndrome child...

As this news began to make its way into my consciousness, we heard shouts from the room next door. Another child had been born. “She’s perfect!” someone exclaimed about that other baby. “She’s perfect!” Once we found out that Penny had Down syndrome, we had a hard time celebrating her birth. We didn’t open the bottle of champagne perched by my bedside. We were afraid to call our friends and family. We didn’t shout, “She’s perfect.”

She describes with transparency that she felt her child was a "defective piece of machinery" that had been turned off--"subhuman," "abnormal," "retarded," "stupid" were all of the connotations that had swirled through her mind. Theologically she said the only way she could frame the extra chromosome that ran through every cell of Penny's body was that this happened because she was the victim of the results of sin in the world. She could not help but think of Penny as "defective" and a "mistake."

But she began to wonder what it meant for Penny to be created in the image of God. She asks some interesting questions on the nature of Adam and Eve's dependence in the Garden of Eden. But then she relates the disability of Down Syndrome to Christology. Quoting two theological authors who address this topic...

Jesus experienced bodily disfigurement on the cross, “this Christologically defined imago Dei would thus be inclusive rather than exclusive of the human experience of disability.”
Reynolds makes a similar point: “His resurrected body continues to bear his scars as a sign of God’s solidarity with humanity. . . . It suggests that disability indicates not a flawed humanity but a full humanity.”

She then began to conceive of her child's disability as a gift...

to that enable each of us to admit our creatureliness, our need for one another, our need for God’s grace.

She then adds this story...

Early on, I had asked my mother whether she thought Down syndrome happened because of sin in the world. She responded gently, “The only evidence of sin I see is in how the world reacts to Penny.”

Then she ends the article recording the realizations she has come to two and a half years after her daughters birth...

Two and a half years after Penny was born, I don’t think of her as defective, or retarded, or abnormal. I think back to that first evening of her life, when I cringed at the words about the baby next door: “She’s perfect!” I still wouldn’t call Penny perfect. I wouldn’t call any human being, besides Jesus, perfect. I am well aware that Penny needs healing and redemption through Christ, as do I. And Penny’s nature, I hope and pray, will be redeemed through Christ as she becomes the whole person she was created to be. I suspect Penny’s whole person will include three twenty-first chromosomes, but only because any aspect of that extra chromosome causing separation—physical, emotional, relational—will be overcome.
Just recently, we started reading a book about Jesus together. We read the story of Jesus blessing the little children. Penny was fascinated. At the end, I told her that Jesus loves her just like he loves the little children in the story. And I asked her if she knows that she can talk to Jesus. Without hesitation, she nodded her head, folded her hands, and said, “Pray.” Now that I know what to look for, I glimpse perfection in Penny’s life nearly every day.