Build

I work as a program specialist at a place which supports individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities. Our vision statement is to “impact the world with capabilities.”. This manifests itself in a myriad of different ways, but is particularly evident in the following.

One of the individuals we offer support who is diagnosed with moderate mental retardation is a small business owner. He founded B____’s Shoe Shine, a company which provides old fashion shoe shining. He has a broad client base which extends throughout the community.

Before starting his business this individual had a habit of asking people if they would like him to shine their shoes for them. He has always had a proclivity towards helpfulness especially in the area of cleaning. This was recognized by a team member working in his home, and with some help from other team members he was able to parlay his skill and passion for making people’s shoes look good into a business. He now is able to hand people a business card and ask them if they would be interested in a shoe shine.

This anecdote provides a window into something both troubling and hopeful in the climate of much popular western ideology. What follows expounds upon this.

Asking new people you meet, and even old friends, if it’s okay to shine their shoes is not normal. At least not anywhere I’ve been to. The abnormality of that behavior coupled with the intrinsic devaluation of individuals with intellectual disabilities in our society creates an image for the aforementioned individual that is pitiable and demands condescension rather than respect.

There are two ways to try and help alter this negative perception. The first would be to deconstruct. In this approach team members working with this individual would tell him to stop asking people if he could shine their shoes. Simple enough. The second approach would be to take the behavior leading to this negative self image, asking people to shine their shoes, and use them to construct a positive image. This is not so easy.

Deconstruction, in this instance, requires little thought or imagination. For many it is instinctual. Upon recognizing something perceived as bad or wrong many try and find a means to deconstruct and subsequently stop the action (through physical action is being referred to here, metaphysical ideas often find themselves fitting into this same paradigm). Construction, however, asks one to spend time to consider the situation. It is a result of more than a reactionary action. Instead it shows respect to the situation at hand, no matter how bad, and in contrast to making something less bad, offers a means of making something better. Construction is inherently positive, whereas deconstruction is an inherently negative phenomenon.

There is a time for deconstruction. Actions require reasons, and history comes down to us as a long list of brave men and women struggling against idolatry and false gods, and it is because they were able to see things like genocide and slavery, abortion and adultery for what they truly are that they had the motivation, much less the means, to struggle against them. Finding and discussing the shortcomings of something is important to process of its redemption, however it is a means to something better not an end in itself.

Christ’s commands to his disciples weigh much more heavily, using Jeremiah’s paradigm, on building and planting rather than rooting up, pulling down, and destroying. In a world of cynicism and disbelief we as Christians should be the ones to say that yes our world is broken and God’s people are lost, but that God is fixing His world and finding His people. We must move beyond our gawking at the decimation of Eden, and continue the work of building God’s Kingdom.