How to Escape from Faith Healers while Blind

Stay sharp, and know the exits

Listen to this story on the Deep Sy podcast.

“You will be healed within one year.”

I had just stepped off the subway and was walking in a stream of people toward the turnstiles to exit when a woman said this out of nowhere from about two feet away. Her voice was confident and clear.

People who, like me, are both disabled and prone to zoning out on public transportation get used to shaking ourselves out of our thoughts to respond to comments about our bodies. I imagine most people would find the comments startling. For us, they just come with the territory of being in public. Some of the comments repeat themselves over time and become, if not predictable, at least familiar. I was pretty sure I knew where this was going.

“God is going to heal you and you will be able to see in the next year.”

“Oh,, okay,” I said uncertainly with an awkward smile. It’s hard to tell how much people who say things like this are going to want to engage. A couple times, I listened to monologues so interminable that I had to raise my voice, state firmly I was leaving, and walk away while the person was mid-sentence.

It was best to keep things surface level with this woman, which was no small task considering she was telling me the creator of the universe had joined my team of medical care providers. She continued.

“My name is Deborah. Remember the name Deborah. A year from now, when you can see again, don’t forget Deborah told you God was going to cure your blindness.”

“Yes, alright, uh… Does he take Blue Cross Blue Shield?” I asked, really reaching for some light-heartedness.

“Have a good day,” she said, walking away and sounding unamused.

Clearly, as instructed, I did not forget Deborah. But that interaction was, as you could probably guess, several years ago. In the intervening time, my already low vision got much worse. I can hardly see anything anymore. Deborah and I were underground though, so it’s possible her connection to Heaven was spotty.

I think most people don’t realize the number of aspiring faith healers who walk among us. Any disabled person does though. Wannabe miracle-workers of all religious stripes are drawn to us. They see canes, wheelchairs, or service animals and lock on to us like disability-seeking prayer missiles (they are actually trying to obliterate the disability, so the simile is apt). If you ever need to find one of them, just go somewhere that has a lot of people, put your hand on your back, and start shouting, “Oh, my persistent back pain! It has caused me so much trouble that I am open to radical departures from conventional medicine!” You’ll have two or three within a few minutes.

Another time I was standing on a subway platform listening to the screen reader on my phone read out something with, I believed, no one standing anywhere close to me. When Deborah started talking to me from super-close range, there was at least an explanation for the proximity. We were both in the crowd leaving the train and walking to the exit. There was no similar justification for what happened with the next guy.

“Jesus can hear you,” he said softly probably a foot away from my right ear.

“What?!” I said, half way between trying to sound normal and yelling in fright.

Usually, “Jesus can hear you” is presented by church people as a comforting idea. A balm in times of trouble. It’s encouragement that God is listening, and he cares about you.

Funny how that message gets lost when a stranger unexpectedly half whispers it directly into your ear. Suddenly, it sounds more like a threat.

“I’m not hiding anything! Jesus can go through the tapes; he’s got nothing on me. I want to talk to a lawyer!”

But I misunderstood the stranger. Since his words were quiet and out of the blue, I misheard a crucial consonant.

“Jesus can heal you,” he repeated with more diction.

“Right,” I thought, “I should have known.”

Fortunately, I have ways of exiting these conversations apart from making health insurance jokes. The ultimate aim of faith healing is conversion. So I have an advantage over many disabled people in the same situation, at least when the faith healer is of a Christian persuasion. I attend church regularly and probably share a solid chunk of beliefs with the faith healer. There are a lot of beliefs we don’t share, particularly around disabilities and miracles. But if I can just keep it vague enough to convince them I’m in the club, there’s a chance they will leave me be.

“Yes,” I said, “He can heal me,” saying nothing about whether he will. Or whether he is, as faith healers often believe, laser-focused on getting rid of any and all disabilities.

“If you ask him, he will heal you,” the stranger said, still in a volume appropriate for ASMR.

“Mm hmm,” I replied, noncommittally.

“Do you want to come to a church where we pray for healing?”

“Oh thanks, but I already have a church actually. Yeah, I go all the time.” I said, grateful for the opportunity to bring this up.

“Do they pray about healing?” he asked.

“Ah, well, um, they definitely pray.” No response. “Um… and also, I bet if I asked them to… maybe they would?”

“Hmmm,” he responded, unimpressed.

As he stood there, looking at an obviously blind man, his implication could not have been clearer: if they do pray for healing, they’re pretty bad at it.

This wasn’t working. This guy was asking too many questions.

“I just remembered I have to go,” I said, which made no sense because I was waiting for the subway. I turned and walked upstairs to the station’s entry area, and then down some other stairs that went to a different part of the same platform. I waited for my train there instead.

I understand the instinct of people who want to heal me is kindness. They want to help, and believe themselves capable of helping. I don’t think of them as malicious. But I do think of them as annoying.

There are a million ways people, and institutions like schools or employers, have indicated to me over the years they would be much more comfortable if I was not disabled. The desire to pray away my blindness falls in that pattern. But it adds a cosmic dimension. It’s not just a person or institution that would be more comfortable if I could see. It’s God. God would really just feel a lot better if I wasn’t disabled.

But hang on, isn’t God all-powerful? And I’m still blind. So what gives? What’s holding up God? Well, we already know God wants to get rid of disabilities, so it can’t be that maybe he’s just cool with me the way I am. It has to be something we’re doing wrong down here. Obviously the faith healer is willing to put in the work to make the healing happen. So the only slacker is me. I must not have enough faith.

And wait a second, how did disabilities get here in the first place if God doesn’t like them? The faith healers definitely have an answer for that too. “Sin,” they will tell you solemnly.

So here’s the bottom line. My disability is my fault because of my weak faith. The accommodations I want, the understanding I think people should have, the advocacy I believe we have to do around disability inclusion and justice, it’s all nice. But we wouldn’t really need to concern ourselves with any of that if I would put in the effort and do a little praying. That’s all. Just a little prayer. What’s the big deal? Just admit that the difference between your body and a normal one is a spiritually abominable manifestation of evil, renounce the satanic forces that reside inside you, and bada bing, bada boom: vision!

In other words, the pitch from faith healers to disabled people is A LOT. If you’ve heard it a couple times, which most visibly disabled people have, and decided you’re not buying it, you don’t typically feel a strong desire to hear it again. So you might find yourself relocating to another part of a subway platform to avoid talking further about it.

Plus, as I alluded to earlier, you never know where these interactions are going. Once when I was a young man, a woman told me after a church service she was going to pray for my eyes to be healed. Then she decided without asking to engage in a practice known as “the laying on of hands,” which when done without consent is precisely as inappropriate and creepy as it sounds. The idea is simple if there is permission. While praying for someone, you put a hand on their shoulder or back in a gesture of comfort and connection. And if the prayer is for healing, someone might place their hand on the ailing part of the body.

But yeah, this lady didn’t ask and just put her hand right on my face. I have no idea what she said during her prayer or how long it lasted. All I can recall is a pungent mixture of perfume and bad breath.

Sometimes it feels like I have to be on my toes in any random encounter with Christians because it can careen off the rails at a moment’s notice if the subject of disability comes up. I once walked into church on a regular Sunday morning and found a seat. The pastor began his sermon by putting a slide on the screen with a picture of a “peepza.” This is a marketing stunt pulled each year by some pizza chain around Easter. It’s a pizza with Marshmallow Peeps as a topping.

The pastor asked, “Have you ever seen two things that just don’t go together? Where seeing them together makes you want to throw up?”

Well, he went on, your reaction should be the same when you think about God and disabled people. Since, you know, we are basically sin incarnate. This was the new pastor at a church I was attending. It was not a church I would continue attending. And yes, he was from a tradition where they do faith healings.

In a way, this pastor, and Deborah, and Christian ASMR guy, and facepalm lady have gotten what they were looking for. They have been a part of something supernatural. Somehow, despite all of them, I still go to church. And that is nothing short of a miracle.