Ableism is when you try to heal me, and fix me and promise that I will walk, or see, or hear or that I will be everything I was really meant to be … one day in heaven Ableism is believing that heaven is an able-bodied place where broken bodies finally become ‘whole’ – Maria…

How often do you wonder what your personality will be like when you no longer have to think about trying not to be grumpy when you are tired? Have you ever asked what your inner world might be like when you never have to try not to think uncharitable thoughts? Have you ever been tempted…

For many of us who acquired our disabilities after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Nancy Eiesland’s seminal work, The Disabled God (1994), disability is not a source of shame but a source of pride. After I was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in graduate school, many of my initial encounters with…

Yes, we will be fully healed of our bodily and mental disabilities in the resurrection. Actually, that is too easy an answer. Why? Because it is strictly speaking impossible to be ‘disabled’ in heaven. Because ‘disability’ has come to refer to a problem in social relationships, where we fail to care for one another as…

The question whether (all) disabilities will be (completely) healed in the resurrection resonates deeply with me on a personal level. I write as a man who was born with a physical disability, a neuromuscular disorder resulting from in-utero exposure to rubella, or German measles. The effects of this exposure were primarily mobility-related, though I do…

Joni Eareckson Tada has lived for more than fifty years as a person with quadriplegia, the result of injuries sustained in a diving accident when she was a teenager. She uses a motorized wheelchair for mobility. When envisioning what it will be like to meet Jesus for the first time in eternity, she imagines herself…

The question before us is not: how does reflection on transhumanism inform our theological anthropology in general? Nor is it: what role does the interpretation of the imago Dei have in the construction of our theological anthropology in general? It is specifically about how reflection on transhumanism helps us refine our understanding of the image…

This is not just an academic question for me. As I am writing this essay, I am serving as the primary caregiver for my 88-year-old father who is suffering from multiple co-morbidities, including dementia. The frailties and limitations of our embodied condition are part of his (and, therefore, my) daily experience. Since I am a…

Ray Kurzweil’s documentary film “Transcendent Man” should be required viewing for anyone who wants to learn more about transhumanism. Kurzweil crosses off every box we have come to associate with the movement: he believes we should fix Mother Nature’s mistakes; he sees aging and death as unnecessary; he believes that technology can and must save…

I’m a big fan of science fiction, because it can spotlight the possibilities and liabilities of technology. There is a comfort in Sci-Fi, of course: it’s fiction. Not so in the case of transhumanism: Humanity+ and other transhumanist organizations seek real transformation of the human condition through technology. The transhumanists of Silicon Valley tend towards…

Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished between positive and negative freedom: freedom to be what we are meant to be versus freedom from constraint. The technological society in which we live, bolstered by centuries of the development of expressive individualism, has clearly come down on the side of negative freedom. Freedom equals choice, and technology expands the…

Can reflection on transhumanism help refine our understanding of the imago Dei? The teaching that humanity is made in the image of God is regarded as core to Christian doctrine and the bedrock of Christian anthropology—arguably, it is the reason we can speak of theological anthropology at all. But there is a surprising diversity of…