(This is a post I've slightly recycled from a while back. But given that it sort of touches on what I've been thinking about, I thought it'd be interesting to re-post)
Scene 1: Two friends in the pub, circa 2003
KATH: Did you hear that Kelly's a schizophrenic now?
GRACE: (in self-righteous tones) Yes, but you can't call her that.
KATH: What?
GRACE: A schizophrenic. She's a child of God. Maybe she has schizophrenia or has been told she has schizophrenia or been diagnosed with schizophrenia... but she's still a child of God, first and foremost. The schizophrenia shouldn't define her. Person-first language, and all that...
KATH: But Kelly's calling herself a schizophrenic. Reclamation of language, empowerment, de-stigmatising, you know. And if she's calling herself that, you shouldn't patronise her by refusing to use her choice of terminology.
GRACE: Yes, but I object to the terminology. I'm, like, challenging her, affirming her dignity.
Scene 2: Two friends in the pub, circa 2008
GRACE: Have you seen Kelly recently?
KATH: Yes, she's fine, I think she's working at a bank in Slough. But I was thinking... do you remember that discussion we had, when you refused to allow me to call her a schizophrenic.
GRACE: Yes...
KATH: And you're still into all your church-type stuff?
GRACE: Yes...
KATH: So are you still a sinner? Or rather, am I? Aren't we both?
GRACE: Um, yes. All of us are sinners.
KATH: You're a sinner?
GRACE: Well, saved by faith and grace and all that..
KATH: But don't you see my point?
GRACE: No...
KATH: Well, you go off it with how dismissive and disempowering it is for anyone to call Kelly "a schizophrenic"... and yet, why do you still do the standard Christian thing of referring to yourself as "a sinner"? Aren't you simply a person who sins?"
Very, very good point. Quite a massive theological thought-shift.
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3 comments:
Heh. Now that's a hugely interesting point.
Yes. In all these years of both complaining that people define one another only in terms of their "limitations" and yet me still comfortably calling myself "a sinner" - the inconsistency is really not something that has ever before occured to me. Hmmmm.
:)
I might be wrong, but I think part of the problem with mental health labels is that they're often misapplied and misunderstood. It doesn't seem to happen with other labels - people are comfortable being arthritics or asthmatics, and there doesn't seem to be a big stigma about those particular illnesses.
Sinner is an interesting term. Given most current theology is influenced by the Original Sin doctrine, more accurately most Christians believe that we sin because we are sinners. Something I largely reject, because I don't think it helps to consider myself sinful because of something genetic.
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