Hmmm….as an amputee, I found this site rather provocative. I’ve long thought about the dilemma that once my leg was taken, no amount of prayer would ever bring it back, would ever heal me. I realized that I’d never heard of someone miraculously being healed from amputation. Never.
Unlike with my father’s cancer, where we felt that an exercise of faith could bring healing, there was never a mention of praying back my leg once it was cut off. Of course, many people prayed that my bone cancer (the reason for the amputation of my leg) would not spread. And it didn’t. And many people prayed that I would learn to walk skillfully with a prosthetic limb, and this has more or less happened, too.
I think there is a part of me that has always resented God for not healing me from cancer before my leg had to be amputated. After it was taken, there was little I could do except reconcile the amputation into my Mormon worldview. To understand why God wanted me to be one-legged. Even after years of pondering and praying on this subject, it’s not an easy thing for me to understand or to accept.
[Note added 10/17/06: I realize that the website I mention above is not really making a statement about amputees, but rather is trying show the fallibility and/or nonexistence of God. I take issue with the author of this website and they way that s/he casually uses the amputee body for his/her purposes and the way that this erases the agency of the amputee, casting him/her in a subject(ive) position. S/he could have used any number of other examples (e.g. why does God hate white people, because as much as they pray they can’t turn their skin green?; or why does God hate 23 year-olds because no matter how hard they pray, the can’t be 21 again?; and so forth. Though of course my examples sound ridiculous, they illustrate the way the ‘logical’ point the website makes about amputees is only logical because of the way our society devalues disability).]