A self-styled motivational speaker said to students and teachers at a school. “Because of your sins in the past life, you are maimed, disabled, weak, and poor.” One schoolteacher was had visual disability but achieved a Ph.D., objected to this statement. He was humiliated with derogatory remarks. Later, the specially-abled association complained against him and was arrested. (India Today, 8 September 2024) The disciples also had a similar question. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’ (John 9:1-2)
Punishment without memory: Some people believe that there are many lives, moving from one species to another of 8.4 million species. This cycle of birth will end when the soul is ultimately dissolved in the Ultimate Person, the God. What a person does in one life of a species would determine, what would be next species as well as other factors. For humans, it could be a disability, or poverty, or being born in some difficult place. Strangely, no one neither has a memory of previous life nor the sin committed in that life. The Bible teaches that there is one life and after that judgment. (Hebrews 9:27) The quantum of punishment is also a mystery.
Punishment without chargesheet: When a person is accused of a certain crime, the government respects the right of the accused by providing the chargesheet against him. If human governments are obliged to divulge the details of the offense, the divine government should be careful and sensitive to providing a chargesheet for the status like being born in a low caste family, with blindness…etc.
God’s glory: The Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ taught that a disability like blindness is for God’s glory to be revealed and he healed the man born blind. The man Shankar, with a visual disability, could get a Ph.D, and not be left to beg. That shows that God’s glory is revealed.
Do I realize that only truth can motivate and not a myth?