The man with the shriveled right hand
Mark 3:1-6, Matthew 12:9-14 and Luke 6:6-11 (Only Luke’s account specifically says it was his right hand.)
*Note: this is part of a series on how living in Eurasia affected my understanding of the Bible. Please head over to my post on “Birthday Cake for Chickens“ to catch my explanation and disclaimer there if you haven’t yet.
I don’t want to give a comprehensive summary of how I understand this passage, what Jesus was revealing about himself, or the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees. Those are all important parts of this story. I just want to add a few illustrations that might help fill in your mental picture of what life might be like for someone with a handicapped right hand in a culture like this.
There are two principles I want to illustrate: the specific role of the left hand and the stigmas around disabilities.
I was shocked to realize there was no toilet paper
First, the role of the left hand.
When I moved to Eurasia, I arrived late at night, bleary-eyed from the long trip. I was grateful that someone from the university could pick me up at the airport and take me to my host family’s house. I was looking forward to settling in for the night. But when I got to the house and walked into the bathroom, I was shocked to realize there was no toilet paper. There was just a sprayer, like you’d find on a sink faucet, connected to a hose next to the toilet. Somehow I had missed this chapter of potty training. I stared at the sprayer. Peeing was fine; I could sort of shake off and that would be good enough. But, I wondered, what on earth do you do when you have to take a dump? I went to bed puzzled. I knew I would have to figure this out within about 24 hours.
When I got up the next morning, I started a months-long journey of learning the language from scratch. At the beginning, I was mostly communicating through grunts and gestures. There were two daughters in their early twenties in the home; one of them spoke conversational Russian, so I at least had that to fall back on when I got really stuck in the local language. (The other option was to play charades).
The three of us sat in the kitchen drinking tea that first day. I don’t remember how I asked about the toilet situation, but I remember somehow the girls ended up giggling and pantomiming the bottom-cleaning process for me (still in the kitchen, with clothes on, but I got the idea). It looks like straddling the toilet with the sprayer in your right hand, using the water pressure and your left hand to splash water vigorously between your legs until you’ve washed everything away.
Then you shake off or dry off on a towel and go wash your hands really well. This process, I learned later, is documented to be far more efficient at cleaning your bottom than toilet paper. It’s also less irritating for people with hemorrhoids. And when you have a plumbing system that can’t handle flushing toilet paper (like most developing countries), cleaning with water is more sanitary, assuming you wash your hands really well– especially that left hand you used for close-range splashing.
He would kiss ladies on their right hand, but definitely never the left hand
Everyone washes their hands really well, but they’re also conscious of the difference between the two hands, and they use their right hand for any task that requires cleanliness, like greeting another person or handling food. One time, the girls had a friend over, and they sat in the kitchen eating. I remember seeing one of them reach for a bread roll with her left hand. Another girl immediately called her on it, and they all collapsed into giggling with embarrassment.
I also remember an office conversation from years later (when I understood the language) about kissing ladies on the hands. As I recall, a man commented that he would kiss ladies on their right hand as a sign of honor, but definitely never the left hand, as that was disgusting.
So it seems to me that a man with only a left hand in this culture would have a hard time touching anyone. He’d never be able to shake hands, salute anyone respectfully, or even take a piece of bread from a family-style serving dish.
The other cultural observation I have about this story is that in parts of the developing world, as far as I’ve observed, people tend to be less accepting of disabilities. For generations in the former Soviet Union, people with any kind of disability were sent to special boarding schools. They weren’t integrated in education, so kids without disabilities didn’t have much exposure to them. Or they were labeled as “invalids” (in Russian, that’s still the commonly used word for a disabled person) and they were kind of written off. They weren’t expected to grow up and become productive members of society with unique contributions.
In my experience, it’s still fairly common to see people with special needs called names and discriminated against when they do venture out into society. It’s just that people haven’t been educated about integration.
I don’t know what life was like for disabled people in Bible times, but judging by all the New Testament stories of people begging and lying around on the streets, I’m guessing it was similarly non-inclusive. I’m not sure who the guy with the shriveled right hand was, but he probably didn’t have a ton of friends or do much productive economic activity. When Jesus healed him, he not only repaired a hand; he reinstated that man as a full member of society.
How do you understand this story? (Scroll down for comments!)