The Right is the Hand of God
Want to challenge the idea that natural variation violates God’s will? Start with hands.
Imagine being told from a young age that something inherent in your wiring is inferior or perhaps sinister. Your teachers tried to beat it out of you by smacking your wrist, but all of their attempts have failed. Your church leaders keep accusing you of working with the Devil, but you protest that it’s perfectly natural. Your parents stay up late at night agonizing over their mistakes. Doctors try to “cure” you although you know you are not ill. You try to protest that this is just the way you are, that it’s not evil in any way, but this only serves to kindle the hatred of those around you.
You are left-handed in the Middle Ages.
The word “left” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “lyft”, which means a variety of things ranging from crippled to untrustworthy. In other languages, the same unfavorable connotations are evident. In expressions like the use of “left-handed wife” to refer to a mistress or “coming out of left field” meaning that something unexpected happened, we still have a subconscious tendency to refer to the left as the side of the other or the undesired.
The Bible contains 100 mentions of the right hand that are all positive and 25 mentions of the left hand that…
