Anyone who has read any of the church documents about safeguarding, will know the expression ‘vulnerable adult’. This term has been defined on various occasions.  There is a long list of statements which interpret this expression.  In summary it applies to any adult who is open to exploitation by another individual because of some impediment in their social, emotional or physical functioning.  The term has been rightly critiqued, not because such vulnerability does not exist, but because some of what is meant by the word could be said to apply to every human being on the planet.   Everybody is vulnerable at some point in their lives and it is also a mistake to believe, as the expression implies, that vulnerability is a good word to describe a permanent handicap of some kind.   Many of us move in and out of situations of vulnerability.  It is for this reason, no doubt, that the secular use of this expression has given way to a more accurate expression, ‘adults at risk’.  The Care Act of 2014 successfully describes the need to protect at risk adults in society without ever using the word vulnerable.  Indeed, it is pity that the Church has not yet caught up with this wording in the Care Act by also abandoning the expression altogether.  The word fails in several important respects and it is these failures that I want to explore in this post.    

In the first place the word vulnerable means literally capable of being wounded. Whatever other definitions we then choose to add on to the word, vulnerability is a category potentially applying to every human being.  Everyone is vulnerable in the same way, just as everyone must eventually face up to his/her own death.  We all experience aggressive, coercive or bullying behaviour by others from time to time. We could also add numerous other experiences which we would describe as involving other people attempting to take advantage of us. While we may not be vulnerable in the ‘at risk’ sense, we are certainly vulnerable in our capacity to be hurt and damaged by the malevolence of other people. 

There are good reasons, good Christian reasons, for seeking to rescue this word from the negative connotations that that it has acquired in safeguarding documents and the pre-2014 social work uses of the word.  One of the defining features of our humanity is our capacity to feel.  You cannot stop feeling things, good and bad, unless you close all the senses and become a kind of robot.  Robots do not feel nor are they exposed to sensations of malevolence directed at them from outside.  Feelings of any kind will involve accepting our vulnerability. Such feelings are not always the highway to fulfilment and contentment. Sometimes this capacity to experience feeling involves negative sensations such as shame, grief, fear or disappointment. All these feelings are unpleasant, but we would never want to deny our capacity to feel them and thus avoid experiencing any kind of emotional pain.  The negative feelings we have are balanced by our ability to feel joy, creativity, satisfaction at a job well done and delight at the presence and company of other human beings. Our ability to experience the negative is for the most part more than balanced up by our ability to feel what is good and glorious about life. 

The experience, that, for most of us, anchors our individual lives, is the experience of love/commitment to another person. But, even within the most successful relationships there are times of misunderstandings and hurt. Nevertheless, few people who have been with a partner or spouse for a long period of time would want to declare that the memories of togetherness and mutual joy are in any way negated by the times of hurt that may have occurred.  Both the joys and the hurts are born out of our human capacity to be vulnerable to another.  In short, we need to celebrate the fact that we are vulnerable beings who are open both to joy and pain. This word vulnerable could also be translated as openness.  Such openness to another is a key facet of our humanity.  Surely, we are right to reclaim the word vulnerable to help us describe this possibility of reaching the fulfilment commended by both Scripture and human tradition – the experience of human partnership in marriage. 

This blog post is then all about reclaiming the word vulnerable and seeing it as something glorious and distinctly human. Vulnerability, in short, is the capacity to share one’s humanity in acts of generosity and love, even while knowing that such openness makes it possible to be open to the possibility of hurt.  When we use the expression vulnerable adult in an association with weakness, incompetence or failure of some kind, it will be unable to serve its more elevated purpose of pointing to our highest potentialities as human beings.  It is important to challenge that old, I would say obsolete, use whenever we can. 

In the New Testament the word vulnerable is never used.  Nevertheless, there is one point when Jesus appears to be talking about something very similar to our notion of vulnerability – in the Beatitudes.  There are a variety of possibilities of meaning for these eight declarations by Jesus and in many ways the measure of uncertainty about exactly what Jesus meant adds to their interest and value.  Here I shall restrict myself to commenting on the first two, both of which seem to have something to say about vulnerability.   In the first beatitude Jesus speaks about the poor in spirit.  Preachers often declare that the explanation they offer is close to the original meaning.  I would rather say that none of us can know definitively what Jesus really meant by this term.   I for one have always found the paraphrase in the New English Bible helpful. ‘Blessed are they who know their need of God’.  This communicates the idea of openness and vulnerability towards God so that we can come to him with right attitude for receiving what he has to give us. To accept that we are needy in a spiritual sense is one step along the road towards finding mercy, peace and forgiveness.   The poor in spirit could well be translated or paraphrased as Blessed are the vulnerable, if we take the NEB translation seriously.    

The second beatitude is also one where Jesus appears to be commending a group who are often thought to be weak or vulnerable, those who are in a state of grief.  The natural meaning of those who ‘mourn’ is to point to those who have lost a loved one.  Christian spirituality, however, knows other forms of grieving, including the mourning over evil and the pain of the world.  Grief could also be a reaction to the existence of sin, our own or that of others.   However we chose to interpret these first two beatitudes, we find ourselves exploring a range of spiritual/psychological states which belong to our topic of vulnerability.  The lack of one single interpretation for either of these two beatitudes allows us to range over a consideration of many different ideas.  Also, we find at different moments in our lives a meaning which fits more closely to our situation.  For example, the older we get, and encounter loss of loved ones, we need to hear this beatitude as a word of comfort for that grief.  When we are younger our grieving tears might be more appropriately shed for the appalling suffering revealed in the world’s continuing story of pain and poverty.  Grieving is appropriate as a response to pain of a variety of kinds.  I used to sum up my teaching on this beatitude by saying that Jesus commends in us a capacity for tears.  ‘Heaviness may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning’ as the Psalmist said.   Mourning and joy are commended by Jesus to be the two balancing aspects of Christian experience.  Vulnerability and joy are also to be balanced in the normal Christian life.  In short, while no one wants to be in the place of vulnerability and mourning all the time, they do belong to the Christian life and indeed are part of the journey of joy and grief that is set before us in our journey of Christian discipleship from birth to the grave