Misunderstanding 2: People with Disabilities Are Objects of Pity, Not Partners

This article is part of a series that addresses common misunderstandings about disability within the church. Each week, we examine one misunderstanding and reflect on it from biblical, theological, and pastoral perspectives. The goal is to seek ways for believers with disabilities and believers without disabilities to build a healthy church of the Lord together. In the previous article, we explored the misunderstanding that “disability is a punishment for sin.”

The church is called to reveal the community of the kingdom of God in the midst of this world. In actual church life, however, the way many congregations view disability has often been shaped more by social assumptions and cultural habits than by Scripture. One of the most common misunderstandings is the tendency to see people with disabilities primarily as objects of pity. Pity may begin with a sincere and kind heart, but when pity becomes the basic structure of a relationship, people with disabilities are no longer treated as fellow believers who share faith and ministry. They are positioned only as recipients of help.

In that situation, people with disabilities are no longer seen as partners who wrestle with the church’s challenges, help discern the direction of ministry, and build up the community together. They remain instead like those who are protected through someone else’s good deeds. This kind of structure raises serious questions, not only about the spiritual growth of people with disabilities, but also about how the church understands the very nature of the kingdom community.

Consider one example. A church begins a special ministry for children and adults with disabilities. This is, in itself, a precious and praiseworthy initiative. However, the way the ministry is actually run keeps them in a space that is separated from the central streams of the church’s faith formation, such as Sunday worship, corporate prayer gatherings, Christian education, and leadership training. Volunteers are kind, and various supports and programs are offered. Yet believers with disabilities are not invited to the tables where the church’s direction is discussed.

Their confessions of faith are not recorded in the minutes of meetings. Their questions and insights are not meaningfully woven into the processes that shape the church’s theology and ministry. As a result, disability ministry remains a department that “helps someone,” and believers with disabilities remain at the margins of the church’s structures and decision making. In this case, the problem is not only individual attitudes. The deeper issue is that the basic design of the church’s life assumes people with disabilities are “objects of care” rather than “partners who share responsibility.”

When pity becomes central, relationships tilt from being horizontal to becoming vertical. Those who help and those who are helped settle into fixed roles, and the boundary between them hardens over time. Those who help become comfortable in their role, and those who receive help find it difficult to step out of the place where they are expected to be grateful. In that process, the voices and choices of people with disabilities, as well as their theological insight and interpretation of life, are not fully honored. They may feel loved, yet at the same time they deeply experience that they stand outside the important conversations and responsibilities of the church. As pity grows, a contradiction can emerge in which the spiritual agency and self-determination of people with disabilities actually weakens, despite the good intentions involved.

Scripture does not endorse this kind of structure. In the Gospels, Jesus has deep compassion for the sick and for those who are socially vulnerable, but his compassion always leads into relationship and fellowship. Jesus is not someone who helps people from a safe distance. He sits beside them, speaks with them, eats with them, praises their faith, and calls them into the very center of the community’s story. The compassion of Jesus is not a feeling that keeps others in a lower position. It is an expression of love that opens a path for people to meet one another as persons of equal worth. Human pity often leaves an invisible distance, but the compassion of Jesus tears down that distance and creates a fellowship that binds people together as one body.

From this perspective, treating people with disabilities only as beneficiaries of charity reveals a deficient understanding of the church. Scripture describes the church as one body in which all members are joined together. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes that “those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor. 12:22, NIV). This is not simply an instruction to protect those who are weak. It is a declaration that the parts that appear weak in human eyes are essential for the very identity of the church. People with disabilities are not optional additions who can contribute “a little” to the church if circumstances allow. They are essential members whose absence causes the church to lose something vital.

The incarnation of Jesus also reveals the deep mystery of partnership. Jesus did not remain at a distance, looking at humanity and offering help from afar. He took on human flesh and dwelt among us. He chose a vulnerable body and personally experienced fatigue, pain, and loneliness. The incarnation is the movement of God from the distance of pity into the place of shared life and shared burden. The fact that Jesus, who is God, stood in the same place as human beings shows clearly what kind of relationships the church is called to cultivate. The church is not a group that helps others from above. The church is a community that follows the way of Jesus by recognizing one another as brothers, sisters, and partners in ministry.

Within this vision, people with disabilities are not only those toward whom ministry is directed. They are subjects who participate in shaping the ministry of the church. The Holy Spirit gives gifts to every believer, with or without disabilities, in order to build up the body of Christ. Among believers with disabilities, some have a deep gift of intercessory prayer. Others have gifts of relationship and comfort that enable them to hold wounded people through attentive presence. Still others, having walked through suffering, offer wisdom that helps the community discern its theology and practice. When the church views people with disabilities only as those who need help, the church does not simply lose opportunities to show love. It misses the gifts that the Holy Spirit has prepared for the church’s maturity and witness.

Therefore, the church must go beyond operating separate programs “for” people with disabilities and examine its actual structures and expectations. We need to ask whether our plans stop at doing things for them, or whether we are opening real pathways for believers with disabilities to participate in building up the community. We must consider whether there is a concrete place for believers with disabilities at meetings and in spaces of communal sharing. We must also ask whether we are only speaking about people with disabilities, or whether people with disabilities themselves are given the opportunity to tell their own stories and share their perspectives on the church’s direction. This is more than a matter of courtesy. It is a necessary step for the church to become the church in a biblical sense.

Pity can remain at the level of emotion and is a great starting point! Partnership belongs to the very structure of a community that reveals the kingdom of God. Pity carries the risk of placing one person above another, even when the intention is good. Partnership, however, restores mutuality by helping us stand together on the same ground. Pity begins with a desire to protect someone, but partnership moves us toward a place where we bear responsibility together and carry one another’s burdens. Pity may move hearts for a moment, but partnership has the power to reshape the culture and structures of a church.

A church in which believers with and without disabilities labor together in partnership becomes a living testimony of how the kingdom of God is at work on earth. When people with disabilities move beyond the role of beneficiaries of charity and stand as witnesses to the gospel, as conversation partners, and as co-laborers in ministry, the church displays a richer and more faithful picture of the kingdom of God. My prayer is that such communities will be established in churches throughout Korea, so that they may grow into churches that bring joy to God.