Rethinking Disability in the Church: Misunderstanding 1
The Christian church is called to be a community that welcomes every person as a bearer of the image of God. Yet throughout church history, understandings of disability have often been shaped more by cultural customs than by the teaching of Scripture. These cultural assumptions influence our language, ministry philosophy, leadership expectations, and patterns of hospitality. They frequently make it difficult for people with disabilities to belong fully in the community and to show the gifts that God has entrusted to them. As a result, the church, often against its intention, reflects the patterns of the world and fails to display the beauty of the kingdom of God as clearly as it could.
This series invites the church to see disability from a biblical perspective. Each week we will consider a common misunderstanding about disability that often appears in church life. These misunderstandings are not minor intellectual mistakes. They leave deep wounds in the spiritual formation and faith journeys of people with disabilities and of the whole congregation. Some misunderstandings create shame and guilt. Others build invisible barriers. Still others make people with disabilities almost invisible within the community. As we reflect on these issues, the church can discover where it needs to repent, learn a deeper compassion, and recover a biblical and theological vision of Christian community.
Scripture does not describe disability as a punishment for sin, does not treat it as a sign of weak faith, and does not portray it as a spiritual barrier to participation in the life of the church. In the Gospels, Jesus honors people with disabilities, listens to their voices, and restores them to community. The apostle Paul teaches that the parts of the body that seem weaker are actually indispensable members of Christ’s body. The Psalms show that pain and lament can be brought honestly before God without shame. Taken together, the biblical witness shows that disability belongs within the natural diversity of human experience and that God is graciously present in every form of weakness.
The goal of this series is not only to correct misunderstandings. The deeper purpose is to help the church become a community that welcomes every person, respects every gift, ability, and difference, and invites all believers to participate together in the work of God. It is my prayer that these reflections will support theological discernment and help local congregations reveal the love of Christ more truthfully.
Misunderstanding 1: “Disability is a punishment for sin”
There are words and attitudes that often appear in moments of crisis within the church. When a child is born with a disability or when an adult receives a new diagnosis, the community sometimes turns to harmful beliefs in an attempt to explain a painful and confusing situation. One of the oldest and most damaging misunderstandings is the idea that disability is a punishment for hidden personal sin or for sins passed down through the family line. This belief appears in many cultures and religious traditions, and it is also found in parts of the Christian community. For families who are already struggling, it becomes an additional burden that weighs down their hearts.
One example illustrates this reality clearly. A couple whose child has significant medical needs begins to attend a church. Instead of being warmly and unconditionally received, they hear suggestions that there may be spiritual problems in their home, hidden sins, or the influence of ancestral sin. Some members pray in a sympathetic tone, yet still leave the parents with a subtle sense of guilt. The parents begin to feel that they are under suspicion. Eventually they withdraw from their small group and participate less in prayer and fellowship. In that moment, the church loses an opportunity to display the love of Christ, and the family is left with isolation, grief, and shame. This kind of misunderstanding is not limited to a single culture. It appears again and again in many parts of the world.
The teaching of Jesus speaks directly to this misunderstanding. In John chapter 9, the disciples see a man who has been blind from birth and immediately look for the cause of his disability in sin. They ask whether this man sinned or his parents. Their question reflects the thought patterns of their time. In both Jewish and Greco Roman contexts, many people interpreted disability as a sign of God’s curse or as the result of personal sin. Jesus firmly rejects this way of thinking. He responds, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3, NIV).
Jesus acknowledges the reality of sin in the world, yet he refuses to link this man’s disability to a specific act of sin by him or his parents. This event challenges the idea that disability is a visible sign of divine anger and calls the church to look instead for God’s grace and presence in the lives of people with disabilities. The wider testimony of Scripture reinforces this truth. Genesis 1 proclaims that every human being is created in the image of God. The image of God is not defined by physical strength, sensory ability, or bodily wholeness.
The book of Job shows that even a righteous person can experience deep suffering and that we cannot automatically connect suffering and personal sin. The Psalms teach that God knows and forms every person from the womb and that each life is the result of God’s careful and loving work. The psalmist confesses, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:13–14, NIV).
Paul explains that the whole creation is groaning under the weight of frustration and decay. Human weakness and suffering must be understood within this larger context rather than reduced to individual fault. “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:20–22, NIV). (Christianity.com) We cannot simply declare that disability or pain is the direct result of a particular personal sin or a specific ancestral sin. Disability is one expression of the diversity that God has allowed within humanity and at the same time one of the many realities that appear in a fallen world
Most of all, God is the one who draws near to those who are wounded and marginalized. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3, NIV). This promise reveals the heart of God for people who suffer. Disability places a person among those whom God especially cares for, rather than placing them outside his concern.
This theological vision poses an urgent question for the contemporary church. When the church teaches that disability is the price for sin, it misreads Scripture and also inflicts profound emotional and spiritual harm. When we hold to the teaching of Jesus, we begin to see that God’s work can be revealed through disability and that the church is called to respond with deeper love and solidarity. People with disabilities and their families need prayer, support, and full welcome, not suspicion and speculation. Pastors and leaders must teach clearly that disability does not damage or erase the image of God. The lives of people with disabilities can become powerful channels through which the church discovers aspects of God’s grace and wisdom that it might otherwise overlook.
A healthy Christian imagination leads the church from suspicion to solidarity and from judgment to companionship. The presence of disability invites the church into deeper humility, patience, mutual dependence, and trust in God. The church exists to show the world that God is close to the brokenhearted and that he upholds weary souls. God excludes no one. He calls every person into a community of love. For this reason, the important question is not, “Which sin caused this disability,” but, “How will the church welcome those whom God loves, and how will we walk with them.”
The church is called to be a house of prayer for all people and a community that welcomes every person. Disability does not prevent the church from fulfilling this calling. Misunderstanding and prejudice create the real barriers. We pray that churches will, by the grace of Jesus Christ, tear down these walls and become communities that welcome all. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14, NIV).