Disability Sunday: The Disturbing Truth

Disability Sunday is next week. For the first time, I’m pleased to say, my church will theme a service around it, and I’ll be preaching.

I want it to go well, be reflective and celebratory, and help the whole congregation connect with its threads. I messaged the person leading the service and shared my thoughts. I sent the five worship songs that the band and I helped choose. She has different style expectations of what a church service should be and often adds a Psalm when she’s leading (we normally just have a New Testament passage) and other more traditional features, so I gave her a few disability‑themed Psalm options. She ignored those suggestions and chose another. It partially fits, so I’ve said it’s fine to use. I’ve also asked my friend to sign the entire service. She signs through the morning, although she’s never been up front. I felt this service would be the perfect introduction. I also chose a song from my disability playlist and sent her the video of God Must Hate Me by Catie Turner, which I’m bringing into my sermon.

This song captures how hundreds, if not thousands, of disabled people worldwide feel. It captures the exact emotions I felt before coming to faith, and I know some friends still feel this today. My colleague described it as “disturbing.” That line has sat with me ever since.

She didn’t explain why, so my ASD brain has been overanalysing it, and it has created a barrier between us for now.

I understand why some people might find the song disturbing. It’s honest. It acknowledges that Christian culture has pushed the ideas listed in the song. This isn’t a song blaming God. This is a song naming the culture around disability in church settings. It tells the truth. It tells the disturbing truth that many disabled people wrestle with.

It acknowledges that disabled people have been shaped to believe that there’s something wrong with their body and they need fixing. How the Bible is used doesn’t help. Through the Old Testament, disabled bodies were treated like defective sacrifices instead of human beings made in God’s image. The focus shifted from the person to the defect. That distinction has been ignored, and disabled people have been told, explicitly and implicitly, that their bodies were less holy, unwelcome, and caused by the fall, personal sin, or divine curse. The New Testament challenges this in John 9, although it doesn’t break the three‑millennia cultural and social foundation where disability is treated as wrong, even if disability theology challenges this idea.

This song isn’t edgy content for the sake of it. It’s a pastoral response to a lifetime of being told that your body isn’t right, that you’re fundamentally wrong, and that your difference is a problem God should fix.

It names the quiet, abusive, and ableist thoughts and experiences many disabled people have lived through in churches, especially churches where healing is preached as the only faithful outcome.

Lines like “If Jesus died for all our sins, he left one behind, the body I’m in” and “Same hands that made the moon and the stars got carpal tunnel and forgot some parts” are not dramatic lyrics. They are theology in pain. They are what happens when you grow up hearing that God makes no mistakes while everyone around you treats you like one.

This song isn’t disturbing. Disabled people would hear those lyrics and recognise themselves. I hope our non‑disabled congregation will recognise some truth within it as well. Many people want a nip and tuck, a nose job, lip fillers, liposuction, or other augmentations. People seek a better body. It’s no different. The opening line about seeing someone and thinking they got all the divine attention speaks to any person, disabled or not. This song names the ache of watching others get celebrated as fearfully and wonderfully made while your own body is treated as problematic.

This is why I love this song. It tells the truth about how it feels to live in a world, and sometimes a church, that thinks you’re unfinished.

I’ve fought for equality and equity in my church. It hasn’t been easy, but it has worked. We’re ninety percent physically accessible, have a congregation where half of our children and adults live with disabilities, and flourish in our inclusivity. Suggesting a disability‑themed Sunday service, whether for Disability Sunday or not, would have been dismissed a few years ago. Now it's embraced. 

Not everyone is lucky enough to be in disability inclusive churches. Many remain mistreated, become victims of institutional harm, prayer projects, and interpersonal ableism, instead of being treated as icons of God’s image.

If people feel uncomfortable, that’s okay. It disturbs the idea that God’s goodness is proven only by cure. It disturbs the habit of praying over disabled people without listening to them. It disturbs the comfort of healing narratives that leave the unhealed carrying the blame. That discomfort isn’t a flaw in the song. It’s a spotlight on how disability has been treated for a long time and highlights the disturbing truth of the world we live in.