There is a belief many disabled and neurodivergent people carry quietly, formed by years of being treated as problems by churches, Scripture, and faith.
For some people, that song is uncomfortable. For others, it’s familiar. It names an existence shaped by years of being told your body is wrong, your mind is wrong, your needs are inconvenient, or your presence is something God will fix later.
It forms when Scripture is weaponised. When wholeness is tied to body hierarchy or healing is offered to correct disabled bodies. When disability is blamed on demons or dark spirits. When sin, disobedience, or weak faith are used to explain our bodies. These ideas are still pushed today. Medical truth, disabled lives as celebrations of God’s kingdom, and our identity as divine image‑bearers are abandoned. Is it really a surprise that many think God made a mistake and hates them?
I felt it. I’ve lived all of this.
From thirteen to twenty‑five, before I came to faith, I searched Scripture, theology, and churches. I was desperate to understand where disability fit into God’s world. What I found wasn’t comfort or an all‑loving God. It was judgement, pressure, and the belief that I was broken, unworthy, and wrong— and the hardest part was realising that the very people who call themselves broken and unworthy because of sin still rejected me for being the ‘wrong kind’ of broken.’ Suddenly, John 3:16 sounded less like “God so loved the world” and more like “God so loved the world — except disabled and neurodivergent people.”
Although I persisted, reconciled, and found truth in Disability Theology and grace, these experiences came from churches across our diocese and have continued to affect me to this day.
When you hear that for years, you eventually start to believe God made a mistake or you’re an exception to God’s goodness. The one body God forgot.
Recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that neurodivergence is a gift. Many of us felt joy. Disability advocates, disabled people, and especially those who’ve been spiritually harmed by negative representation, celebrated.
I celebrated. It felt like a breakthrough. Disability was finally being recognised and named as a gift.
But the hard truth is this: declaring a human life as a gift should never have been groundbreaking. The fact that it sounded revolutionary shows that disabled and neurodivergent people have not been treated, spoken about, or imagined as gifts.
And that brings us to a deeper question.
If I had asked at the start whether disabled people are part of God’s kingdom, children of God, or loved by God, most of you here would have said yes. If I had asked whether you believe disabled people fit those negative beliefs, I hope most would have said no.
But if I asked you why disabled bodies exist, what would you have said?
Would you have felt confident explaining disabled embodiment without slipping into healing language, fixing language, or “one day in heaven you’ll be different” language?
So, what if someone came to you and said the words of that song out loud:
“God must hate me. God must have made a mistake because I’m disabled.”
What would you say?
Would you reassure them while quietly imagining a future where their body is different?
Would you offer healing prayer?
Or will you say:
“God did not make a mistake with you. Your disabled life is a gift. You bear God’s image. Our church, liturgy, spaces, theology, and worship are here, waiting, just for you, just as God is.”
And then be confident in how you meet, greet, and accommodate them?
That’s the question that must be carried out of this room.
The song doesn’t say that there’s no God and that disability is proof. The people believing this clearly believe in God. They just have the wrong theology. It just needs changing.
Disabled people bring joy to the church — joy that comes from creativity, humour, community, and the ability to find light in places others overlook.
Disabled people bring wisdom — wisdom shaped by patience, resilience, interdependence, and the ability to navigate a world not built for us.
Disabled people bring leadership — leadership that is embodied, imaginative, and grounded in lived experience. Leadership that widens the church’s welcome, deepens its compassion, and teaches it how to love.
When the church finally sees disabled lives as gifts, it becomes more like the kingdom God intended.
As a church, we need to change how we answer questions about and from disabled and neurodivergent people. We need to break the idea that they are problems to be solved, bodies that are broken and need fixing, or lives seen negatively by God. The only thing broken and wrong about us is the same thing broken in all humanity— a state of separation from God because of sin.
We need to replace those assumptions with joy, wisdom, leadership, welcome, and belonging, not as accommodation or token bodies of inclusion, but as recognition of God’s image already present.
Because God did not make a mistake.
If you would like to read the Bible Study that was run as a workshop for this conference, please click here.
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