When They Don't Act The Way Everyone Else Thinks They Should...

No, this isn't going to be about meltdowns, stimming, or any of the other stereotypical behaviors associated with autism.

This is about how people respond, or, rather, react, when a special needs person fails to stay in the background "where they belong."

You see, and what I am about to say will be considered heresy by many autism activists who want us to  believe that autism is perfectly normal, there is a perfectly normal teenager trapped inside an autistic body.

He has the same hopes and dreams that most other teenagers have:

He wants to go to college.

He wants to move out on his own one day.

He would love to be on the US Olympic swimming team.

He wants to be a train engineer.

He wants a girlfriend.

Many people, however, don't see that.  They see an autistic young man, and that means they have certain expectations of how he will act - the place they expect him to occupy in the pecking order.

They don't understand, and maybe they don't WANT to understand, that he is is trying to be normal.  They don't know that he has gone from being essentially nonverbal, not caring whether he ever interacted with others, to desiring relationships with others.  They don't know that his art has been displayed during a local art show.  They don't know that he is the first autistic young person to swim on his high school swim team.

He takes many of his cues socially from the young people around him, but he doesn't understand that much of what he sees is determined by context.  He sees friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, following each other around, waiting for each other when they leave the room, waiting outside the door when they go to class or the restroom.  He sees them holding hands, or putting their arms around their boyfriend or girlfriend.  He wants to initiate conversations with members of the opposite sex.

But instead of understanding, because he isn't conforming to their ideas regarding how he should act in a social setting, it throws them off, even scares some people.

Which is too bad.

They have no idea what they are missing out on, they don't realize the opportunity they have to build into his life - an opportunity to truly impact his life, to help him become as normal as possible.  And what is TRULY sad is how the young people of the church, the people who are called to show the compassion of Jesus the Christ, are some of the worst offenders.

God help us.  

Father, forgive them.  The have no idea what they are doing.

A Brief Theology of Disability….

In all ages and all cultures, INCLUDING, SADLY, many churches, the disabled have been reviled.  Generally, the grounds for revulsion are based on the notion that all seeming imperfections are the result of sin, and are therefore evidence of the judgement of God - either on the disabled person, or their family.

And yet, we have to ask the question, is this really always the case?

We come by this notion naturally enough.

According to the Bible, we are created in the image of God:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27, ESV

Being created in the image of God, we have an innate understanding that things here on earth are not as they were intended to be.  The reason for that can generally be explained by the Biblical teaching regarding man's fall from God's favor:

To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

    And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:16-19, ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…
Romans 5:12, ESV

It is indisputable that we live in a corrupted world as a result of sin. Despite the teachings of some that man is inherently good, the Bible and empirical observation both give us overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  The teaching of sin accounts for much, even regarding disability and sickness.

But not everything.

I am going to say at this juncture that I do not claim to understand everything God has in mind for each of us.  In what I am about to say, I neither attempt to explain God's designs, nor do I apologize for God.

I simply offer what God says about Himself in His Word.

The rest is up to Him.

In Exodus, God records a conversation he had with Moses.  He called Moses to lead His people, the Jews, out of their captivity in Egypt.  Moses, however, questioned whether that was God's best decision:

But Moses said to the LORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
Exodus 4:10-11, ESV

 Conventional knowledge attributes all disability directly to sin, yet God explicitly refutes this.  He asks and answers His own question: who made man with his limitations?  I DID.

In this exchange, God had a perfect opportunity to explain to Moses how disability was the result of sin, to let Himself off the hook.  Instead, God unhesitatingly takes full responsibility for creating people with disabilities.

I created them that way.

But WHY?

That is the question that haunts so many - and a question with which I continue to struggle.

There are days when I accept this teaching readily, but then there are the other ones, the days when I rage against God's decision to create RJ with autism.  I hear RJ's aspirations - he wants to go to college, he wants be a train engineer, he wants a wife and children of his own in a home of his own - and then I observe his frustrations at the limitations that have been placed on his life, limitations that threaten to completely derail his aspirations, and my heart is torn apart.

So, WHY?

John 9 gives us the answer.

It gives us the account of a man who had been born blind, who spent his life as a beggar as a result.  And the disciples of Jesus, the giants of theology that they were at this point in their training, asked the same question that is still asked today:

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

John 9:2, ESV

There is that assumption again. 

Jesus, this man is disabled.  Surely the fallenness of man accounts for this, right?

Once again, God has a perfect opportunity to confirm their assumption, to let Himself off the hook.

And once again, He firmly sets the hook.

“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
John 9:3, ESV

I did it.

But why?  Wouldn't it be more to your glory if you had created this person without their disability?

No.

For reasons you will probably never understand during your time here on earth, I will be glorified through the disability of this person.

God created, and this person was born with a disability.  And for reasons we will probably never understand during this lifetime, God somehow will glorify Himself through it.

I don't know everything God is going to do to glorify Himself through RJ.  We have already seen wonderful progress in his development, progressing from a child who was essentially non-verbal to an intelligent, affectionate adult who swam on his high school swim team - the first autistic swimmer in the league’s history.  At the age of 15 we saw God reach through RJ's autism to bring him to Himself in salvation.  Big limitations still exist, but we know more progress is on the horizon.

And we still pray for his healing.

I had a dream several years ago.  Whether it is from God or just my own wishful thinking remains to be seen.

I am standing before the church of which I am a member on a Sunday morning, reintroducing my son to the congregation.  "Brothers and Sisters, you have known my son as an autistic person, but God has chosen to bring complete healing to RJ - not because we are somehow worthy of a miracle, but for the glory of His name.  This morning I want to reintroduce my son to you, your brother in Christ, healed of his autism."

As hard as it is for me to say, God, YOUR CHOICE, for YOUR glory - either way.

Lord, I believe.  Please help my unbelief.