• The General Mental Health Forum is now a Read Only Forum. As we had two large areas making it difficult for many to find, we decided to combine the Mental Health & the Recovery sections of the forum into Mental Health & Recovery as a whole. Physical Health still remains as it's own area within the entire Recovery area.

    If you are having struggles, need support in a particular area that you aren't finding a specific recovery area forum, you may find the General Struggles forum a great place to post. Any any that is related to emotions, self-esteem, insomnia, anger, relationship dynamics due to mental health and recovery and other issues that don't fit better in another forum would be examples of topics that might go there.

    If you have spiritual issues related to a mental health and recovery issue, please use the Recovery Related Spiritual Advice forum. This forum is designed to be like Christian Advice, only for recovery type of issues. Recovery being like a family in many ways, allows us to support one another together. May you be blessed today and each day.

    Kristen.NewCreation and FreeinChrist

Autism and Christianity: An Ethnographic Intervention

Are you strongly out of step with majority political leanings in your church?

  • yes

    Votes: 2 100.0%
  • no

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2

Theodiskaz

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The name of this thread is a paper at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, in which I read

"Other autistic traits cited by autistic Christians on the forums as prelapsarian spiritual abilities include sincerity (Autism & Aspergers, 18 December 2005), loyalty (Wrong Planet, 30 April 2014), intensity (ASPIESCentral, 28 May 2014), “compassion, acceptance of social outcasts, an ability to celebrate differences more easily” (Wrong Planet, 23 October 2013), and a deep commitment to social justice (Autism & Aspergers, 20 June 2009). The forums’ Christian riff on the theme of neurodiversity has an eschatological as well as an Edenic dimension."

I very kindly invite anyone here who can expand on these ideas to please do so. This seems so like what I have been thinking lately. I haven't been to church since the inauguration, because I almost got into a fight with a brother at Wednesday night Pastor's Bible Study. I am a 55 year old man.

I went to email him the other day, only to have my wife point out a facebook post where he advanced a conspiracy theory to a church lady acquaintance of mine concerning the counter-protestor's killing by a nazi in Charlottesville, Va. He did this ostensibly to calm her down, and he did this after just expressing complete faith in Attny Gnrl Jeff Sessions ability to uncover the truth, and how important it was to wait for that truth to be revealed.

Why...why...why isn't revering the same scriptures in the same way and to the same degree and personally knowing the One and Only Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and All That Is in Them, why isn't all this, all by itself, enough in common to feel like I have a cultural connection to my brothers and sisters? I feel like we were seperated at birth and I was adopted out to, sure, I'll say it, to aliens. How does this happen?

Does any of the kind of confusion and frustration that I'm describing sound familiar to anyone here? The evidence of the quote above suggests it, and I am guardedly optimistic.
 
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Vitari

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As I have said in previous comments, I am not an aspie but my husband is.
The problem of feeling a total disconnect, including with christian brothers and sisters is not confined to aspies! I have been a christian for over 50 years and have always had problems in this area.
The shortest comment I can make is to refer to Thomas Merton, who I think said he felt a gulf between him and his fellow monks, but there remains one bridge:Love.
God made each one of us unique but that also means each one of us is alone. Yet we are one in Him. That is a reality whether it feels like it or not.
I believe when Jesus comes back and removes all sin and everything that offends, as He promised, that the things which cause separation, lonliness and misunderstanding will be no more. But for now, we must exercise longsuffering and love.
 
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BryanJohnMaloney

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Why...why...why isn't revering the same scriptures in the same way and to the same degree and personally knowing the One and Only Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and All That Is in Them, why isn't all this, all by itself, enough in common to feel like I have a cultural connection to my brothers and sisters?

Because Satan's most comfortable dwelling is within the church, that is why. Because a large number of those who shout "Lord! Lord!" want nothing to do with the Lord. They are merely there for a social club. That is why. Because people can lie and call themselves Christian. Because not all who cry out His name are actually for Him.
 
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