anything can be a devil or an angel. I do not wish to take away anything that God has given anyone. the will, emotions, and reasoning of the brain are all good if they are good just as much as they also have the great capacity to lead one astray. it is good to see things from many different points of view and I am sure autistics are a huge factor in being able to see things differently. don't get me wrong, I am not condemning anyone for ideas and concepts. are you autistic ( I wish to learn from them and see how they see reality ) ? because if that is so then I would say that your point of view seems very similar to the average christian in one vein of thought, the kind that attempts to cut themselves off from emotions and attempts to use reasoning ability as the means to know God. this is a very common thing that I have seen and no doubt there are many who depend on emotions as well. some of the greatest teachers I have had were the kind that loved logic very much and i'm not condemning anything at all but rather attempt to explain to others that there is a difference between the earth and heaven, that there is a good and bad with most things. with someone being "abnormal", it gives them great opportunity to avoid common pit falls and thus to reveal new paths that are not commonly known.
Sorry for taking a couple of days to reply, but I wanted to let the questions you've brought up percolate in my thoughts a little first.
I am autistic. I'm 58 and was only diagnosed about 1 1/2 years ago. There is a saying that if you know one autistic person you know one autistic person. We're all different. Autism is a spectrum. One person may have a much more pronounced experience of an autistic characteristic than the next person, and this is true of each characteristic associated with autism. I'm in the process of educating myself about autism in general and listening to others' stories, but the truth is that I am an
expert in only my own experience.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is that autistics are not people who are essentially making a choice to be different and could be more like everyone else if they just tried. I spent most of my life hearing that message. Just relax. Try harder. Try harder while just relaxing.
No. There are real differences in how our brains are wired and no matter how hard we try, no matter how many skills we amass, we will always be just as autistic as we were when we started. The good news is, that's OK. Being autistic is as OK as being non-autistic.
I don't consider myself to be cut off from my own emotions. I feel them often and deeply. Just this morning I was laughing so hard that tears came to my eyes. Like other autistics, what I don't do well is mirror others' emotions so that I feel
along with them. That may make us appear less emotional in situations where others are emoting. It may even appear that we are being rude or evasive when we're feeling no such thing. If there's a need for someone to remain detached and to perform some good logic when others are wallowing in mutually reinforced emotions, then I might be a good person to have around.
In church this would mean that services designed to create an emotional response and bonding in the congregation generally only made me uncomfortable. I could, if I put a great deal of effort into it, manage to
act like I was having the experience that was expected of me, but it was exhausting and distressing, leaving me lonelier and
more detached feeling. Added to that was the sheer sensory overload of church. I handled it better as an adult, but as a child I sometimes had to put my fingers in my ears to keep the music from oscillating painfully in my head, which generally got me into trouble.
Other autistics may not be able to tolerate being in church as well as I did. Others might do better, and some may not be able to tolerate it at all. Add the sort of spiritual guilt and fear of Falling Away and Losing Your Salvation that can be associated in some Christian circles with not "fellowshiping" in a specific, circumscribed way and you can have a recipe for disaster.
My best advice is, if a congregation has autistic members who are struggling with conventional church services, to listen to them very carefully. If they are non-verbal, find out what means they prefer to use to communicate and listen using those. Then provide the sorts of opportunities they can participate in whole-heartedly, with real joy and without guilt or should-haves. It may be something really unexpected and non-traditional. It may even be something they can do from home. Just listen, listen, listen.
I want to know the reasoning ability of autistics because I know that some of them are able to create new things rather than being trapped in the already know, objective box that I find most humans trapped in ( it appears to me that most humans for the most part function by a set of black and white rules and laws as opposed to being free in the spirit though this judgement of itself is far to shallow to describe all of reality ). here is a great example ( youtube video at the end ) of an autistic person and he is very much the kind of free type of person I hope to see in autistics-type people.
I would love to see more employers looking to hire autistics, for
all their varied abilities, and to be willing to adjust their workplaces to allow for the needs of autistic employees just as they now adjust their workplaces to allow for the needs of their non-autistic employees.
I do want to say though, that for all that we have to offer, we are not the New Creation.
We all have our good points and our faults as persons. It's just good to get the word out that autism in and of itself is not a Bad Thing and that autistic individuals may qualify for jobs in rather amazing ways. It's not that we're all going to be crack programmers, or inventors or whatever. Some of us
will be those things, and some of us will be other things, but we're out there, have things to offer, and need opportunities.
I get what you mean though so please don't think i'm fighting against you. some of the higher angels called seraphim go by love, the cherubim go by knowledge, and the thrones go by justice. and so I would expect to see one person more into one thing and another more into another even though they all contain the other aspects within themselves since the reality of God is not divided.
I don't feel that you are fighting against me. Don't worry.
Autism is not something we are simply into (although autistics often have something that they are really,
really into
). It is something we
are. It colors everything that makes us the unique individuals we are to some extent or the other. Non-autism isn't something that is present but hidden within us. There isn't a non-autistic nature inside us struggling to get out. Autistics are whole and complete people. We don't have to be more like non-autistics in order to achieve that.
Thanks for asking your questions. I enjoyed answering them.
