Everyone is wired to feel useful, productive and like they belong. To the extent that a child does not wake up feeling this way is the extent to which they will move into serious misbehavior.Those words apply to every one of us every day we live.
When our lives spiral downward, we can bet we are missing usefulness or productivity or a sense of belonging.
To recap the parallel between autism and spiritual autism:
Autism is the absence of love demonstrated. A young child's slide into autism usually contains a reversal of existing love and warmth and belonging. The family fabric finds itself frayed and torn and has to cope with an absence of what once was.
Adam and Eve began in full fellowship with God, love demonstrated at its best. Their choice--their slide into sin--carried them into a reversal of existing love and warmth and belonging. The family fabric of humanity found and continues to find itself frayed and torn and has to cope with an absence of what once was.
Thankfully, Jesus arrived. His life created the step that restores us to God, where we discover the usefulness, productivity and belonging we are wired to find.
We become spiritually autistic toward God when we slide away from his offer of radical love, warmth and belonging. Does he feel like we feel when trying to relate to our autistic children? Toward him, we interrupt our communication to chase fruitless impulses, we love in fits and starts and throw tantrums of thanklessness, and we choose to stay stuck in a place without benefits trapped by an unseen power that holds us hostage.Our chasing of fruitless impulses mars our usefulness. We can't find the niche God created in advance that suits our unique giftings that come from him.
Our loving him in fits and starts and throwing tantrums of thanklessness interrupts the productivity of love that we can know when we are in sync with God. My autistic nephew loves his parents, but it is love that cannot grow up and transfer to a wife and children. Love is designed to mature, among ourselves and with God.
Our choice to stay stuck in a place without benefits trapped by an unseen power that holds us hostage prevents our belonging to full fellowship with God and other believers.
Ephesians 2 creates the most interesting picture:
[With the coming of Jesus], now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it...He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do...that's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You belong here...God is building a home. He's using us all--irrespective of how we got here--in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day--a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.Autism is a cruel exile from maturing love. Spiritual autism is an exile we choose that prevents our maturing in love with God and other believers, to belong to a human structure, to be useful and productive in the work for which we are fitted by God himself.
Goodness, it makes such sense if we let it. Exile vs belonging...an invitation to exit spiritual autism...to enter that which we are wired to become.
The best words (in my paraphrase) from Rudolph Dreikurs, Psychology in the Classroom: A Manual for Teachers.
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