Autism and Christianity during the silent crisis

I never intended to post matters regarding Neurodiversity, or chronic illness and many of the other things that will come up on this post on this site. I had intended to keep this site purely for theology and Christianity, dealing with topics as they came up. Yesterday I used bluesky roast, a tool for analyzing your bluesky content and I was hit by something destressing; it the current situation I have been focusing my output on dealing with matters temporal, whilst not a bad thing in of itself, it didn't mention my Christian focus once.

With this in mind I have come to realize that to divorce my voice for those out of the spotlight, from my Christian posts ultimately detriments to my callings Christian and perhaps even to my want to help those of us (myself included) in what I refer to as the silent crisis. I won't cover the silent crisis as a whole but I will reveal the darker side of the world and show you that is you don't support the neurodiverse, you can't call yourself a Christian.

Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)

I was having a discussion (or may simply have walked in one) on bluesky, the exact context I have forgotten but it was talking about something called ABA, something I was surprised to not have heard of and looked it up on the internet.

ABA is a method of 'therapy' that in essence says: 'your behaviour isn't normal so stop it'. Given that autistics only comprise a relatively small proportion (but seemingly growing) and non-neurotypical behaviour displayed by us is to be eradicated.

Those of you who don't know about autism and come away with only one thing about us, learn this; Autistic masking.

Autistics are essentially chameleons; whilst we don't fit in alot of the time we are atleast within a normal band of not fitting in, or even fall into the 'you don't look autistic' category. The problem is autistic masking requires an incredible amounts of effort to maintain especially over extended periods of time. The effort required leaves many an autist drained and in need of rest after any long social engagement (for example school). Though not all of us are so heavily effected but I doubt that there is an autistic alive that doesn't mask in one form or another.

So why am I mentioning autistic masking?

ABA seeks the elimination of behaviours that are 'not normal' and whilst in some cases that might be a noble goal the reality is different: ABA doesn't remove a behaviour it forces the individual to stop doing it, which sounds an awful lot like masking. Trying to fit to norms that simply don't apply to someone who isn't neurotypical.

Whilst some of you might see what I'm getting at, some of you won't; whilst masking is taxing it doesn't always end badly, however, the more a person masks and hides their nature, the more stressful and exhausting it is. Ultimately this strain can only be maintained for so long and autistics doing this kind of frequent and extreme masking are known to commit suicide because it simply breaks them.

God made us who we are, and yet society represses that. I'm not talking 'woke' here, or of sexuality, I'm talking about simple neurodiverse human nature.

Down the rabbit hole, or Autism speaks but not for me

When I looked up ABA for the bluesky thread I was confronted by a number of links on google, so I clicked one of the more professional ones about ABA and realized that they were not only talking about it but showing how to get referrals for it. After a bit more chat and searching I made a double take and looked at the website who recommended it : it was Autism Speaks

(Those of you who read my bluesky don't stop here there is more than my rant so skip ahead if you want but please don't stop).

Autism speaks is the group no one speaks about, at present they have 28 followers on their blue sky account and follow 1 person. Autism speaks has yet to make a single post but I can guarantee you they are the most blocked and reported account by socially active autistics and autistic advocates.

No one talks about autism speaks because put simply they are a eugenics group, they seek a 'cure' for autism and for the majority of their existence they didn't even have a single autistic on their board. Autism speaks Wikipedia page says enough about them to be condemning and quite frankly I suggest you read it if you doubt me. The page is actually revealed things about them that I hadn't heard... which is kind of horrifying...

Put bluntly autism speaks wants to 'cure' autistics even if they no longer dare say it, and as no one has anything good to say about them, it always turns into a rant so no one knows anything about them either.

But wait there's worse, or The Judge Rotenberg Centre

The next set of claims that came up were simply outrageous, they were about a place where ABA was being used in its fullest form and with no regard for human life: If a patient does something that the staff don't like, they electrocute them.

Ofcource I immediately looked it up as this couldn't be true in the modern age... only it was...

The Judge Rotenberg's wikipedia page is like looking at a page for warcrimes. Its just barbaric, backward, inhumane, insane... and located in America...

They just electrocute anything that annoys them and leave anything they don't think matters to rot, in both instances this has left in terrible results and the latter in multiple deaths.

I... just look at the page seriously. There are somethings that just need to be read for one's self, however, what I will say is if you patients have electrical burns on their skin from punishments you have inflicted you have no right to call yourself a healer...

Letting the lights go out, or Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) in the UK

After the worst of Covid many things came to light, one of these being that hospitals had abused their ability to apply DNR (or DNAR it the article), put simply they had notes put on those with learning disabilities or disabilities in general that said that if their heart stopped at anytime don't resuscitate them.

Obviously people died.

Among those were autistics.

For reasons that boggle a decent persons brain, those who were different were simply allowed to die. I know I should write more on the subject and one day I will but put simply that's all you need to know. That's all that anyone needs to know, people died.

A neurotypical Jesus

Put bluntly how can one expect of autistics (myself included) to think well of neurotypicals if this is how the neurodiverse are treated. Autistics don't think like neurotypicals and quite frankly you're all exhausting, that's not to say we don't have our faults but there's an fable saying as it were amongst the autistic community with many version but it roughly goes:

As the autistic student left the classroom the teacher sighed with relief, after dealing with five teachers and a hundred neurotypical students, the autistic goes home and sighs.

This intransigence to make change to make life easier for everyone was a known for me growing up, but now we have the DRNs, and Autism Speaks, and the Rotenberg centre. Why should autistics respect neurotypicals and why is it important to give them/us reason to?

The answer is simple, Jesus was likely neurotypical.

If neurotypicals treat autistics in a manner that is so tortuous, why would autistics think anything good of neurotypicals. And if neurotypicals don't turn to look into the dark places of the world, to see the silent crisis of which this is only part, why shouldn't they think that God made a mistake creating neurotypicals. I know I have wondered that myself on more than one occasion, and its hard for a neurotypical to understand the kind of hardships being truly different is, and the autism speaks dares talk of a 'cure'.

Not only is this a dangerous line of reasoning it leads back to the point; Jesus was probably neurotypical, if neurotypicals were a mistake then so was Jesus incarnate. If Jesus thinks like a neurotypical he is thus portrayed as a blind and uncaring figure regardless of what the bible teaches of him.

Jesus taught us to many things but much of it came down to love your neighbour. We may preach of Christ in Christianity but we must also portray another aspect, his humanity, as an autistic me writing this might sound self-serving or hypocritical to write but if we can't defend the neurotypical human, we can't defend Jesus and our preaching is for naught.

So go out into the world and look into the shadows, don't let them hide their secrets: If you find injustice, speak out; if you find abuse speak out; and if you find neglect or situations that lead others to fail either rase a ruckus to get it fixed or fix it yourself. I won't demean your sensibilities by asking 'what would Jesus do?' because quite frankly he had enough to fix in his short human lifetime and I don't pretend to know the mind of God, but what I will leave you with is this:

"“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,

I was a stranger and you invited me in,

I needed clothes and you clothed me,

I was sick and you looked after me,

I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat,

I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

I was a stranger and you did not invite me in,

I needed clothes and you did not clothe me,

I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”"

Matthew 25:34-46