A Love Letter To The Church From An Autistic Pastor

“..and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven.” -Jesus

I love the church. Those who know me well know that I am an apologist for the local church. I believe that thousands of years ago Jesus made an outrageous prediction and promise that he would build not a place, but a people who would be unstoppable and because of that they would be handed the keys to his Kingdom.

Honestly, the Christian church should have never made it out of the first century. The early church faced insurmountable obstacles. They faced incredible oppression from without and even more incredible division from within. It is no secret that the church has had its issues over the centuries of its existence, so when people often share their reservations about the church, I don’t deny their right to feel the way that they do about the church. The church is full of people, so the church is full of flaws.

Perhaps this is why I stay in the church despite all of its flaws. Perhaps this is actually why the church made it out of the first century after all. I cling to the historian and gospel writer Luke’s words when he says that “all the believers devoted themselves..” , because honestly it takes just that to stick it out. Devotion. When Jesus promised to build his church he made a declaration of devotion to his followers and even with all of my flaws and the flaws of the church, I believe in remaining devoted to each other.

It is because I am deeply devoted to the church that I am venturing out and temporarily suspending one of my own rules about autism advocacy, and that is giving attention to negative and hurtful comments made about me or others like me.

If I did not believe in the church that Jesus is continually building, I would not belong to it but there are times that I must make a public confession of my utter disappointment with the church’s role in discrimination against and dismissal of persons with disabilities.

To be clear these thoughts and sentiments are my own, but over the years since publicly speaking about being diagnosed with Asperger’s, and my journey of marriage, fatherhood, and church and community leadership, I have found that there are literally thousands who share both my struggle and sorrow with the church.

When I speak of the church, I speak of the church universal. I love the church in all of her different expressions and environments. The church is rich in cultural and theological diversity and I celebrate all of the variants that make the church the attraction that it is. The church strives to be a community.

I love my church. I have the privilege of being the lead pastor of an incredible church that is racially and ethnically diverse. I am extraordinarily fortunate and it is because of my good fortune that I am often oblivious to the struggles of others in the autism community who have yet to find true community in the local church, let alone the opportunity to lead in the church.

My road to this place in my life and ministry has not been an easy one, but I am here and as someone who is blessed with this opportunity I often silently struggle with the weight of having to be a voice that advocates for both communities to which I am a member. It is an uncomfortable cross to bear to say the least.

I am not immune to critique and criticism from both communities. Often times I am open and eager to hear and learn from both the autism community and the faith community, yet when I receive messages from the “church” that imply that I should avoid labeling myself as autistic, it both breaks my heart and opens my eyes to the reality that the church has so much to learn.

Recently I was chastised by another Christian for identifying myself with my autism diagnosis. While I will not give full detail and full attention to this person’s issue, I will say that this is  not by far the first occurrence of having privately been confronted with such rhetoric.

I believe that every person reserves a right to disclose or not to disclose any diagnosis they my have with whom ever they choose. I do not pen these words with the type of arrogance that assumes that I know what is best in making that decision, however because I am devoted to the church and all of the ideals that it represents as Jesus espoused, I can not miss the opportunity to assist the church and the Christian community to which I belong with insight into how we might find the faith to move beyond one of our greatest flaws, and that is our fear of being human.

For Christians, our understanding of faith, sin, salvation and all that we believe begins with a simple story about the dangers of so desperately wanting to rid ourselves of our humanity. This is the story of Adam and Eve. As I have grown in my faith and my fidelity to the church that I love so dear, I learned that the road that leads so many away from God and away from the local church is the same road that we often direct them to.

In the beginning humanity was completely content with being human. Naked but not nervous about who knows and about how God will react. Naked, but not needy in the sense that we felt the compulsion to measure the meaning of our existence by our ability to “be like God.” This is the craftiness of the serpent. God simply wanted us to enjoy being with him and not the burden of being like him. After all humanity already bore the very image of God. We are most like God when we determine that being with God is enough. Paradise is resisting the urge to compete with God and submitting to God’s desire to commune with God.

What better state of beauty does God’s creation have to offer us. In the beginning there was a natural freedom to be confident in God’s commitment to us just as we were created. God’s creation is always good, and the concept of community created by a loving and creative God only enhanced the goodness the human experience, until humanity decided that being human wasn’t enough.

One of the most powerful revelations that I have learned as a response to my autism diagnosis is that whenever we eat the proverbial fruit, we lose faith in the very idea that God created humanity to be human and to be free from the burden and weight of trying to assess the value of ourselves and others by our own standards.

When what God says about me is no longer good enough, when how I am created by God becomes a condition by which I am judged, then we all become like the ancient Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. We erect glorious images of ourselves as a way of overcompensating for who we secretly desire to be and in the process we ask the world to worship a false image of us and a false perception of God.

I see it every day on social media, but more importantly and more dangerously I see it in the church.

In many ways not only has the church insisted that people eat from this dangerous fruit, but the church has either intentionally or unintentionally taught people to follow a very dangerous path. The moment we criticize or condemn people for being human is the very moment that we send them the message that God is not in control and that God in fact did not create them in his image and that they are incapable of enjoying community with God or the rest of creation.

This is a flawed theology that gives birth to a false faith and I will not hide behind nor cover myself with leaves but instead leave behind the suggestion that I should stand behind shame and stigma in an effort to appear to be more like God.

The fact that I am autistic is not an offense to God and does not under any circumstances even remotely suggest that I should seek to be anything other than human. This is who I am and how God created me.

When humanity first made this grave mistake it led to the downward spiral of a cycle of shame, and God’s pursuit of Adam and Eve, and God’s pursuit of all of humanity is one that expels the misnomer that either I or any other human being that lives with a disability should be ashamed and should hide behind the figurative fig leaves of this false type of faith.

To the church and Christian community that I love so dearly, while I am often grieved at how we egregiously and aggressively insist that the disability community hide and live in shame I am still grateful that Jesus himself promised that the church would be built and that there is no force that has the power to extinguish the mission of the local church, even the powers of prejudice  and exclusion.

To the church, Jesus has entrusted us with the very keys to his kingdom. We are the gatekeepers of the type of kindness and gentleness that those in the disability community need to experience in order to come out from hiding and to shed the stigma of shame that society has placed on them.

We are the plan that Jesus put into place to promote access into his kingdom community. We are responsible for ridding our society of the fruit that forces people to create false images and live in fear of not being included in the community.

Like Paul I live in a constant state of overwhelming acceptance of God’s grace that is actively working in my life and ministry and because of the sufficiency of God’s grace, I will continue my devotion to the church that Jesus is building, not because it is not flawed, but because I have faith.

I have faith that one day I will not be asked to hide who I am and how God created me.

I have faith that one day the church will examine her practices, principles, and programming and actively look for ways that she can be better at believing the best for all members of the community she serves.

I have faith that one day very soon the church will embrace its call to be gatekeepers to community and that she will swing the doors open wide enough for the disability community to belong to a gathering of people who trust that in their humanity lies the very image of God our creator.

To the church. I am disappointed but I love you.

We can be better.

We will by the grace of God, we will.