Overcoming Spiritual Autism

David Lynden wrote an article by this title in the current issue of Discipleship Journal (http://discipleshipjournal.com/). He is a teaching pastor; he wrote this article based on his experience of parenting a young son diagnosed with autism. His experience draws incredible parallels between his relationship with his challenged son and God's relationship with his flawed children.

I remember first becoming aware of autism through the movie, Rain Man. I would guess most of the country got their first impression of autism from that movie. Dustin Hoffman acted incredibly to help us enter the world of the autistic. Several characteristics of this condition include

• the inability to emotionally connect
• the challenges of listening and tuning out all the thoughts racing through the mind
• the inability to deal with the unexpected

Lynden mentions these same challenges with his son. He narrows it down to helping his son learn how to get more "face to face" with others, particularly his own parents.

When you look at those three characteristics from the angle of our challenges of connecting with God, it is easy to see how we have those same issues quite often. The key to these challenges is spending as much time with God as possible - as much "face to face" time that keeps me emotionally connected to his spirit, that narrows my focus to what is most important spiritually for me, and that stabilizes me when life throws me a nasty curveball. One stat that Lynden listed was that every moment, a typical brain deletes 100 million pieces of data, processes another 2 million pieces, and then focuses on five to nine pieces of data. Without God's help, my focus could completely zone in on the wrong piece of data. I'm glad I have a father who knows how to overcome my spiritual autism.