When God chose to become incarnate, Jesus was born fully human. This could only be achieved by considering humanity in our fullness, which undeniably includes autism. To become human meant that Jesus was subjected to the full human experience. Otherwise, the example he set for us could be dismissed as attainable to God alone. This meant that Jesus experienced hunger, the need for sleep, friendship, grief, and, most importantly, the perceptions and prejudices of those around him. For those who received their autism diagnosis as a teen or adult, their first experiences with autism were likely being perceived as simply “weird” or “unusual.” As someone who would never have been diagnosed as autistic, Jesus was seen as both weird and unusual. As popular as Jesus was, this didn’t stop people from talking about him, and not always in the best way. Spectators would gossip about the odd methods of ministry he employed and even his followers would complain when his practices didn’t align with the cultural norm for how things are done.[1] They didn’t realize just how important these ways of living were to Jesus. Part of their spiritual development was learning to see divinity in the strange and unfamiliar. When we examine the way Jesus carried himself now, we are able to see these actions as crucial for the kingdom of God. However, in his time, these actions were viewed much as autistic traits are today, with an air of doubt, judgement, and, at times, even distain.
As we seek to destabilize the assumption that being neurotypical is the default setting to which the church must cater, we recognize how Jesus destabilized cultural norms throughout his entire ministry. His personal relationship with societal concepts of wealth, nationality, and even gender were blurred, demonstrating little care for the boxes the culture had built. This aligns closely with the experience of autistic people today. This is the man who, when making his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, rode a donkey instead of a horse.[2] When asked to pay his taxes, he had someone find a fish that miraculously had money in its mouth. We must recognize that this is not a strategy any neurotypical person would ever employ. Jesus went on to converse with fig trees, a form of synesthesia where inanimate objects are given personalities, called “ordinal-linguistic personification.” In fact, there were so many instances of Jesus seeing connections in the world that others could not. The notion of Jesus having synesthesia, a common trait among autistic people where multiple sensory pathways are connected (like seeing the number 4 as blue), would be quite possible indeed. Even near the end of his life, when confronted by Pontius Pilate, Jesus would become nonverbal, a common reaction among autistic people in situations of high-stress. Even when the ability to present as neurotypical would save his life, Jesus refused to cater to the expectations of the society and government around him. In this show of authenticity and rebellion, Jesus demonstrates not only autistic traits but sets an example for autistic people everywhere seeking to claim their identity.
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