As I noted briefly a few weeks ago, the church has a neurodiversity problem which it needs to address. Those of us who are neurodivergent in one way or another face challenges both in corporate worship and in the discipleship programs of the church, but the typical congregation is unaware or dismissive of these challenges. If you or your children have ADD, or are on the autism spectrum, or deal with dyslexia, or have other neurological/neurochemical processing issues that make you different from neurotypical folks, you’re most likely on your own. What works for “everyone else” ought to work for you, and it’s up to you to make it work.
Part of the issue is that neurotypical people do not understand what it is to be neurodiverse—and usually don’t see any need to. Neurodivergent conditions are defined from the outside by neurotypical people, and they are defined symptomatically. Put another way, these conditions (and thus, by extension, those who have them) are defined as collections of behaviors which neurotypical people see as problems that need to be fixed. In some cases, they are defined morally and condemned as willful misbehavior by people who refuse to believe the condition actually exists. I have been viciously berated by someone in the church for not immediately making that person aware of a message which had been left for her, and that sort of encounter is not unique to me.
The problem is existential. My attacker was right, in a sense, that if I exercised enough willpower I could keep everything sufficiently organized to ensure that no detail would ever escape my attention. The flaw in this argument is subtle: who is this “I”? The implicit assumption is that there is a self which possesses the capability to make that choice; this logically entails the assumption that there are no limits to the self which would interfere.
In our physical lives, we are less prone to make that assumption. We understand that the physical aspects of our selves are limited, and that those limits are different for each person; no one is going to tell me that if I just try hard enough, I could be a major-league shortstop. (Especially now that I’m too old for the majors.) We recognize something outside our own wills which constrains our ability to act: if I can’t run fast enough or throw hard enough to play shortstop at a major-league level, it won’t matter how hard I work or how well I understand the nuances of the position, I will not be a major-league shortstop.
When it comes to the mental/emotional/spiritual side of the self, however, the matter is less clear. Contemporary Western culture generally assumes a pseudo-Christian body/spirit dualism: I have a body, but my body is not me in the truest sense. (We see this playing out in transgenderism, transhumanism, and other ways.) This understanding of human nature allows us to accept physical limitations because they aren’t really us, but how do we make room for metaphysical limitations? In a culture which sees the self as autonomous and increasingly believes we create or define our identities for ourselves, the idea that the “I” which chooses is essentially limited or defective in will—in the mechanism of choice and the very act of choosing—is problematic, to say the least.
Our culture tends to respond to this dilemma by collapsing it in one way or another. Addiction is increasingly labeled a “disease,” which makes it a physical problem. The scientific community once did the same with same-sex attraction; now that attraction is defined differently, as an identity: the self is perfectly fine—the idea of restricting desire is the problem. When we hit desires that we can’t simply affirm, we’re not quite sure what to do. That’s why the attorneys for Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer can, with apparently straight faces, say he did nothing wrong in beating up and choking a woman because (they say) she wanted to be beaten up. (I guess I’m old-fashioned, but if you tell me the person you beat up was “asking for it,” I’m going to take your meaning rather differently.)
As I noted above, neurodivergence in its various forms gets Door #1 from society: it’s a physical problem which calls for a physical solution, making the neurodiverse simply problems to be fixed. The natural response is to bang on Door #2 and claim neurodivergence as an identity. The approach has its merits. For one thing, it does challenge the stigma of neurodivergence, claiming it as an acceptable form of difference rather than as a justification for discrimination. For another, in so doing, it highlights the reality of neurotypical privilege, which is every bit as real as the privilege which attaches to being white or Ivy League or whatever.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe it serves, for both a pragmatic and a theological reason. Pragmatically, identity claims work when they don’t seriously discomfit those in power against whom they are asserted, and they work best when they can be made to serve the agendas of the powerful. Sexual preference would not have found the widespread acceptance it has in recent years were it not for the reality that my life is not directly affected in any way, shape or form that I can see by the sexual choices of people I don’t know (as long as those choices don’t directly involve me or mine). Identity claims for ADD or autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia assert them as forms of mental operation which must be understood on their own terms and accepted as fully valid in their own right; they aren’t claims which the powerful can accept at no cost to themselves, and so I expect they will resist—even forcefully.
Theologically, collapsing the dilemma of our metaphysical limitations doesn’t actually solve it. Both doors leave the self enslaved. This is clearly true with Door #1, which tells us we are our brain scans, nothing more. The self, if it actually exists at all, is the slave of the body which contains it. It’s less obvious with Door #2, which seems to offer freedom—but it doesn’t free the self, it frees desires. This is not actually the same thing at all. The freedom to do what we want in the moment is very different from the freedom to refuse to do what we want for the sake of something higher than our desires. It’s the freedom of the easy way out and the refusal to grow. The self, if it actually exists at all, is the slave of the desires which drive and control it.
Historic Christian theology offers a better way forward, for several reasons. First, it gives us a unitary understanding of the self: “body” and “spirit” are useful operational terms, not two separate things. They are merely two aspects of a single reality—a human being. As C. S. Lewis put it, we are “spiritual amphibians.”
Second, it makes it clear that we are intrinsically limited in every aspect of our being and declares that no one is superior to anyone else. To be neurodivergent in some way is to have a less-common set of limitations, but those limitations do not give those who are neurotypical any grounds to judge us or devalue us. Rather, they are an invitation to humility. We all, neurotypical and neurodivergent alike, are called to give others grace for their limitations as we need to receive grace for our own.
Third, Paul’s use of the body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12 makes it clear that our individual limitations as much as our individual strengths are part of what fits us for our place and work as part of the people of God. Like jigsaw-puzzle pieces, our voids are necessary to give room for the places where others stick out, and vice versa. The fact that I have ADD does not make me inferior to or less qualified than others in the church, it just means God designed me to fit a different-shaped hole than most.
The church, then, has an opportunity to minister to and advocate for neurodivergent people in ways that the world neither can nor will. Given the consistency with which God commands his people to defend and raise up the vulnerable, I believe the church also has an imperative to do so. I suspect that the cultural shifts which are driving down church attendance in the US make that a practical imperative as well as a theological one.
Image ©2020 Wikipedia user Mrmw. Public domain.
