Autism is my super blessing! I'm a high-school valedictorian, college graduate, world traveler, disability advocate. I'm a Unitarian Universalist. I'm a Progressive Liberal. I'm about equal rights, human rights, civil & political rights, & economic, social, &cultural rights. I do servant leadership, boundless optimism, & Oneness/Wholeness. I'm good naked & unashamed! I love positive personhood, love your neighbor as yourself, and do no harm! I'm also appropriately inappropriate! My self-ratings: NC-17, XXX, X, X18+ & TV-MA means empathy! I publish shows at 11am! Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/support
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episode 81: I follow a Neurodiverse, Autistic, black, and abused Jesus!
"Was Jesus Less Than Able-Bodied?
As far as I can tell, the artistic choice to depict Matthew as autistic has been widely embraced. Jesus came for the sick and outcast, so it’s not hard to imagine him calling someone with a disability to follow him.
But let me ask a somewhat provocative question: What if The Chosen had taken the artistic liberty to present Jesus as neuroatypical or less than able-bodied?
Surely, there’d be pandemonium, along with accusations of heresy. Our knee-jerk reaction reveals something troubling about our understanding of Jesus. Perhaps a Hollywood, handsome Jesus has become too sacrosanct. It’s time to uproot this idol. The Scriptures and church history give strong precedent for pondering Jesus as less than able-bodied.
Suffering ServantOne of the most cherished passages from Isaiah is the Suffering Servant passage in 52:13–53:12. Pre-disability, I relished the passage’s vision of substitutionary atonement—the Servant died in my place for my sins:
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities.
After the onset of my disability, God invited me to cherish other aspects of this passage. How is it possible I had never noticed the disfigurement of Jesus and his social rejection (52:14 NIV)?
Many were appalled at him.
His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being.
His form marred beyond human likeness.
It seemed unavoidable that God actually wanted me to perceive Jesus as disfigured. At the very least, this verse speaks of Jesus’s condition on the day of his death. He is flogged, his flesh ripped. He is bloodied, bruised, and covered with spit. He is a spectacle of deformity, paraded to Calvary. Suffering, deformed, and disabled. Like me. Like millions of others. He can relate; he became what I am.
I wonder, though, if these statements resonate with Jesus’s entire life, not just his crucifixion. For Isaiah adds (53:2 NIV):
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, . . .
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Let those words sink in: Jesus was unattractive. We read further of him:
A man of sorrows and familiar with illness (53:3 my translation)
like one from whom people hide their faces (53:3b NIV)
This sorrowful, sickly servant is like a freak show, “like one from whom people hide their faces” (53:3 NIV).
Isaiah 52:13–53:12 seems to offer a strong basis for assessing whether our Hollywood, handsome, able-bodied Jesus is correct."
Links: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/matthews-disability-chosen-matters/ and https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/why-its-important-to-value-neurodiversity-in-the-church/ and https://cypf.berkshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/media/168884/positives_of_autism-poster.pdf.
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