Spiritual Autism

For those of you that don’t know him, this is Tyler. A few months before Tyler’s second birthday Jennifer and I became concerned about him. He was not talking yet, and he would not make eye contact with anyone. Jennifer and I were concerned that it may be autism. We took him to his pediatrician and voiced our concerns. She assured us that everything was normal, that some children just start talking later than others. So we left the doctor’s office with a spring in our step assured that Tyler was ok and everything was fine.

After just a few weeks however, our concerns were back because we were still not seeing any improvement. So we took another trip to the doctor’s office for another dose of reassurance, of which she was more than willing to prescribe. So we left the office the second time not quite as content with the answer but comforted, somewhat, that Tyler was going to be fine.

Again, it was not long until we knew that there was something very wrong. Around the time that Tyler turned two years old we knew that he was autistic. But why did the doctor’s refuse to see this? Just the mention of the word autism was like showing a crucifix to a vampire! She did not want to hear it. All she could do was reassure us that Tyler was completely normal; he was just like anybody else.

We stopped taking Tyler to that pediatrician and began treating him, through the help of other doctors and friends, for autism. It took two years for the doctors to confirm what Jennifer and I had already known. Tyler was diagnosed with PDD, Pervasive Developmental Delay, a form of autism.

What is the cause of autism? We could fill hundreds of blogs, and no doubt they have, discussing the causes of autism. Some say that it is purely genetic, that autistic children were simply born with it, nothing more. Some say that vaccines are 100% at fault, and a person’s genetic makeup plays no role in it at all. Our oldest son got all the vaccines that Tyler did, but he is perfectly healthy. So vaccines cannot be 100% at fault. Genetics cannot be 100% at fault either. I heard one doctor that said it best, “it is not possible to have a genetic epidemic”, and certainly we have an epidemic of autism in our country today.

I believe that the problem is a combination of both genetics and vaccines. Time will not let us go into a discussion of why vaccines are bad, I’m sure there are plenty of other blogs to read on this subject, but I know from my own research that they are. How could Wesley be healthy and Tyler be autistic when they had the same shots? Wesley’s body was obviously stronger and more able to deal with the toxins, and other dangers, that Tyler’s body could not handle.

The title of this blog is Spiritual Autism. So what is the comparison how does the physical compare with the spiritual? A few months ago I began thinking about Tyler’s condition, how it affects him, and my relationship with him as his father. I began to compare that to our spiritual lives, when as children of God we have sin in our lives, how it affects us and our relationship with our heavenly Father. As children of God we know that we have a constant pull to sin from within (Romans 7) that is in our “genes”. We know that when we sin, when we “inject” sin into our lives, that we lose fellowship with our heavenly Father, we become spiritually autistic. Over the next update or two we will look at similarities between Tyler’s condition, and the condition of the child of God that has allowed sin into their lives, and see the dangers of becoming Spiritually Autistic.