A pastor from Missouri recently garnered national attention for his teaching that autism is of demonic origin, that to believe otherwise would be to believe God creates “junk.”
This is my response.
In all ages and all cultures, including the United States, the disabled have been reviled. Sadly, in many instances, the church, called to show God’s love in the world, HAS LED THE WAY. Generally, the grounds for revulsion are based on the notion that all seeming imperfections are the result of sin, and are therefore evidence of the judgement of God - either on the disabled person, or their family - or worse, satanic.
And yet, we have to ask the question, is this always the case?
We come by this notion naturally enough.
According to the Bible, we are created in the image of God:
Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them,” Genesis 1:26-27, NASB
Being created in the image of God, we have an innate understanding that things here on earth are not as they were intended to be. The reason for that can generally be explained by the Biblical teaching regarding man's fall from God's favor:
To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall deliver children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; with hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life.”
“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; yet you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” Genesis 3:16-19, NASB
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned,” Romans 5:12, NASB
It is indisputable that we live in a corrupted world as a result of sin. Despite the teachings of some that man is inherently good, the Bible and empirical observation both give us overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The teaching of sin accounts for much, even regarding disability and sickness.
But not everything.
I am going to say at this juncture that I do not claim to understand everything God has in mind for each of us when He creates us. In what I am about to say, I neither attempt to explain God's designs, nor do I apologize for what God explicit says HE has done.
I simply offer what God says about Himself and His creative work in His Word.
The rest is up to Him.
In Exodus, God records a conversation he had with Moses. He called Moses to lead His people, the Jews, out of their captivity in Egypt. Moses, however, questioned whether that was God's best decision:
Then Moses said to the LORD, “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
But the LORD said to him, “Who has made the human mouth? Or who makes anyone unable to speak or deaf, or able to see or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” Exodus 4:10-11, NASB
Conventional knowledge attributes all disability directly to sin, yet God explicitly refutes this. He asks and answers His own question: why does man have disabilities? I MADE HIM THAT WAY.
In this exchange, God had a perfect opportunity to explain to Moses how disability was the result of sin or demonic activity, to let Himself off the hook. Instead, God unhesitatingly took full responsibility for creating people with disabilities.
***I*** created them that way.
But WHY?
That is the question that haunts so many - and a question with which I continue to struggle.
I am the father of a son with autism.
There are days when I accept this teaching readily, but then there are the other ones, the days when I rage against God's decision to create my son with autism. I hear his aspirations - he wants to go to college, he wants be a train engineer, he wants a wife and children of his own in a home of his own - and then I observe his frustrations at the limitations that have been placed on his life, limitations that threaten to completely derail his aspirations, and my heart is torn apart.
So, WHY?
John 9 gives us the answer.
It gives us the account of a man who had been born blind, who spent his life as a beggar as a result. And the disciples of Jesus, the giants of theology that they were at this point in their training, asked the same question that is still asked today:
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” John 9:2, NASB.
There is that assumption again.
Jesus, this man is disabled. Surely the fallenness of man accounts for this, right?
Once again, God has a perfect opportunity to confirm their assumption, to let Himself off the hook.
And once again, He firmly sets the hook:
“It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him,” John 9:3, NASB
I, Jehovah God, Elohim (CREATOR GOD) did it; IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SIN.
But why? Wouldn't it be more to your glory if you had created this person without their disability, or if you chose to heal them?
God’s answer?
No.
For reasons you will probably never understand during your time here on earth, I will be glorified through the disability of this person. And make no mistake, THIS PERSON, WHOM ***I*** CREATED WITH WHAT YOU PERCEIVE TO BE A DISABILITY, AIN’T JUNK!
God created, and this person was born with a disability. And for reasons we will never understand during this lifetime, God somehow will glorify Himself through it.
I don't know everything God is going to do to glorify Himself through my son. We have already seen wonderful progress in his development, progressing from a child who was essentially non-verbal to an intelligent, diligent, hardworking, affectionate man. Eleven years ago, we saw God reach through his autism to bring him to Himself in salvation. He is a Godly man. Big limitations still exist, but we trust God to continue working.
And 25 years on, we still pray for his healing.
As hard as it is for me to say, God, YOUR CHOICE, for YOUR glory - either way. God may choose NOT to heal.
And he wouldn’t be the only one God chose not to heal.
Moses was “slow of speech and slow of tongue.” God’s response indicates that Moses may have had a speech impediment: I created your mouth and tongue. God didn’t heal him.
Paul had his “thorn in the flesh,” GIVEN TO HIM BY GOD: “to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me--to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness,” 2 Corinthians 12:7-9. What, are you going to try and tell me that Paul of all people didn’t have enough faith? God didn’t heal him.
Jesus instructed the pharisees, “But whenever you give a banquet, invite people who are poor, who have disabilities, who are limping (lame), and people who are blind,” Luke 14:13. He didn’t tell them to lay hands on these individuals and heal them, he told them to show compassion, to provide for them - and he never derided these individuals or attributed their disabilities to demonic influences. Never.
And Leviticus 19:14 warns, “You shall not curse a person who is deaf, nor put a stumbling block before a person who is blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the LORD.” The implication? Once again God says, I MADE THEM THAT WAY.
Simply stated, the teaching the autism has its origins in demonic activity contradicts what the Bible clearly teaches: worse, it attributes God’s creative activity to Satan. For reasons we will never understand during this lifetime, God created these individuals with their developmental disabilities for His purpose and glory.
