To understand how to love people in each specific situation, I must ask God and listen to His answer. This is particularly important for me because of my condition. I can't fake it.
Link to the passage: 1 Corinthians 13.
Most of my writing over many years has been driven by real problems in my own life, not simply academic curiosity. The recent series are no exception.
Some may wonder, if there really is only one kind of love, if this means that we should treat everyone in exactly the same way. The answer is no. Every person and every relationship is different. Love never behaves in an unseemly way, but what is decorous, appropriate, varies according to the person and the situation. Herein lies my problem.
Love never behaves unseemly, but I don’t know what it’s like to behave decently without constantly listening to God. A lack of predictive empathy seems to me to be the source of my perplexity. And it also seems to me that the only solution to that problem is to allow God to tell me in the moment what is right.
This problem contains several parts that I have been writing about in circles for the past ten or twelve years. The first part is simply to define my problem as clearly as I can. I am not totally lacking in empathy. I don’t like to hurt people. I care a lot about how the people around me feel. Actually, I often care too much about this — I can easily be drawn into codependent relationships. And I think my receptive empathy — that is, my ability to read other people’s emotions in the moment — is weak, but I don’t have a serious deficiency.
My serious failure has to do with predictive empathy, that is, my ability to predict how others will respond to my actions. Now, but only recently, I’ve recognized that it’s an aspect of my autism that I can’t fix on my own. I’ve also come to understand that all my life I’ve tried to fix it by withdrawing and avoiding all new social situations. I actively run away from situations that involve unknown people or in which I have no control. A 2006 report to the Kansas Board of Law Examiners by an independent psychology examiner said this: This is not a new problem. But I did not take that aspect of the report seriously at the time, nor until very recently.
Last February, the Holy Spirit gave me an earthquake, a paroxysm of exhortation, kindly presented by the simple words of a dear sister in Christ. I have previously written about this. Because of that, I am no longer allowed to remain in my safe place of avoidance. So, since then, I have contacted several people, as I thought right at the time, and I have made some serious mistakes. I may have permanently alienated an entire branch of my family.
But, I said and wrote only what I felt was right. That was the exact problem. I said what I felt, in my limited knowledge, to be the right thing to do, without asking God specifically what I should say or do. And, as I now recognize, my perception of social situations is so different from that of people who call themselves “normal” that trusting my perception will often get me in trouble. I must ask God about every new or unusual situation. But I usually haven’t asked.
I know that, in reality, every follower of Christ should ask God how to do the loving thing in every situation. But most people who have normal social senses can fake it effectively enough without asking anyone. I can’t fake it.
I believe that my social situation is analogous to that of my gross motor coordination. Most can ride bicycles. Me too, but only straight ahead. If I try to turn right or left, I always lose my balance and land on the ground. Most can drive a nail directly into a board. I can do it too, about a tenth of the time. The other nine times, the nail flies off or twists, and I probably hit my thumb at least once. It’s not that I don’t know what my body parts should do. I could give you an accurate lecture on the biomechanics of riding a bike or hammering a nail.
But getting my body to do what my mind knows it should do is a whole different matter!
“What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?” Romans 7:24.
Similarly, in matters of social behavior, I have studied Scripture, people, and various related disciplines for many years. On a purely mental, theoretical level, I know how I should behave. But, in practice, that knowledge is filtered through and applied to my perception of my social situation. And that perception is unusual and often wrong. Errors in my social perception, such as errors in my gross motor coordination, were largely neurologically wired before I turned three. Now I can’t change them easily or quickly, if at all.
I have sought and am seeking therapy specifically to address social behavior in situations like mine. But, for funding purposes, autism is just a childhood disease. No one in this part of the country who claims to be an expert on the subject accepts patients over twenty-five years of age. I would be much luckier if I was seven years old instead of seventy.
All of this brings me back to square one. To realize a functional social life, a life that does not harm others, I must ask God how to love them in every situation and believe that He will answer me. To do so:
- I must ask him, which is difficult for me.
- I must wait for His response, which is more difficult.
- I must believe that He is speaking directly to me in my specific situation. I must do so in spite of the Church’s years of teaching, that He now speaks primarily or only through my understanding of His written words. Remember that it is my own understanding, filtering the Scriptures through my own inaccurate social senses, that gets me into trouble now.
- I must believe that what He tells me is right and do it.
I think this blog will be working on these questions for a long time.
