On the CCL podcast, we’ve been exploring the topic of “Neurodivergence and the Christian life”. In our first episode, we opened up the issue and heard many wonderful, extraordinary and moving stories from neurodivergent people about their experiences, and the questions and issues that arise from their experiences—especially in relation to Christianity, the Christian life and church life.
In this episode, which is Part 2 of 3 in our series, we will look at what the Bible has to say about these questions, and how we might think about these things from the perspective of God and his revelation about his world and our lives—through the themes of Creation and the Fall, ability, the Spirit and weakness, and community and the body of Christ.
(Please note: Part 3 will be published in a fortnight’s time.)
Links referred to:
- Kate Morris’s Substack: “An Extraordinary Normal”
- Next CCL event: The smartphone disciple (Mon 27 Oct)
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 51:31 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been checked against the audio and lightly edited, but still may contain errors. If quoting, please compare with the original audio.
Introduction
[00:00:05] Tony Payne: Hello! Welcome to the Centre for Christian Living Podcast. I’m Tony Payne, and welcome to Part 2 or Episode 2 of our special three-part series on “Neurodivergence and the Christian Life”. Now, if you missed Part 1 or Episode 1 of this series, I’d strongly encourage you to go back and listen to that before you listen to this episode, because it really sets the table for what we go on to discuss in today’s episode.
[00:00:28] In that first episode, we opened up the issue of neurodivergence. We heard lots of wonderful and extraordinary and moving stories from neurodivergent people about their experience and about the questions and issues that arise from their experience, especially in relation to Christianity and the Christian life and church life.
[00:00:46] But assuming that you have listened to Part 1, which opened up the issues and raised the questions, this episode, Part 2, will be what the Bible has to say about these questions and how we might think about these things from the perspective of God and his revelation about his world and our lives. So I do hope you enjoy this episode, Episode 2 of our special CCL series on “Neurodivergence and the Christian Life”.
[Music]
[00:01:25] Tony Payne: “Neurodivergence and the Christian Life”: this is Episode 2. And just a reminder of what we’ve done so far: we’ve been following a process—a process in which we think about any question or issue that we have as Christians, one in which we firstly, assess and interrogate the subject we’re thinking about and ask our questions from lots of different angles, and that’s really what we did in Episode 1.
[00:01:46] But then to reflect biblically and theologically about what we’ve seen: how does knowing and loving God, and knowing and loving everything in relation to God, change our view or shape our view of the question or the issue that we are considering—in this case, neurodivergence and the Christian life? And that’ll be this episode.
[00:02:05] And then we also, of course, need to come back to our questions and issues, having understood them afresh, I guess, in light of the Bible and its theology, and deliberate about what kinds of responses—what kinds of practical responses and action—we would take in light of what we’ve come to know. And that’s what we’ll be doing in our final episode in Episode 3.
[00:02:24] So in this episode, we’ll be looking at the Bible and drawing together what we find there into some theological judgements or themes that relate to neurodivergence and the Christian life. And since having me just talk to you about these sorts of things for half hour would be a bit tedious, I’ve asked my friend and colleague, David Höhne, to come and help me work through these biblical and theological ideas. And as we chat, we’ll also drop in some really nice quotes and contributions from various neurodivergent people we interviewed for this series, and hear their perspective on the Bible and what it says about their experience. But first of all, David, welcome.
[00:03:00] David Höhne: Thank you.
[00:03:01] Tony Payne: Who are you again? Why are you here?
[00:03:03] David Höhne: I work as part of the ministry of Moore College. I teach Theology here at Moore College, and I also do some other jobs here too.
[00:03:12] Tony Payne: Well, thank you for coming along to talk with us. You teach in the Theology department and it’s theology we’re going be looking at, and especially four big theological themes that come out of the Scripture in regard to neurodivergence.
[00:03:23] But I guess before we go to those themes, I guess we’ve got to face the fact that, first of all, there really isn’t any neurodivergence in the Bible. Like it’s not—how do we approach that as Christians when we come to the Bible to think about—does that mean the Bible really doesn’t have anything to say on this topic?
[00:03:37] David Höhne: I think it helps us to step back and think, “Well, what does the Bible think is important about being a person, and how does the Bible also help us understand some of the difficulties that we all have with being people?” And so, I think through that kind of a lens, that sort of produces a level playing field into which we might read a slightly finer grain of difficulties that people might have getting on in the world with each other, with themselves, with God.
[00:04:10] Tony Payne: Hmm. That makes sense to me. So the Bible tells us lots about who we are and about our nature as people, about our problems as people, about our destinies, as people. And that tells us a lot about all facets of our life. I sometimes feel it’s a little bit like saying, “The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about cars. There are no cars in the Bible. But it does tell us a lot about how we should drive a car.” And I think it’s a little bit the same in this instance as well. As we look at four big themes we’re going trace through, we’ll find it actually teaches us a lot. It frames our understanding quite significantly about this important question.
1. Creation and Fall
[00:04:45] Tony Payne: And the first theme I want to go to is Creation, and Creation and Fall. And as a way into this theme, I thought we might look at Psalm 139. We’re not going read the whole psalm, but let me just start off by reading verses 1-3. Verse 1:
[00:05:01] O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways. (vv. 1-3)
[00:05:14] This is a strong theme of the whole psalm—that God knows, that he sees—and it doesn’t matter, in a sense, who the psalmist is, where he’s, what he’s doing, what stage of life he’s in, what his experience is; God knows and sees him intimately.
[00:05:28] It’s almost like there’s no escaping God’s presence or God’s knowledge of the psalmist and his situation. And we see that further down in verses 7-12: he says,
[00:05:38] Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the outermost parts of the sea,
even there, your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you. (vv. 7-12)
It’s an extraordinary picture, isn’t it?
[00:06:12] David Höhne: Yeah. I think it reflects—and we’ll go on to talk about this a little bit—I think it reflects how special the human being is to God amongst all the other creatures. Psalm 104 talks about God feeding all the animals and watering the ground and looking after them, and all that sort of thing. But what we see here in Psalm 139 is the special attention that God gives to those who are made in his image.
[00:06:38] Tony Payne: And that’s reflected in the very next verse, which has a “For” at the beginning of it—this sort of knowledge of each person, he says, is based on the fact:
[00:06:46] For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. (vv. 13-16)
[00:07:15] Now, the psalm we’re looking at here, David, is a song of David—not you, David, but the great David. It’s a psalm of the Messiah. It’s about God’s knowledge of him that goes all the way back to his formation of him in the mother’s womb. It’s a song about his faithfulness all the way through from creation.
[00:07:31] And yet it sort of speaks to and connects to the broader themes of the goodness of God’s creation: that all that God makes, he makes purposefully and makes for his good purposes, and that extends to each one of us as God’s creation. How does it connect to the wider doctrine of God creating us as humans and the doctrine of creation?
[00:07:53] David Höhne: Yes, that’s right. The first chapter of the Bible is all about God making the world, supervising its construction and overseeing its formation. And seven times throughout that sequence, God will do something, talk about it and then say, “And it was good.” And when it gets right to the very end, he says, “It’s very good.”
[00:08:17] So one of the things that’s distinctive in the world of creation stories from the ancient Near East is that the God of the Bible really likes his creation. He doesn’t suffer it in any way. He doesn’t have to put up with it, or hasn’t just made human beings as lackeys to take out the trash. He really likes his world, and so speaks of it as being entirely fit for his purposes.
[00:08:45] Tony Payne: Now that sense that God’s creation, including every one of us, and we saw an example of this in his creation of the psalmist so intimately and purposefully and carefully—that his creation of all of us is an act of God’s wisdom and goodness—that he creates all of us according to his purposes, that’s a special thing, especially for neurodivergent people. And a number of people we spoke to mentioned Psalm 139 as having this resonance for them as an affirmation of the goodness of God’s creation, and them as God’s good creation. Here’s a clip from an anonymous interviewee who chatted to us about her experience.
[00:09:21] Anon: I think there is a helpfulness in other people who are neurodivergent to know that, like, they are not broken. But actually, the Bible says that we are specially and wonderfully made and that we are knitted together. Like, the language of knitting is so beautiful. I crochet. There’s a real care that comes into it, and there’s a real, like, precision that comes into it as you work your stitches. And so, I think in the language, it’s so evocative, the way that David is, like, and the Lord knit us together. Like, there’s a care, there’s a precision, there’s a specificness involved.
[00:09:54] And so, if all those things are true, how can it be that God accidentally slipped and made you broken? That doesn’t make sense. And that’s not true, because that’s not what the Bible says. That’s not what it means when he knit us together. And I think there’s a real helpfulness in, like, people who are neurodivergent knowing that—that God hasn’t made a mistake when he has made you. And yes, the world is hard. But God and his kindness is good, and in the new creation, all things will be perfect.
[00:10:23] Tony Payne: Now, David, the reason that we’re looking at creation and talking about the variegated goodness of God’s creation and the fact that God creates people for good purposes is that historically, the issue of disability generally, and neurodivergence in particular, has been largely viewed through the lens of the Fall, theologically. It’s been mainly about what’s gone wrong, what’s disordered, what’s disabled, what’s malfunctioned here in creation. Whereas, it’s also important to say, in light of God’s good purposes in creation, that that’s not the only or even main thing to say—that God creates all of us in our great variety in his goodness, and that we are part of his good creation, even though we all also participate in the brokenness and the dysfunction of the Fall in different ways. Do you think?
[00:11:14] David Höhne: Well, yes. I have always struggled to get a grip on the term “neurodiversity”, because at one level, all humans are diverse neurally in every way. One of the extraordinary things about the human brain is that, though it’s basically made of the same stuff and basically the same shape, they’re actually remarkably different from individual to individual.
[00:11:40] Tony Payne: Well, interestingly, the way the language has developed actually reflects that. So within the literature and in the neurodivergent community, it’s now quite common to use the term “neurodiversity” to talk about the diversity of brains, exactly as you’re saying,
[00:11:56] David Höhne: I have a PhD from Cambridge University, which means that I belong to a club of people who are quite diverse from the rest of the world and have been historically. But even within that, there are people who are quite different from me, even though we all belong to a particular kind of, I guess you would call, intellectual talent club. I didn’t get my PhD till I was 36, and I used to sit in class with 18-year-olds. That’s quite a diverse amount of life experience.
[00:12:25] Tony Payne: And the particular kinds of diversity that we call “neurodivergence” describes a minority brain, in many ways—a particular kind of brain that diverges from the majority of brains in particular ways.
[00:12:40] The reason I say it’s often been viewed through the lens of the Fall is that the divergent nature of, say, an autistic brain or someone who has ADHD has often been viewed almost entirely through the lens of what’s wrong, what doesn’t work, what’s weak.
[00:12:53] Whereas the more we research and understand and the more we listen to the experience of neurodivergent people, you also find there are enormous strengths. There’s a variegation of ability and goodness in those different sorts of brains as well.
[00:13:06] David Höhne: Well, that’s why I raised the example of my experience. What I observed in that context was quite a bit of neurodiversity, but all of the people in that group were good at the thing that the group valued. Outside the group, some of them may well have been labelled with the kind of neurodiversity which is not acceptable in the greater public.
[00:13:30] Tony Payne: Yeah and it was often marginalised or misunderstood in different ways.
[00:13:34] David Höhne: So it’s—I think there’s a lot of social norms which kind of invade this conversation. And so, that someone’s diversity is fine if it’s in the right context, whereas when it’s deemed not to fit in this context, oh well then it’s “fallen” or defective or whatever.
[00:13:53] Tony Payne: I think what we need to say—I mean, we do need to say something about the Fall and the effect of sin on the Fall. And in fact, Psalm 139, interestingly—like, it’s got a real kick in its tail. Like, it’s this beautiful psalm that we like to quote and put on posters about being fearfully and wonderfully made. But the final verses of the psalm are really quite horrific. They’re about wickedness and God’s enemies and hatred of God’s enemies.
[00:14:15] David Höhne: Deceitfulness, bloodthirstiness, swearing falsely, detesting, rebelling against God, hating each other. From the perspective of Adam and Eve, those are neurodiverse behaviours, which have been universally condemned.
[00:14:30] Tony Payne: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it kind of reflects Genesis 1 and 3: like, you’ve got—Psalm 139 has the goodness and wonder and celebration of Genesis 1 and the goodness of all God does, especially what he’s doing for David the Messiah. But it’s got the rebellion and the wickedness and the unavoidable dysfunction.
[00:14:47] It’s like we’re fearfully and wonderfully made, but we’re also fearfully and appallingly dysfunctional and disjointed and disordered, each in our own way.
[00:14:58] David Höhne: Yeah, yeah. One of the things that we have universally—one of the neurotypically things about human beings is that they’re envious of God’s sovereignty over them, and they react to that in different ways.
[00:15:10] Tony Payne: Yeah, very much so. So I guess to summarise, what we’re saying is that theologically, leaning on what the Bible says about both Creation and Fall and sin, that there’s a great diversity of goodness in God’s world. Of all the different ways in which he’s created the world, including creating people with all kinds of different strengths and different kind of ways of thinking, and their brains wired in different fashions, as you kind of were alluding to.
[00:15:34] But also, there’s a whole diversity of ways in which we suffer from the Fall and from the disorder and dysfunction of the world. We’re also all different in that respect. And that’s true of every person, whether we label them as neurodivergent or neurotypical. We all participate in this diverse goodness of God and also in lots of different ways in which we’re dysfunctional and which we find—
[00:15:55] David Höhne: Yeah, the church fathers had a useful way of speaking about it. They spoke about corruption—that sin had brought corruption into the world, and so all human beings suffered from this kind of corruption. The most obvious form of it is that we die.
[00:16:12] But of course, dying, sickness, ill health—that’s like a spectrum in and of itself. And in the New Testament, often when people are referred to as having an unclean spirit, it’s actually a degree of death about them.
[00:16:27] So fallenness, corruption, is something that we all carry around with us in different ways. And it gives certain people different challenges to others.
[00:16:37] Tony Payne: And it kind of saves us from falling into one of two errors, I guess. On the one hand, to be only crushingly negative about the phenomenon of neurodivergence, as if all we can say about it is that it’s disorder or corruption, because it’s not; there’s a diverse goodness there as well. But on the other hand, it also sort of saves us from a kind of false positivity—of trying to almost pretend that there’s nothing disordered or nothing really wrong. And this is a kind of a theme within the discussion around neurodivergence.
[00:17:06] And in fact, there was one woman that our team spoke with whose name was Sarah, who’s autistic herself, who had something quite insightful to say about this. Let’s listen to Sarah.
[00:17:15] Sarah: There is one thing I might say, and I don’t think I touched on it. So there’s this whole debate in the autism space about, “Oh, the neurodiversity movement and autism is this superpower.” And you know, it becomes like an identity. It’s like, “I’m autistic, so therefore you have to be, like, I don’t know, super nice to me” or something. Like, or, you know.
[00:17:40] But I find—like, when I first started to research autism, I’m, like, “Oh yeah, yeah, the autism, the neurodiversity movement.” And it’s true: I see the benefits of it. Like, for better or worse, we have autism, so we just have to make the most of our lives. So it does make more sense to focus on what we can do, as opposed to what we can’t.
[00:18:01] But there’s a danger in being too extreme. So I think in some circles, the dialogue has been a bit too ultra positive or whatever. In only talking about strengths, you can miss the real struggle. Like, ‘cause there is this thing, it’s like, well, people will go, “Well, if you’re all IT whizzes, well you know, that’s not a disability; that’s just quirky.” And you’re, like, “Well, yeah, but I’m not actually, like, that successful.” But also it’s, like, well, I need a lot of help with everyday tasks, and I need a lot of social support, and I can’t live on my own, and I, you know, can’t really get a job. So in some ways, I can see how people can be judgemental if all they hear is that “Autism is just a difference and it’s not really that different from the rest of us. So, you know, we should exclude people, whatever.” But then, when we don’t measure up to neurotypical standards, then we’re just seen as failures. So there’s sort of that.
[00:19:06] But also, it’s worth considering that I have Level 1 autism, which is like the milder end. But I know people—Christian families—who have kids with Level 3 autism who are nonverbal, will never look after themselves and, you know, have behaviour outbursts or whatever. My experience is extremely different to theirs, and it would not be fair at all to say that their autism is a strength. They might have strengths in their—you know, they might have a seventh skill in playing the piano or whatever. But a lot of them don’t. So I think it’s worth keeping in mind that they all have worth—we all have worth. But there is suffering involved.
[00:19:51] So yes, you focus on people’s strengths. You don’t judge them. But you keep in mind that there is suffering and you can’t get away from that.
2. Ability
[00:19:59] Tony Payne: That was really well said, it seems to me. And it leads on to the next theme I want to explore, and that’s how we think about ability and our value as people. Because—I mean, we tend to think in our culture, as I think humans have often always thought, that the more able you are, the more meritorious you are, the more you can do, the more valuable you are.
[00:20:23] David Höhne: Yeah, I think there are a couple of things we can say to that. Our romantic culture focuses on self-actualisation and self-fulfillment. So the more you can do that, the more you can be fulfilled, the more you can make yourself the person that you want to be—not only the more clever you are, but the more moral you are.
[00:20:45] And then at a—perhaps, a more group level, our culture of supply and demand means that unless you can produce something that everyone wants, you’re not valuable and what you do isn’t valuable. And that can change like fashions. But that’s an immense amount of social pressure on people to be able to perform at the right time to be valuable by others.
[00:21:11] Tony Payne: It’s why when people are unemployed, when they lose their job, it’s often a crisis, not just in the sense of, “Oh, I haven’t got money to do stuff for my family.” It’s a crisis of identity. It’s a crisis of “Am I worth anything anymore?”
[00:21:23] David Höhne: That’s right, yeah. “No one wants me. I have nothing to contribute.”
[00:21:27] Tony Payne: Whereas, the culture of Jesus—the culture of Christianity—is quite different from that, isn’t it?
[00:21:32] David Höhne: Yeah, well, let’s look at an example that Jesus gives in Luke 5. This is just after Luke has called Levi or Matthew, the tax collector. And a discussion is generated between Jesus and the Pharisees over doing the right thing. Surprise, surprise, the question put to Jesus by the Pharisees has to do with eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. That’s a bad thing in their eyes. Jesus’ response is actually really telling: he says to them, “It’s not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I’ve not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
[00:22:13] Jesus hasn’t come to gather around him the best of the best, the cream of the crop. He’s actually come to identify a fundamental flaw in all people—that we are sick when it comes to being able to do the right thing. And what makes us sick is valuing other things than what God values about us. Jesus has come to give us back the gift of value that can only come from God, that comes by grace.
[00:22:43] Tony Payne: It’s almost like telling us the truth about ourselves, isn’t it? That we have this kind of false narrative that somehow, if only we can be able enough and do enough and be worthwhile enough in what we produce and what we succeed in, then somehow we’ll amount to something that will count for something.
[00:22:58] David Höhne: That’s right. We’ll aspire to the heavens, and ultimately God will welcome us as his equal.
[00:23:03] Tony Payne: But Jesus’ kingdom is just not like that. It’s not about how able you are, how good you are, how much you contribute. I mean, the whole point is until you realise that he is going to contribute everything to your salvation and is going to give you value in life and eternal life as a gift by his grace, and plant you on your feet and make you who you really were created to be by his grace, not by your effort.
[00:23:27] David Höhne: Yeah. He gives us a completely different vision, like in the beginning of Hebrews, where the heavenly picture is Jesus standing before God saying, “Here am I and the sons and daughters you gave me.” That’s the Bible picture of the pinnacle of our lives, not us coming before God and presenting a career, a family, a wealth, or anything like that, as sort of somehow everlasting confirmation of our value. It’s the fact that Jesus nominates us as his brothers and sisters. That’s glory.
[00:23:59] Tony Payne: Now, why is this so important as a theme with respect to neurodivergence? I think it’s for two reasons. The first is that for many neurodivergent people, this narrative—the narrative of ability, of achievement, of self-actualisation—has been one that’s kind of left them marginalised and mistreated and alienated, because in various ways, dysfunctions and weaknesses they might experience because of their condition—I mean, they don’t quite fit in as one of the able, high-achieving fantastic people. And so, they have often been—many neurodivergent people have talked about this sense of being alone, of not being understood, of not being valued, of being on the outer, and that’s enormously hurtful. And what this says to us is that Jesus comes for every person—every person is actually like that. That’s the true narrative about who we are, and that’s who Jesus comes for. He comes to save people like us who are, in fact, dysfunctional, and all of us are.
[00:24:55] David Höhne: Yeah, yeah. And even those who we want to separate ourselves from when I pretend that I’m functional—
[00:25:02] Tony Payne: Exactly.
[00:25:02] David Höhne: —Jesus looks past me to them and shows us both how to make our way home to God.
[00:25:09] Tony Payne: And so, what the Bible is showing us here is that what we do doesn’t bestow value upon us, especially before God. And what we can’t do doesn’t make us any less valuable.
[00:25:20] And it’s why Christians are people of grace. It’s why we’ve always been culturally at the forefront of caring for the marginalised, of welcoming the orphan and the widow. It’s why true religion, says James, is to visit and welcome the fatherless and widows. Another passage we could read if we had time in Romans 14 and 15, it’s a wonderful passage about our congregational life—about welcoming and accepting one another and not making distinctions among one another, because Christ has welcomed and accepted us.
[00:25:50] David Höhne: It’s that marvellous way that the Anglican church service is supposed to begin in the Book of Common Prayer —that we start by confessing that we are sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. And that’s, in fact, the most important thing we have in common.
[00:26:07] Tony Payne: That’s who we are gathered here. And you set that expectation right at the beginning.
[00:26:11] Now, this trap—this false way of thinking about ourselves; you might call it the “merit trap”—of seeing ourselves only in terms of our abilities, it can also be a trap for neurodivergent people in some ways as well. Grant Macaskill, who wrote one of the really interesting books I read about autism and neurodivergence; it’s called Autism in the Church, and Macaskill is autistic himself. He wrote this, and I thought it was quite insightful. He said, “We can fall into the trap of ascribing value to autism only insofar as it confers unique abilities.” And what he goes on to say is that while it’s really important to recognise the strengths and the goodness that comes from neurodivergence, from having a different kind of brain that can often do extraordinary things, it’s not those so-called superpowers of the neurodivergent brain that make you valuable, as if somehow you’ve got to have a superpower in order to be someone. And it’s not as if neurodivergent people only become valuable if they can play this game of merit—this false game of merit in some way.
[00:27:11] Alex, one of the people we spoke to in the lead-up to this project, said something about this that I thought was really good.
[00:27:16] Alex: You know the Tim Keller book where he talks about, like, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking about yourself less”? Like, I remember that and I’m like, I’m a lot happier when I don’t make my identity the core thing about autism—like, searching inside myself to find the truth. Like, that makes me absolutely miserable in the end.
[00:27:36] But when I’m, like, “God made me. My identity is that I’m his daughter. And he made me perfectly and he knows me perfectly. And even if, like, no one else gets me today, if everyone misunderstands everything I say, I’m still perfectly known and perfectly loved by him.” I think that just gives me a comfort and a help with the loneliness.
[00:27:58] Like, it’s still quite hard, feeling sometimes that other Christians don’t quite understand. But yeah, we serve a God who does.
[00:28:06] Tony Payne: So Jesus comes to people just like us—to people who are profoundly disordered and disabled in all sorts of ways, who are corrupted by the effects of the Fall and sin. And he saves us. He saves us where we are.
3. Spirit and weakness
[00:28:18] Tony Payne: But of course, he doesn’t leave us where we are. He transforms us by his Spirit. He brings a new power—a new purpose—into our lives, and we start to change.
[00:28:30] And that’s our third theme that I wanted us to think about is how does the Spirit and the role of the Spirit in the Christian life relate to this theme of neurodivergence, and especially to the ongoing weaknesses we have in our lives as Christians? If we were going think about this, David—I mean, where would you go in the Bible to think about this kind of topic?
[00:28:48] David Höhne: Well, the way that Paul talks about sin in the life of the believer in Romans 6, 7 and 8. So chapter 6 is that challenge not to take grace for granted. “Shall we go on sinning that grace may abound?” The more sins that I commit, the more opportunities God has to be gracious, and won’t that be lovely? And Paul says, “No, no. That’s not how grace works. You’ve died to sin now. That’s not part of your life.” But nevertheless, because we don’t have our resurrected bodies, we still have that corruption about us, which thwarts our efforts to try and live the resurrected life that Jesus has won for us.
[00:29:30] And so, and then in chapter 8, Paul talks about how Jesus hasn’t just set us a whole set of new challenges as his followers, compared to not being his followers; God has blessed us with Jesus’ Spirit to enable us to be his sons and daughters after the fashion of Jesus himself. And so, Paul talks about a “spirit of adoption” or a “spirit of sonship”. That is a gift to those who have been called to Jesus through his death and resurrection, through overcoming our sin.
[00:30:04] And so, Calvin described it as “The Spirit makes the merits of Jesus ours.” He shares with us the merits that are actually Jesus’ merits, so that when I fail as a fallible Christian, I have a stronger sense of how bad that is. That’s a change. But also, I don’t actually have to just try a little bit harder to be a good Christian. God’s Spirit is at work in me to make the righteousness of Jesus, the merit of Jesus, the goodness of Jesus mine in those situations. So God still sees Jesus standing in for me.
[00:30:44] So what the Spirit does is prompt me in my failure to turn again, to see that no, I haven’t been lost. I haven’t been accidentally cut out or missed by a whisker. “Good start, David. Thank you very much, but I’m sorry you’re not up to this.” The goodness of Jesus still stands for me before God, and it’s mine as a gift continually.
[00:31:06] And so, my behaviour becomes a matter of saying, “Well, what does the Lord Jesus deserve in this decision?” In this situation, he deserves kindness. He deserves faithfulness. He deserves service. And even when I fail in doing that, I’m still considered the son of God.
[00:31:23] Tony Payne: It was a wonderful balance in what you’ve said there. I thought you’ve been saying two things at the same time so beautifully—that the Spirit opens up a new life for us, a life that leaves behind the old and puts on the new—that no longer lives for unrighteousness, but lives for righteousness. And so, there is a new direction to our lives. There are new behaviours in our lives. We put off the old; we put on the new. And yet, at the same time, every time we fail in the process of doing that, and we do keep failing, ‘cause that’s a lifelong putting off and putting on, it’s not as if we slip out of being Christian at that point, or we somehow lose our spot, or that somehow God no longer accepts us. I love the image you use: that he sees Jesus. He looks at us and he sees Jesus and his merits.
[00:32:03] David Höhne: Well, there’s a sneaky kind of merit that slips into the life of some Christians that “Jesus gets you going and you just have to finish off well.” Do your best to kind of keep up with the crew and get over the line. Obviously, Jesus has dealt with your past sin. It’s now up to you to deal with your present failings. That’s not actually the grace of the Lord Jesus.
[00:32:29] Tony Payne: But the reality is that our sinfulness and the sinful desires we have, we still have them and they still battle against us. And even though we are completely accepted because God looks at Jesus instead of us, there’s still the reality of those sinful habits and sinful desires in our lives.
[00:32:45] David Höhne: Right, yeah. And if your neurodiversity makes it particularly difficult for you to, at times, keep everything together, it’s going feel like, “Oh no, I’m so hopeless. God will never actually accept me, ‘cause I have meltdowns” or whatever that challenge may be.
[00:33:02] Tony Payne: “I just was shouting at someone and lost my temper completely.”
[00:33:05] David Höhne: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:33:05] Tony Payne: “Had a meltdown and I said all these awful things, and so I must be a terrible Christian.”
[00:33:09] David Höhne: Yeah, yeah. “How could I keep going?”
[00:33:11] Tony Payne: Well, we can keep going because of what we’ve just said: that God by his Spirit still looks on us in his Son and unites us to his Son.
[00:33:19] But one of the neurodivergent people we spoke to, Sarah again, had something really interesting to say on this topic—the topic of sin in the life of neurodivergent people. Let’s see what Sarah has to say.
[00:33:31] Sarah: There is this thing in neurodiversity movement. It’s like, “Because I’ve got autism, you can’t tell me that I can’t do something or that something I’ve done is wrong, because it’s just my disability.” And I don’t think that’s right from a Christian standpoint. I’m, like, we all sin. People with disabilities are just as capable of sinning as everybody else. It might be more obvious, but it’s still sin. So, say, autism should not be used as an excuse for bad behaviour. So there’s a lot of that going on in the community. “Oh no, we don’t discipline him, because he’s got autism.” I’m, like, well, you can still have bad character and have autism.
[00:34:10] So not go too hard with the dis—like, still have that grace. Like, it’s the balance between “This is God’s standard. What you’ve done wasn’t okay. But I still love you as a person and I still want to help you and support you.” So fine line. Tricky.
[00:34:29] Society does not like to talk about sin and discipline, and the fact that we don’t live God’s way. But as Christians, we are still aiming to live like Jesus. So I try to approach it with—I want to have a humble attitude. So if someone tells me, “Oh, well, you know, I found that conversation a bit hurtful when you said blah, blah, blah.” Like, I would rather they actually said that to me than—’cause otherwise, I wouldn’t know. As long as you’re not being, like, nasty about it.
[00:34:57] Tony Payne: I think that’s really quite insightful—that the fact that we have a disposition or a weakness towards certain sorts of behaviours just because of the way we are, and that’s probably true of all of us to varying extents—it doesn’t absolve us from the evil we do in those situations.
[00:35:15] And we should take responsibility for those things, even if it means apologising afterwards and saying, “Look, I’ve lost control and I have difficulty retaining control, but doesn’t excuse me from doing something that was in itself harmful and wrong, and I’m sorry.” Do you have any thoughts on that?
[00:35:30] David Höhne: My thought is that usually, almost invariably, sin is an interpersonal problem. And so, whether I can help my sinful actions or not at the time, they still affect you. And so, a wrong has been done, and you deserve better than the sinful behaviour you’ve received from me.
[00:35:54] And so, whether I felt like I could help it or not, that still doesn’t change the fact that something’s been wrong to you and you deserve some kind of restitution. You too are made in God’s image and you shouldn’t have to live with my meltdowns.
[00:36:11] Tony Payne: And if we can take it out of the realm of meltdowns, let’s take it into the realm of other kinds of behaviours that any of us might engage in at different points.
[00:36:19] David Höhne: Oh, well, we could think of the opposite: my inability to notice that you need to be in contact with me and my persistent ignorance of that, whether I have read that social cue or not, has still separated you and I.
[00:36:37] Tony Payne: The other aspect of it that occurs to me as we discuss this is that taking responsibility for our own actions in the way we’re talking about, even in those circumstances when we found it very difficult to control ourselves, we can also take responsibility for the circumstances that lead up to those circumstances, as it were. That is to say, if we know there are certain triggers in our life that in a certain set of predictable circumstances, I’m probably going end up completely overwhelmed and bad things are going happen, there’s also a degree to which I need to think about those circumstances and take responsibility and try and manage them. When it happens once, when it happens twice, when it happens three, I should make sure I maybe not try and put myself in that circumstance again—
[00:37:15] David Höhne: Yeah.
[00:37:15] Tony Payne: —where I know I’m going to lose control. So there’s also a sense of responsibility for thinking about those kinds of issues that I know that not only neurodivergent people really think about and grapple with, in terms of managing and thinking through how they relate to other people and what’s going happen, but especially parents of neurodivergent kids. This is a real struggle as they seek to manage and help their own kids through these difficult times. And very often, the child will lose control and will not know why they’ve lost control. In fact, Kate Morris, who contributed to our project several times, especially in this area, had something very interesting to say on this topic, especially.
[00:37:49] Kate Morris: So a child who comes home from school and has a meltdown, which we understand to be quite different to a tantrum. It’s an explosion of pressure from them holding all of that stress and difficulty in, or externalising it and facing the consequences of that at school as well, coming home and experiencing a meltdown.
[00:38:10] And you can look at that meltdown, and we can understand from research and from a scientific point of view what is going on in that brain at that moment. It makes perfect sense that they’re experiencing that. But if in that, they’re yelling at the parent something horrible that they shouldn’t be saying to the parent, how does a parent respond when we both understand the science around this, but we also understand what we are called to do and how we’re called to behave and interact? So I think it’s a really important question.
[00:38:41] I put this question, actually, to a lady who’s in ministry who is autistic and ADHD, and her response to me was really helpful. She said that when she has meltdowns, she needs to understand it from the perspective that she is a sinful person where sin is in everything. She’s also a person who is in a human body with limited capacity, and this human body is going to experience overwhelm, because of the autism that she has. And so, she needs to understand that both of these things are actually playing into it. Neurobiologically, she’s going to need to have that explosion and the pressure release, and that’s not the moment to be able to do anything else, because of that shutdown. But afterwards, she says she has a responsibility to be able to apologise for things that she’s done in that and acknowledge that there has been brokenness, sinfulness, hurt from what’s happened. And she said that she’s working on her overwhelm by doing occupational therapy and psychology, and working in her body to work out how to navigate overstimulation so that she doesn’t hit this point of having a meltdown.
4. Community and the body of Christ
[00:39:51] Tony Payne: Now this takes us to the fourth and final big biblical theme I wanted us to think about. And that is, the Christian life is a spiritual battle, as we’ve been just talking about, but it’s not an isolated one. It’s not fought alone. We’re part of a people. We’re part of a community—part of a body. And another biblical theme that many neurodivergent people spoke to us about as we talked about this issue, and especially about being a Christian and neurodivergent, was the theme of the body of Christ—of the interdependent unity and support and giving and loving that happens within the church, within God’s body. Here’s Laura.
[00:40:28] Laura: I just find that great comfort that God created me intentionally and that he cares about every part. And also, yeah, that in the Bible it talks about in, like, 1 Corinthians 12 about how we’re all one body and we—but we all have different gifts and we all have something to contribute. So I think difference can be quite a strength in that. But we’re all united in Christ in one body with all our differences.
[00:40:56] Tony Payne: Laura mentions 1 Corinthians 12 and its famous picture of the body of Christ—of the interdependent parts of the body, with each part doing its own thing, and how the body needs all its different parts in all their diversity. David, what do you think is significant about this passage and about the image of all the different parts of the body of Christ united in Christ?
[00:41:19] David Höhne: I think this is a really fundamental portrait of what church life should mean for people who love the Bible. It’s common amongst our churches to value the preaching of the gospel and evangelism as being clear signs that God’s Spirit is at work. But that’s only two of the kind of gifts that God gives to the church. It’s very easy for us to settle into prayer, evangelism, and going on a roster as being the three gifts of the Spirit that we need at our church.
[00:41:54] But what we see in 1 Corinthians 12 is that God’s Spirit empowers us to have a particular discernment about one another—that I need this group of people in order to be the Christian that God wants me to be, and they need me as an individual Christian to be the kind of church that God wants them to be.
[00:42:16] And so, there’s a couple of great sort of summary statements almost: there’s sort of three times that Paul says “no one can say” in that chapter. Firstly, no one can say that Jesus is Lord without the Spirit. But then, no one can say, “I don’t need you” if they have the Spirit. And also, no one can say they don’t need me, if the Spirit of God is actually at work there.
[00:42:41] And I think that’s a really important lesson for all Christian churches to take on board—that God has brought to your gathering the people he wants to be there. And you won’t be the kind of church that God wants you to be unless you can make room for all of them. And similarly, all the individuals that have been bought there have been bought there so that they can be a blessing to the place where God has brought them.
[00:43:11] Tony Payne: And in 1 Corinthians 12-14, the word of God’s very important—that word that confesses Jesus, the word that you prophesy and so on in chapter 14. And many of the gifts he speaks of—many of the manifestations of the Spirit’s presence in chapter 12—are manifestations of different ways that the word might be brought from one person to another.
[00:43:29] It’s almost as if God puts his word into all of our hearts and onto all of our lips, but each in our own way, given our own experience, given our own opportunities. And I sometimes think that with a passage like 1 Corinthians 12, we focus on the gift and on figuring out what everyone’s gift is—
[00:43:47] David Höhne: Yeah.
[00:43:48] Tony Payne: —rather and I really like the way you put it: it’s that this church needs you and you need this church. And it’s you in all your individuality and particularity, with all your strengths and weaknesses. You’re needed. You can’t say that you’re not needed, and no one can say that you’re not needed.
[00:44:04] David Höhne: Yeah. I tend to think that really, it’s the people that are the gifts. And God sends a number of different things to make a healthy church wrapped up in human bodies.
[00:44:13] Tony Payne: Exactly. It’s almost like the fundamental substrate of the gifts is this word of God that brings us to life and that we all have.
[00:44:20] David Höhne: The word is—
[00:44:21] Tony Payne: And it’s on our—
[00:44:21] David Höhne: —the Lordship of Jesus, really.
[00:44:23] Tony Payne: Yes! Yeah.
[00:44:23] David Höhne: That when we come together, confessing Jesus as Lord, as our Lord, as my Lord, that means I’m not Lord and you’re not Lord.
[00:44:33] Tony Payne: And I need you to say that. I need to stand next to you while you say that. And I need to hear you say it in your way, and to reflect it in your experience and in your life and in what you say about your life and how you encourage me. And it’s that interdependent kind of intricate network of people being together and contributing to each other. It’s not about doing a gift inventory and figuring out whether I should be playing the guitar or not.
[00:44:55] David Höhne: No, in fact—
[00:44:56] Tony Payne: It’s much more about—
[00:44:57] David Höhne: In fact, really it’s—the one thing that I think is really interesting towards the end of that passage is that Paul, I think he really wants to niggle these Corinthians who are a power church. ‘Cause he’ll start to talk about parts that need special honour and how we have to deliberately and intentionally look for ways that we can give special honour to less presentable parts. And I think that’s a great description—well, a great analogy for how our neurodivergent brothers and sisters can be identified—that insofar as church is about social cues and social relationships, our neurodivergent brothers and sisters, it’s going to be a challenge for them to read the social cues consistently well. But if you’re a gregarious, extroverted person who can talk to anyone, you’ve been put into this context to help those who can’t read social cues as well, help them be part of the body.
[00:46:02] Tony Payne: In Part 3 of this series and our third episode, we’re going think through some of the practical implications of all of this. But just to sort of foreshadow some of that, there are going be some really significant implications. When we combine what Jesus says about ability and merit and how valuable we all are, only because he loves us and has given us life by his grace, we’re not playing the merit game. We’re not playing the status game. And we are part of an interdependent body, and we all need each other, no matter who we are. And we all contribute something vital. It’s going say something very important about the nature of church life—about not only what it means to welcome neurodivergent people into our congregations and to love them in their neurodivergence and welcome and value them for their contribution, their invaluable contribution to the body. But it will also say something for neurodivergent people themselves: what it means to contribute to the body and to see themselves as active, valuable, loving contributors in their individuality and in who they are.
[00:46:58] David Höhne: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think they have a great ministry to us to help us to avoid the more subtle forms of the homogenous unit principle.
[00:47:07] Tony Payne: As if you’ve got to be a certain kind of person to be part of this church.
[00:47:10] David Höhne: Yeah, that’s right.
[00:47:12] Tony Payne: Listen, thanks David. There’s so much more we could explore on each of these four big themes. But hopefully in exploring each of them, we’ve now laid some good theological foundations.
[00:47:22] And on the basis of those, dear listeners, we’ll come back to in our next episode to consider more practically and kind of in conclusion with some fresh eyes now, having looked at the Bible and its theology. What does God’s vision for his world and for us as people mean for neurodivergence and the Christian life? And that’s what we’ll do in our third and final episode: we’ll consider how the theological convictions we’ve talked through transform our thinking so that we don’t think about this question like the world does, but we think about it with a transformed mind.
[00:47:56] And we’ll also consider practically what that means for living as a neurodivergent Christian, for raising neurodivergent kids, and the topic we were just talking about at the conclusion: what does it mean to be a church community in which neurodivergent people are welcomed and in which they thrive and contribute for who they are.
[00:48:13] But that will all be for the next time and I’ll hope you join us then. Thanks again, David, for your contributions today.
[00:48:18] David Höhne: Thank you.
[00:48:19] Tony Payne: Talk to you next time.
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[00:48:40] Karen Beilharz: Digital technology like smartphones has revolutionised the way we navigate daily life and the way our whole society functions. We have supercomputers in our hands that can answer almost any question instantly and perform many tasks that make life easier.
[00:48:56] Such technology has its downsides, like the explosion of accessibility to pornography and the prevalence of online bullying. Even so, our stance as Christians is often something like, “Let’s use this technology wisely, but not abuse it”, as if the technology is simply a neutral instrument. But the good things of our world, like technology or money, can become much more than this: they can become master-teachers that dominate and disciple us.
[00:49:23] In the next Centre for Christian Living biblical ethics workshop, we want to do more than share helpful tips on godly smartphone use, although such tips are useful. We want to zoom out and consider how technology disciples us, how it profoundly reorders our attitudes, operating beliefs and behaviours—not just personally, but on a society-wide level.
[00:49:43] Put your phones on silent and join the conversation on Monday 27th of October, 2025 at 7:30 PM. You can register and find out more on the Centre for Christian Living website: ccl.moore.edu.au. That’s ccl.moore.edu.au.
[Music]
[00:50:20] Tony Payne: Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast from Moore College. For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website: that’s ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all the way back to 2017, videos from our live events and articles that we’ve published through the Centre.
[00:50:45] And while you’re there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make an tax-deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College. We’d also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources. And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions. Please get in touch. You can email us at [email protected].
[00:51:14] Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and editing and producing this podcast, to James West for the music, and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week. Thank you for listening.
[00:51:29] I’m Tony Payne. ‘Bye for now.
[Music]
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (generated using AI).
