Asperger Folk In The Bible

This reflection assumes the world and proves nothing. With that preface as spoiler alert, I'll move on.

I am on the Asperger's spectrum. My brother was off the deep end Asperger's (frantic hand-waving) as a child, so with that clear diagnosis of a sibling in hand (in waving hand, that is) and some obvious traits of my own, safe to say... Yeah. I'm there.

People are not always kind to me about it. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, what worries me more is how many people are being kind. I hate it when I'm being annoying and don't even know it.

Anyway. I see patterns. I see patterns that aren't there (always a problem) but I also see ones that are there. I run with details. And once I'm on a topic I'm passionate about, I just don't know when to stop.

These are strengths and weaknesses.

Where I'm going with this is to simply note with some bemusement that Asperger's folk do seem well represented in the pantheon of biblical writers. Meaning, many of those writers are celebrated for the very things that can get me in trouble. Refusing to move on, finding patterns, and deep-diving on details.

Seriously.

A few examples?

The prophets. I mean, in this day and age, you might say nothing at all. A lot of people leave their church for a real reason which they don't bother to share. Or maybe they explain their reason, and then leave. But pity the souls who don't leave, have a problem with their church, and they just won't shut up about it. Well, those folk aren't thought of as playing with a full deck. I know, I know. Where was Isaiah to go? Hitch the next ride to Assyria? Even so, as I read their rants, I have to say. These guys were kinda Asperger's-y. And we revere them today.

The Psalmists. Anybody read Psalm 119 recently? The dude is obsessed. With God's word. He finds dozens and dozens of ways to say the same thing. And we love it. (Some of us.) We study it. We sing it. ("Thy word is a lamp unto my feet...") Today someone who wrote something like this would get the askance glance.

The author of Hebrews. This guy (or, in a conspiratorial voice, perhaps gal) sees patterns everywhere. And a lot of those patterns are arguably not there. I mean, seriously. Levi offering the tithe to Melchizedek through his ancestor?? Let's be honest. Hebrews is awesome. But it's a dense read full of weird pattern-finding. If Hebrews had not been written, and your neighbor started scribbling this stuff on toilet paper. Would you accept it?

By the way, that bit about seeing connections? My mind just went to Yesterday, a movie in which Beatles songs were not written. Happily, the songs in the movie were well-received by screaming fans, even though sung poorly by a nobody, but we digress, and that's the problem with people like me. We digress. I remember this one time... oh. Sorry, again.)

Right. How about Matthew and the other gospel writers. I mention Matthew in particular because, to my unending delight, the new show The Chosen has chosen to depict him as deep OCD. Love it. I connect with Matthew big-time.

Anyway. Gospel writers. Patterns galore, laid in there, just waiting for you to find them. To say these guys were detail-oriented is to suggest that, oh, sorry. You don't want another analogy? I have several here? No? Ok. So they were detail-oriented, at any rate. Things like Matthew having Jesus be the true Israel, crossing the Jordan, re-enacting the 40 years (as 40 days), but this time not screwing up... We could go on. And on. And on. And boy, that would suit my personality to do just that. But suffice it to say. These guys were connecting the dots and finding patterns faster than John Nash in A Beautiful Mind and also like... oh, never mind.

All that to say, Asperger's folk like me? We're a bit like (wait for it, here comes another) Cassandra. Doomed to speak the truth, and, thanks to our way of delivering it, doomed also to be widely ignored or ridiculed for our fixated attention to patterns, connections, details and truth.

I'll be waiting for this lonely reflection to be ignored. In fairness, though... when that happens, in this particular case the world won't have lost out on much.

But I enjoyed writing this, all the same.

PS - did you notice the sentence that managed to use the word "chosen" twice, once in a title and once not? Did you notice I repeated the exact same feat with "mind"? This is the stuff you'll find in Bible commentaries. Some bushy-bearded guy will catch what everyone missed and y'all be like, whoa, that was cool. But mostly it gets missed. But we Asperger's folk lay it in there all the same. Just for fun.

Because we like patterns.