Mental Health and Belonging

Recently I was with a group of Christian college students that had autism. They were delightful and I learned important things. Being neurodivergent, they find it difficult to fit into society and to belong in Christianity. I could understand not fitting into society but to not belong in Christianity was heartbreaking. None of the students attend church because the services and crowds cause them sensory overload.

Making disciples of Jesus is about belonging as we engraft our disciples into the family of God, whether they are neurodivergent or neurotypical. The Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have opened their family so that anyone can belong to them. It is a family of unconditional love. As the Father loved Jesus, so Jesus loved his disciples and exhorted them that they were to love one another just as they had experienced the Father’s love through Jesus.

Neurodivergent children of God have an essential place in the body of Jesus. It is God who places them into His family. To not love neurodivergent people is an affront to their heavenly Father. We need them and they need us. A spiritual family can only flourish if it embraces the neurodivergent.

Kimberly Olivar observes, “Neurodiverse people play a precious role in the church, not to be patronized, but to be loved. Their place in God’s kingdom reveals to us the beautiful upside-down, backward, illogical love God has for his people. We need them among us, worshipping alongside us and learning with us, so that the body of Christ can be built up.”[1]

[1] https://modernreformation.org/resource-library/web-exclusive-articles/the-mod-neurodiversity-in-the-church/