Jesus Was An Autistic Hippie

I think Jesus was an autistic hippie.

Before some of you start screaming blasphemy at me, hear me out. As a possibly undiagnosed ASD or AuDHD, there are many things I've been learning about my life that have made this theory make sense. I will always give credit to the first person who actually saw me and hinted that perhaps I might be on the spectrum and suggested that I needed to look into it. But also, this person was cruel and dehumanizing towards the end of our intersection. Irony is, that phase was not supposed to be the end. It was supposed to be a transition. And so I say this with absolutely no love and a lot of resentment: fuck them!

As I've explored ASD, I've learned about how pure of intention people on the spectrum usually are. How they hold the same standards for everyone—essentially, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. How they mean what they say and say what they mean. How they're usually very honest. In theory, these are traits that we say we admire, that we want people to aspire towards. However, these same traits, when manifested in our society, people get punished for. It becomes socially egregious to not code-switch. The untaught yet expected skill of "read between the fucking lines."

So I say Jesus was an autistic hippie because many of the traits I identify with autism, I kinda see in Jesus… who then became labeled as a Christ.

No, he had no issues with the people that regular people tended to have issues with—the sinners. Rather, he had issues with the hypocrites, the cheats, the liars. The people who took advantage of others, especially those who did not have it. He hated inconsiderate mofos. He despised hoarders. In this age, we'd call those fuckers the one percent. He detested those who kindled chaos. And vomited (figuratively) at the sight of those who claimed to be without flaws.

The words sin and sinner—what do they even mean? A liberatory pastor I follow—Pastor Kristian A. Smith —said sin equates to harm. Yet we sit here, polish and sharpen our personal and societal preferences, turn them into moral and ethical codes, and brandish them as lances with which we impale anyone who does not fall into alignment with the moralizing agenda. We have imbued these preferences with so much power we have forgotten that the sin needed to be defined to be a sin. We have now embedded "sin" into judiciary codes and social reprimanding systems and call that law.

And I sit here and observe that most of the people we chastise as sinners, those we deal heaviest with, are usually people who, for the most part, are trying to figure out how to survive from one day to the next or how to cope with the difficulties of their life. We call their choices sin, even when they do not harm others (besides maybe themselves), and we judge so harshly because they are not in alignment.

Jesus told us not to judge—for the same measure with which we judge others, we shall be judged.

Jesus hated injustice in any way, shape, or iteration. Jesus preached about love. A couple alte people I've communed with have contemplated how perhaps Jesus was prolly always high on some shit because he was mellow as fuck. I kind of agree. I know like a switch—when my mind elevates, my body automatically falls into place. And maybe Jesus was the sinner. Maybe he smoked. Maybe he had to be high to be able to cope and move through this world levelheaded. Because his mind was so big and so expansive—like that of an autistic person—that to relate to everyone, he needed to be able to tether himself to this earthly plane, so that maybe he wouldn't lose his cerebral shit. Or get overstimulated.

But Jesus was not a punk either. We saw that in the temple when they turned it into a marketplace. He showed them shege and for good reasons.

Jesus didn't really go to too many parties—we know of that one party, where he miracled water into jolly jus! Maybe when he went out, he got sensory overload. Jesus was always praying. Prayer and meditation are good somatic tools, and research shows that when engaged in by persons with ASD, they become ways to bring one back into their body. Prayer and meditation keep the being grounded. And so my theory stands: I think Jesus was an autistic hippie.

But my main question I have for Jesus today is: how did he forgive?

How did you know that these people were harming him? They had harmed him in so many ways, yet he chose to forgive. I don't care about what they say about Jesus being God in the flesh—for as long as he was in human flesh, he was blessed with the curse of the full human experience. How does one, pure in thoughts and intentions, navigate betrayal and cruelty from people who claimed to have loved them? And how does one forgive? What is forgiveness? And for whom?

I think about the story with Judas, his betrayer. Even after Judas betrayed him, he kissed Judas. He loved him. But I don't think it said anywhere in the Bible that he forgave him. So maybe we are not meant to forgive all these fuckers who harm us.

And Judas was overcome by his own guilt that he had no peace of mind.

What about those people that are never able to see what it is that they do to us? No matter what you say or how much you try to show them, their blinders to the pain they cause you are just pitch fucking impenetrable. How do you forgive cruelty like that?

So in conclusion, Jesus was an autistic hippie. My parting thoughts: could an autistic adult, persecuted the way he was, have the capacity to love and accept this path of loneliness because he chose to love?