Neurodiversity advocates: Autism exists because the people who have it are the next step in evolution!

Based: Autism exists because…

1. Sin is nothing, a deficiency or a lack in action.  2. One cannot hate a nothing, one can however appropriately mourn or lament an absence. However, to hate an absence seems misguided, because there is nothing for one to act against. Properly speaking, one can, under certain circumstances, hate the cause of an absence, but not the absence itself. In fact, hating the absence itself is a distraction from the greater issue.  3. Thus, hating a sin is wrong-headed. One might (depending upon the circumstance) hate the will from which a sin issued or world-order that made the sin seem reasonable, but hating the sin is to miss the point.  4. Hence, hating the sin but not the sinner is, in some sense, the reverse of what we ought to do.  5. On the other hand, the sinner as well cannot coherently be understood as a sinner, from a human perspective. After all, we do not act in order to sin, but in deficient ways towards genuinely good ends. These ends are sometimes incredibly warped, by either our own, personal demons or the powers of the world. (I take both of these terms quite literally, but that is unimportant to my line of thought).  6. We are incapable of judging and discerning how good and bad are bound up in one’s life, disentangling the wheat and the tares is beyond us.  7. Therefore, we cannot really think of the other person as a sinner either. 8. After all,  the function of the term “sinner” in the logic of Christian belief is simply: I am a sinner insofar as I am opposed to being conformed to Christ in the way appropriate to my own equipping in the Spirit.  9. But, for those who have not yet been saved, it seems in principle impossible to separate out what parts of their life are attributable to sin and in what measure.  10. After all, actions that we consider deplorable can be driven by noble motives, that with the slightest guidance might have instead manifested in great sanctity. And actions that we consider noble can be driven by the worst and most deplorable of motives, hiding wickedness (wickedness that probably eventuates in actions, however well-hidden).  11. So, we cannot love them as sinner, since we cannot know them as a sinner absent their engagement with the cross. This does not exclude the possibility of addressing certain actions as wrong or wicked, only that we cannot disentangle their intentionality without the application of the criterion of the cross. We can apply the general criterion of righteousness to their actions, and can thereby criticize what they do and say, but absent Christ it is impossible to criticize them as a sinner. 

aretaics n. the science of virtue

harmatiology n. that part of theology which deals with sin

aretaics n. science of virtue

harmatiology n. that part of theology which deals with sin.