The following is an excerpt from Jonathan Machnee’s “Autism & Christianity: A Square Peg in a Round Hole?” 

Within many Christian circles, autism in all its forms remains little understood. Autistic ways of thinking and processing are often construed by pastors and clergy as problems to fix, rather than as different ways of understanding. …

Don’t mistake difference for sin. Autistic people will see things differently; they will process information differently; and they will interpret relationships and social dynamics differently.

Christians often interpret these differences as sin, disobedience, defiance, or a lack of spiritual fruit, when in fact they are simply differences in neurodevelopment. While autistic people are undoubtedly imperfect and sin like everyone else, differences that are often benign are treated as matters of spiritual failure. …

Because people are different, the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23) will often express themselves differently in an autistic person than a non-autistic person. What love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control look like in someone without autism will often be quite different from what they look like in an autistic person.

We know that these qualities take different forms across different genders, ages, and cultures. Yet for some reason, we fail to extend that same expectation to differences in neurodevelopment. We unfortunately expect these fruits to appear identical. But fruit looks different when it grows on different trees.¹

1. Jonathan Machnee, “Autism & Christianity: A Square Peg in a Round Hole?,” Word by Word (Logos Bible Study blog), May 15, 2026, https://www.logos.com/grow/min-autism-and-christianity-contextualization/. ↩︎