The Autistic Matthew

Last year, I cut a minute-long clip from an episode of The Chosen in which Matthew explains Philip how he experiences his own place in reality. Doing so, he used imagery that really spoke to me. 

Recently, this short clip attracted quite a bit of attention, and a lot of comments as well. Those comments roughly can be categorized in two groups: people using it as proof that The Chosen strayed much too far from the Biblical story - calling it ‘blasphemy’ and the likes; but there are also people that see themselves depicted in Matthew’s description.

The real question, then, is not whether Matthew actually was autistic (we can’t possibly know that). The real question is whether he could have been. Some people commented on the YouTube clip are sure he wasn’t - the Bible doesn’t say he was, you know - but they are too quick with that judgment. But such a remark also shows something else.

Because somewhere there is this idea, this assumption that it’s kind of OK to rule out Matthew as an autistic person. And, from the opposite point, it feels really strange to envision the disciple Philip as having Down’s syndrome. Does this mean that we in fact think that autistic people or ‘Downies’ are not good enough to be disciples and apostles?

After watching a few episodes of The Chosen more and more I believe that the series actually show us how life with Jesus looks like if we were somehow transported to the time back then. Yes, we don’t see any cars and the LTE reception is pretty limited around Bethlehem, but the people we see struggle with our problems. The series show how Jesus would have acted with us, with our questions.

As such, The Chosen is not a re-telling of the biblical story in the first place, but more of an application of that biblical story. And in that way, there can be a place for an autistic Matthew.

Finally - getting a little speculative here - I’m not so certain what high-functioning autism exactly is (I make this distinction between ‘regular’ and high-functioning autism on purpose). Especially the social aspects of this disorder aren’t just something in the individual, but they are the result of the interaction between an individual and the society he/she is supposed to live in. It’s this problematic interaction that defines the autism, and another society can lead to another type of interaction with the same type of individual. I could see a possibility for a society where a Matthew who we would recognize as autistic today, is not considered different at all. Maybe the society in the time of Jesus was like that, who knows?