The Mind of Christ

By Kathy Luder

My cousin Matthew stayed with us for a long weekend this past January. My mom said that his parents needed a break. I think they were on the verge of divorce. She didn’t say that but she didn’t have to. I could tell by the shape of her mouth.

Matthew is two years older than I am, the same age as my brother John. But he never got along very well with John. When we were little he preferred dolls to football. He doesn’t like to be touched. And he doesn’t like anything yellow or brown. He is afraid of choking and won’t put anything into his mouth that is bigger than a nickel. He won’t drink out of a plastic cup and won’t use the bathroom if anyone else is on the same floor. He always has to sit in the same chair and at the same place at the table. He is what my grandmother calls "difficult" and kids at school call a "spaz.”

But Matthew is also very smart. He can rattle off the capitals of all the states and their populations, not just of the US, but also of Mexico and Canada. He can multiply and divide huge numbers in his head almost as fast as a calculator. And he seems to know more about the Lord of the Rings than Tolkien himself. Matthew is autistic. My mom didn’t say he is part of the stress in my aunt and uncle’s marriage, but she didn’t have to. I knew it from years of watching.

My brother John hates Matthew. My mom and dad are afraid of him. He goes into a rage if you forget one of his rules and accidentally touch him or if the UPS man arrives at the door out of a brown truck, all dressed in brown, with a brown package in his hands. He screams and cries. He sits in the corner and pushes his head into the wall. You can’t hug him or talk to him. You just have to wait until it passes. It can last for over an hour and it is always very loud. That is what scares my mom. She is afraid of his rage. She wants everything to be peaceful. It is also what John hates. He hates Matthew being babied and spoiled. He thinks Matthew is rude and selfish.

In a sense, he is. But Matthew and I have had some great times. He was the most attentive pupil to ever attend my make-believe school. He always loved our games. The only problem was that he usually wanted to repeat them over and over again in the exact same way. Still, he was quick to follow my lead and play whatever part I assigned him. He never had any ideas of his own but he loved the games I designed. I could always get Matthew to do things that no one else could by making a game of it. I even got him to put a piece of yellow lemon candy in his mouth once because that is what wizards eat for breakfast, though he quickly spit it out. He can be quite mean. His tantrums are awful. But John is wrong to hate him.

The first night of that weekend I sat with him while he surfed the Internet on his laptop. He was mad about some mistakes he found on a Lord of the Rings fan page. He was waiting for a chat to start so that he could point it out to everybody.

“Why does it matter so much, Matthew?”

"Because it is a lie, Kathy. They lied about Lord of the Rings.”

“They just made a mistake.”

“Why didn’t they check? Why would they say something they didn’t know was true?”

“They thought it was true.”

“How could they think something that wasn’t true was true? Did they just make it up?”

I didn’t answer. He went on. “It is not their book. If they want to make it up, they have to write their own book. They can’t make things up about Middle Earth. Only Tolkien can do that and he is dead so he can’t do it anymore, but he was the only one allowed to. And if they do write a book, I won’t read it because it won’t be as good as Lord of the Rings.”

“Why don’t you write a book?” I asked.

“I can’t write a book. I don’t how it starts! I don’t know what is supposed to happen.” His voice was getting louder.

I said,“Just make it up.”

He stood up. His fists were clenched. He said, “But I might get it wrong!”

“You can’t get it wrong. Whatever you make up is right.”

“No, no, no!” he yelled.“I can’t make it up!” He stood there, squeezing his fists, and yelled at the ceiling, “If I make it up, it is a lie. I can’t think about all the possibilities. They can’t all be right! I can’t just make a world. It is too big. Stop it, Kathy! Stop lying.”

My mother came to the door. Matthew was sobbing. Without looking at me he said, “Stop trying to kill Frodo and Gandalf. It is not your book.”

“OK, Matthew. You don’t have to make it up. You can leave it alone.”

He sat back down and looked at the floor. “I like Middle Earth. It is all there. There is nothing to guess. If you don’t know something, you can find it in the books.”

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. I whispered, “Middle Earth is a good place. Let’s leave it just like it is.”

His laptop beeped and he turned back to it. My mom was silent. I saw an anxious look in her eye as I left for my room. I flopped on my bed, exhausted from a two minute discussion that somehow went wrong.

It went wrong because something is broken in Matthew’s brain. It doesn’t work right. He is not the way God wanted him to be. It is like he’s been born blind or deaf but only on the inside. He can’t think clearly. There is no cure. He just has to learn to live with it. This brokenness causes him pain. It brings him fear. It can also cause problems with people because the world does not understand him. He doesn’t intend it but it brings a certain amount of stress to those he loves as well. His mom and dad nearly came to the end of their patience, not only with him, but also with one another that weekend.

But what does Matthew want that is so different? He wants to be loved. He wants life to be fair. He wants things in their proper place and people to tell the truth. Maybe the part that is broken in him is the part in us that compromises and accepts the problems and ambiguities in this fallen world as though they were natural. Maybe we’re too comfortable with lies.

When my aunt and uncle came to pick him up they sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee with my mom. I saw they were holding hands. I know it is not over for them, but I think that was a good sign. Matthew is not going to get better. Their problems won’t disappear by one weekend of reconnecting. But I am glad that they are trying.

I’ve started praying for Matthew again. I know I never should have stopped, but I had. I am also reconsidering my own viewpoint. Matthew doesn’t like yellow or brown. Is that any more arbitrary than not liking onions or spinach? Matthew doesn’t like confusion and chaos. Why should he? And why are we so quick to shrug it off and accept it? He knows just what he likes and what he doesn’t like. He is intolerant of falsehood. Shouldn’t we all be the same?

I am more eager than ever for the Day of the Lord. Matthew and I will both be healed. Matthew’s brain will be as it was meant to be; so will mine. Our minds will no longer be broken. The mind of Christ will be in us, and our souls will be free. The chains of sin and shame will slip away. This annoying, broken, and fallen world will no longer hurt us. We won’t play games and make-believe. We won’t long for Middle Earth, because we won’t need to.

Kathy Luder has been known to get lost in the webs she weaves. She confuses fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. It is not easy to keep an entire make-believe world straight! But she always loves e-mail from the world that God designed. You can reach her at kathyluder@hotmail.com