With new warnings from government officials and the FDA’s approval of new treatments, autism has roared back into the headlines. Sadly, this news has brought a flood of pain, confusion, and shame for many parents.

I’m the father of a child with autism. When I hear discussions about causes and cures, my thoughts often drift to blame and guilt. Past parenting choices roll around in my mind, and I wonder whether I somehow did something wrong or made a choice that played a role in my child’s diagnosis.

It’s not just me. The weight of societal and internal blame can be crushing for many special-needs parents, driving them to despair and isolation. While there’s no cure for autism, there is a remedy for blame. It’s found when we understand autism through the lens of God’s love and redemptive plan.

Autism’s Effects

The profound challenges and weighty responsibilities of parenting a child with a severe disability like autism often go unnoticed. Autism is a neurological condition that impairs motor, language, and social skills—abilities many typically developing people take for granted. The condition triggers restrictive, repetitive movements and hyperfocus on objects or ideas. These behaviors complicate an individual’s interaction with the world.

Autism’s effects vary from mild (though not insignificant) to serious, with the most severe cases requiring 24-7 attention. One child with autism may grow up to finish college, get married, and have a family, while another may be nonspeaking and require constant care for the rest of her life.

The profound challenges and weighty responsibilities of parenting a child with a severe disability like autism often go unnoticed.

It’s essential we see and acknowledge the tragedy and suffering attached to autism, especially when it’s more severe. The “autism is his superpower” script we hear in our culture sounds encouraging, but to many, it’s a nicety plastered over a gaping wound.

Families affected by autism grieve the loss of “normal,” and parents mourn hopes they had for the future. Parents crave the best life for their child; they long for a healthy Christ-follower who will grow up to have a family of his own. For many, autism shatters that dream. Countless parents know their child will live with them for the rest of their lives, and when they’re too old to care for him, the responsibility will go to a relative or group home.

Moral Model of Disability

No one knows for sure what causes autism, but that doesn’t keep people from speculating. This can be a good thing. Medical studies of autism’s causes may lead to better treatments and more effective support. But public speculation about what has caused a disability can also bring hurtful assumptions. Caretaking parents’ struggles are made so much harder when faulty assumptions make them feel they’re at fault.

We see an example of this sort of interaction in John 9. The disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (v. 2). The question reflects a common assumption that’s both ancient and damaging; it’s known as the moral model of disability. This view holds that when people suffer from disabilities, their sins, or those of their parents, are the cause.

People in many ancient cultures held to a version of this assumption. They often employed elaborate rituals to determine what sin they’d committed. Their hope in discovering a “cause” was to change their circumstances or curb their suffering by placating a god’s displeasure. Sound familiar? As horrible and archaic as such practices sound, our own society’s discussions about the causes of autism can fall into the same trap. When we focus on parental actions, we take disability out of the realm of God’s providence and make it a solely human responsibility.

Disability is rooted in the fall. Our first parents’ sin introduced death, illness, and disease into our world. But disability isn’t, in most cases, connected to individual sin. God doesn’t hold you guilty for your child’s autism, regardless of what caused it. He doesn’t hold people morally culpable for knowledge they didn’t possess at the time. We see this principle throughout the Bible (e.g., Ex. 21:28–29; John 9:41; 15:22).

If some environmental factor like a medication taken during pregnancy or a treatment administered during infancy contributed to your child’s autism, God doesn’t hold you responsible for not knowing what even the greatest medical minds in the world didn’t know. As for the better choices we should’ve made but didn’t, they’re nailed to our Savior’s cross along with every other sin and failing (Col. 2:14). No one parents perfectly, but our perfect Father forgives our failings when we confess them and place our faith in Christ’s cleansing work (1 John 1:9).

Lord over Disability

In John 9, Jesus answers his disciples in a way that pivots the conversation from the question of causes to his redemptive purpose: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3). Jesus reminds his followers that in God’s providence, disability will be used for his glorious plan. Despite appearances to the contrary, God ultimately determines who will be affected by disability (Ex. 4:10).

The disciples had good intentions. They wanted to understand why, but they wrongly put the why in man’s hand rather than in God’s. To Jesus, the cause of the man’s blindness didn’t matter compared to what God was doing through it. God was using the man’s disability to point people to their need for salvation. Your child’s autism may not be used in the same grand way, but God still has a redemptive purpose for it, even if you don’t see it clearly right now.

Despite appearances to the contrary, God ultimately determines who will be affected by disability.

Christ is the Lord over disability. Autism doesn’t catch him off guard, nor does he haphazardly place those with autism in random families. If you have a child with autism, God chose you for this blessed and burdensome task. Regardless of the condition’s causes, whether they be genetic or environmental, God chose your child for you, and you for her.

In Ephesians 2, Paul reminds us that everything we have is from a loving God: our redemption, our salvation, even our works. He writes, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (v. 10). Parenting a child with autism is a good work God prepared for you before the world’s creation. Embrace it while leaning on God’s grace, and know that it’s part of God’s redemptive purpose both for you and for his people.