Dear John,

Now I know that you don’t like being told that you’re bad at stuff, so it’s important to be clear about this near the start.

Our value as people is not and should not be tied to our abilities or our scores on tests. That’s always been a challenge for you, because you were really good at written exams and so it became a convenient hook to hang some kind of sense of self-worth on.

Now I know you’re fine with doing a bit of theology – your faith is an important part of how you survived the last few years, and it won’t surprise you to know that it’s still very important to me. But some of those who read this might not see that yet.

At a base level, our value as people is tied to the fact that we were all of us – autistic and neurotypical, Olympic athletes and paralytics – created in the image of God, and so of equal value. Thomas Jefferson famously summarised it in the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” Interestingly, Jefferson wasn’t a Christian, and it doesn’t look like he’d worked through the implications of what he thought was obviously true – he was a slave-owner, for instance. But his words were based on thoroughly Christian principles, and what was “self-evident” to him had not been remotely obvious to people in societies which had been less influenced by the Bible. Classical Rome, for instance, would have thought it nonsense.

However, the Christian idea of worth goes much deeper than that. Remember the first law of economics – that something is worth what its purchaser is wiling to pay for it? And then remember 1 Peter 1:18-19 – that “You were redeemed… by the precious blood of Jesus.”

Therefore you are of infinite worth, and so is everyone else. And that worth is utterly independent of your skills, gifts or abilities.

Suppose there’s an old coin that is on sale in a junk shop for 50p, but when it is properly identified and sold auction, it sells for millions. Wasn’t the coin always worth that much? Just because some people treat you as worth less because of your autism, doesn’t mean you actually are.

You are incredibly precious to God, regardless of how others treat or ignore you. So precious that he let his only son die to rescue you! And God’s opinion matters far more than anyone else’s. Remembering that helps us to keep some of the hard truths we need to talk about in the right frame.

All the best,

Future John