Love Is Bigger

For the past few months, I've been following an excellent blog called Coming Home. Its author is Dr. Gerard Nadal and he is a scientist, a Ph.D. Molecular Biologist and Microbiologist to be exact, who is also Catholic and pro-life.

In Dr. Nadal's words, from the "About" section of his blog:

The purpose of this blog is to explore the lost human essence in the headlong
embrace of reductionism, to promote the dialogue between Christian Anthropology and the sciences, primarily the Biological Sciences. Abortion, Euthanasia,
Eugenics, Physician Assisted Suicide, all threaten human life on a scale never
before imagined. There have been 1.8 BILLION abortions worldwide since the year of my birth, 1960. That’s one abortion for every 3.7 people walking the planet
today. Where did we go so terribly wrong? . . . .

We are all children of God, sharing the same dignity as such. Restoring that lost dignity is what this blog, and my life’s work is all about.

Dr. Nadal is also the father of an autistic son, so when he talks about the dignity due a child of God, he knows that that dignity always extends to those that our society calls imperfect.

He writes extensively about the modern drive to design our children through genetics, and what the implications of those designs are for our culture and for our souls. Many times the answer of modern science is to get rid of the baby until we can figure out the cause of and the cure for the defect.

But can we sustain the cost of that cure? Can we really?

His latest post is about the rise of autism and his view on what that means for us as a civilization:

Autistic children are Love’s answer to our designer approach for offspring,
especially as there are no clear genetic markers or physical attributes to pick
up in pre-natal testing. We are being given one last chance as a civilization to
get it right, to learn the meaning of sacrificial love through a condition that
strikes at the very heart of social communication, to walk ourselves back from
the precipice of the abyss of narcissistic annihilation. We are being given the
chance to learn the true meaning of human dignity and marital love, a love that
creates new life and is large enough to swallow any imperfection that comes with
that new life.

It's an interesting thought: autism as God's last ditch effort to get us to love. As the mother of an autistic son, I found myself agreeing Dr. Nadal. (And I encourage you to click over and read the whole thing.)

Before Fiver came to us, I was scared of having a child that wasn't "normal." (whatever normal really means anyway!) I was afraid that I wouldn't be up to the task of raising a child like that.

What we've learned since Fiver is that love is what makes us capable of the task. Love is there to fill in the cracks and smooth over the edges and hold us together when the bottom falls out.

God is Love.