They came to me to better understand how, while in prayer, Christians apparently ended the life of an autistic boy while praying for his healing during a prayer service last summer in Milwaukee.

What grief and despair, what fear could his parents have experienced to have led them to make such a drastic attempt to “fix” their son? Doesn’t God give us — all of us — the ability to read, to study, to use our cognitive abilities (brains) to understand and address illness, to seek out competent medical advice and help to address treatable conditions?

How then, while in “prayer,” while attempting to talk with God, could a Christian church consider autism “evil spiritedness” as reportedly members of a Christian church in Milwaukee did when they allegedly wrapped an 8-year-old boy in a sheet and held his legs and prayed to remove the “evil spirits” from him. The boy died of asphyxiation.

Sadly, people can be afraid of what they don’t know and don’t understand and, in their fear, sometimes good people — our neighbors — act on that fear, sometimes in brutal ways. There are times, I believe, when we talk to God but don’t always listen to him. We don’t always hear what he has to say and instead sometimes we hear what we want God to say to us.

Ryan is 9 and doesn’t seem to understand. He doesn’t seem to know why kids from school aren’t interested in trains or the mechanics of how an engine runs. He doesn’t seem to understand how to get a classmate to come home and play with him after school. Ryan is a boy with autism.

When I met with Ryan’s family, we discussed Ryan’s symptoms; contemporary treatment and educational alternatives (using comprehensive research recommendations) to help Ryan best use the gifts God has given him. Finally, we spoke about sadness and fear. Sadness and fear of an educated — and at times ignorant society — where in one case it went so far as to end the life of a suffering child in need.

Autism is a neurological problem that appears to affect the development of language, of certain cognitive skills and of problem-solving abilities, and in the ability to “know” how to act (socially) around other people. Autistic children may then tend to be solitary despite being in the presence of others.

The deficits appear to originate, in part, on how a child processes information at the higher brain levels in the motor and sensory parts of the brain. These symptoms seem to begin when the child is very young and vary greatly in severity and prognosis from one child to another.

Ryan is one of more than 74,000 children diagnosed with autism in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, Ryan appears to have a higher functioning type of autism, one that is very responsive to treatment and one that will allow him to receive a competitive education in his local school.

But his parents are scared. They remember autism as being associated with psychosis or those who were schizophrenic, people who could not tolerate any form of human contact. They also remembered the stigma of being “accused” of being the cause of their son’s autism through “emotional neglect” when he was a baby, something very far from the truth. And they are scared because they have read the stories about how some autistic children are mistreated, hurt or in one case had life removed from him, in the name of prayer.

Many of the symptoms comprising the autism spectrum are treatable, and many forms of the disorder when properly treated, result in tremendous success and remediation.

The prognosis for Ryan’s future, if he is allowed to receive treatment and education in standard and contemporary ways, is very bright and hopeful.

Let us pray for the soul of the boy from Milwaukee, that through his death, no other Christian will feel so scared as to be compelled to participate in actions that may result in an end of a life rather than improvement of a life. And that all suffering from this neurologic disorder known as autism, may have as bright a future as any other child in our free society.