Dear Crosswalkers,
Recently the topic of bullying has taken center stage in American culture, and rightly so. This year, over 13 million American kids will be bullied at school, on the bus, at home, online, through their cell phones and on the streets. Last year, a powerful documentary entitled BULLY was released. Then last week, Karen Klein, a 68 year old grandmother, was bullied by a small posse of middle school boys. It was captured on You Tube, which you can view by clicking HERE, and it went viral, being seen in snippets on most all the nightly news programs. I should warn you it isn't pleasant viewing, and it does contain profanity. Over a span of 10 minutes the boys relentlessly poked and prodded her, and hurled cruel insults at her, mostly about her weight but also about a suicide in her family. A great blog was written on the Mockingbird site which described the incident like this: "It's like grandma got dropped in the middle of Lord of the Flies." I encourage you to read the whole piece HERE.
What is America's answer to bullying? From my reading and experience, it seems like our culture has three responses. The first is the bureaucratic response of denial and cover-up that so many have experienced from public school administrators. This is where a heartless apology without repentance and without experiencing the consequences of negative behavior is considered sufficient. In the documentary, BULLY, there is a scene showing interactions between an assistant principal and two boys accused of fighting on the playground. The assistant principal insists they shake hands, and the bully quickly obliges with a smile and an apology. The other, a bullying target named Cole, resists. After the administrator dismisses the boy accused of the bullying, she tells Cole that because he didn't accept the boy's apology, he's being just like him.
"Except I don't hurt people," Cole says.
"By not shaking his hand, you're just like him," the assistant principal responds.
"Like someone who pushes you into a wall, threatens to break your arm?" Cole says. "Threatens to stab you and kill you? Shoot you with a gun?"
"He apologized," the assistant principal says.
The moviegoers clearly see the rushed attempt to be fair is in fact perpetuating a terrible and continuing injustice.
A second response to bullying is to throw money at the problem. Someone started a fund to treat the bullying victim and grandma Karen Klein to a vacation has raised $600,000 dollars!! Most of us would gladly endure that amount of bullying for such a largess. Of course, victims should be compensated for their suffering, but that hardly solves the problem.
Here's a third response: American culture is very good at hating those who hate. This is especially seen in the Klein incident. The YouTube video of the horrible event is titled "Bus Monitor Bullied by Vile School Children." The boys who bullied Karen Klein have now become the object of mockery and cruelty. Here are just a few of the comments from the Youtube site:
- "Those kids need to be put in the middle of the ocean, or a desert, or the south pole."
- "These kids need to be found, exposed and have their … teeth knocked out."
- "Please can we lock these punks in a room with Jerry Sanduskey ASAP!!!!"
The net result is that we become hateful toward hateful people. We become intolerant of intolerant people. We bully those who bully others.
Is there a better way? What Would Jesus Do? In a sense, the Pharisees were religious bullies in the first century. Our Lord was fairly harsh on them. The tax collectors were also, in a sense, bullies. Our Lord was very compassionate on them. The key seems to be balancing judgment and grace, as Jesus was so perfect at doing. Judgment is needed: Most people do not change their hurtful and destructive behavior unless society allows them to experience the consequences of their behavior. In a passage from Mark we will soon examine, our Lord was very harsh in telling those who bullied the "little ones" who believed in him that their consequences would be severe (see Mark 9:42-50).
And then there is the counterbalance of grace. Grace is also needed. It is interesting that Karen Klein has declined to press charges against her bullies. The Mockingbird blog put it like this:
She has not returned insult with insult, nor demanded an eye for an eye. “[She] was oppressed, and [she] was afflicted, yet [she] opened not [her] mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so [she] opened not [her] mouth,” to paraphrase Isaiah 53. In a world that would throw these thirteen year-olds behind bars for their bullying, Klein has, for now, extended a hand of grace, which might actually be the thing that changes the bully heart.
May the Lord help us to deal in a Christlike way, the scourge of bullying in our time.
Have a Happy 4th of July celebration!
Pastor John Christie
No comments:
Post a Comment