THE BULLIED AND THE BULLIES PT. 3
Mike Cunningham
November 17, 2013

“She had a tremble to her, the inner tremble you could feel with just a hand on her shoulder. I saw her in a grocery store. I had not seen her in some months. I asked about her kids and husband, and when I did, her eyes watered, her chin quivered, and the story spilled out. He’s left her. After twenty years of marriage, three kids, and a dozen moves, gone. Traded her in for a younger model. She did her best to maintain her composure but couldn’t. The grocery store produce section became a sanctuary of sorts. Right there between the tomatoes and the heads of lettuce, she wept. We prayed. Then I said, “You’ll get through this. It won’t be painless. It won’t be quick. But God will use this mess for good. In the meantime don’t be foolish or naïve But don’t despair either. With God’s help you will get through this.”

“Then there was the teenager I met at the café where she works. She’s fresh out of high school, hoping to get into college next month. Her life, as it turns out, hasn’t been easy. When she was six years old, her parents divorced. When she was fifteen, they remarried, only to divorce again a few months ago. Her parents told her to choose: live with Mom or live with Dad. She got misty-eyed as she described their announcement. I didn’t have a chance to tell her this, but if I see her again, you can bet I am going to look her square in the eyes and say, “You’ll get through this. It won’t be painless. It won’t be quick. But God will use this mess for good. In the meantime don’t be foolish or naïve. But don’t despair either. With God’s help you will get through this.” Cited in the excellent book, “you’ll get through this,” by Max Lucado, Pgs. 3-4.

”It won’t be painless. Have you wept your final tear or received your last round of chemotherapy? Not necessarily. Will your unhappy marriage become happy in a heart beat? Not likely. Are you exempt from any trip to the cemetery? Probably not. Does God guarantee the absence of struggle and the abundance of strength? Not in this life. But He does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.”

“It won’t be quick. Joseph was seventeen years old when his brothers abandoned him. He was at least thirty-seven when he saw them again. Another couple of years passed before he saw his father. Sometimes God takes His time: One hundred twenty years to prepare Noah for the flood, eighty years to prepare Moses for his work. God called young David to be king but returned him to the sheep pasture first. He called Paul to be an apostle and then isolated him in Arabia for perhaps three years. Jesus was on earth for three decades before He built anything more than a kitchen table. How long will God take with you? He may take His time. His history is redeemed not in minutes but in lifetimes.”

“But God will use your mess for good. We see a perfect mess; God sees a perfect chance to train, test and teach [Joseph] the future prime minister. We see a prison; God sees a kiln. We see famine; God sees the relocation of His chosen lineage. We call it Egypt; God calls it protective custody, where the sons of Jacob can escape barbaric Canaan and multiply abundantly in peace. We see Satan’s tricks and ploys. God sees Satan tripped and foiled.”

“Let me be clear. You are a version of Joseph in your generation. You represent a challenge to Satan’s plan. You carry something of God within you, something noble and holy, something the world needs-wisdom, kindness, mercy, skill. If Satan can neutralize you, he can mute your influence.”

“The story of Joseph is in the Bible for this reason: to teach you to trust God to trump evil. What Satan intends for evil, God, the Master Weaver and Master Builder redeems for good.”

“Joseph would be the first to tell you that life in the pit stinks. Yet for all its rottenness, doesn’t the pit do this much? It forces you to look upward. Someone from up there must come down here and give you a hand. God did for Joseph. At the right time, in His right way, He will do the same for you.” Ibid. Pgs. 3,4,9,10.

“Joseph’s story just parted company with the volumes of self-help books and all the secret-to success formulas that direct the struggler to an inner power (“dig deeper”). Joseph’s story points elsewhere (“look higher”). He succeeded because God was present. God was to Joseph what a blanket is to a baby-He was all over him.”

“Any chance He’d be the same for you? Here you are in your version of Egypt. It feels foreign. You don’t know the language. You never studied the vocabulary of crisis. You feel far from home, all alone. Money gone. Expectations dashed. Friends vanished. Who’s left? God is.”

“David asked, “Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? Where can I run from you?” Psalm 139:7. (NCV). He then listed the various places he found God: “in the heavens… the grave… If I rise with the sun in the east and settle in the west beyond the sea, even there you would guide me” (VV.8-10 NCV) God, everywhere.”

“Joseph’s account of those verses would have read, “Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? If I go to the bottom of the dry pit…to the top of the slave block…to the home of a foreigner…even there you would guide me.”

“Your adaptation of the verse might read, “Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? If I go to the rehab clinic…the ICU…the overseas deployment office…the shelter for battered women…the county jail…even there you will guide me.”

“You will never go where God is not. Envision the next few hours of your life. Where will you find yourself? In a school? God indwells the classroom. On the highways? His presence lingers among the traffic. In the hospital operating room, the executive boardroom, the in-laws’ living room, the funeral home? God will be there. “He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).

Each of us. God does not play favorites. From the masses on the city avenues to the isolated villages in valleys and jungles, all people can enjoy God’s presence. But many don’t. They plod through life as if there were no God to love them. As if their only strength was their own. As if the only solution comes from within, not above. They live God-less lives.” Ibid pgs. 25-26.

Frank Paretti, the author of another insightful book, “No More Bullies” says that,

“Long before I became a published author, I was a public speaker. I spoke at youth rallies; retreats, Bible camps, and church banquets-you name it. I did Bible studies, lectured on Christian world-view, preached the gospel, delivered sermons, and covered all manner of subjects-all that is except the subject of this book.”

“I guess it seemed just a little too esoteric, too narrow in scope. After all, to my knowledge, I had never heard anyone stand before an audience and address the matter of boys, girls, men, and women demeaning each other, picking on other people needlessly, and treating each other with abject disrespect. Nobody talked about it in a public forum-not parents, teachers, preachers, or college professors.”

“Sure, we’ve all heard the subject of bullying mentioned once in a while, usually treated as an unpleasant nuisance, a rite of passage that happens to everyone, no big deal. But I’d never heard anyone actually preach on it. I’d never heard anyone come out and say that bullying is wrong. I had to wonder, if no one else considers it important enough to talk about; how can I be sure any audience will think it important enough to hear about? Though it was a significant burden I had harbored secretly for most of my life, I never seemed to find the right reason, place, and time to talk about it?”

“But then came the Life on the Edge conference for youth and their parents in Ontario, California, on Saturday afternoon, May 22, 1999. Focus on the Family sponsored the event, and I was scheduled to be one of the speakers during that weekend. I’d done LOTE conferences before and had some prepared messages in my files already, but things changed after the killings at Columbine High School. The more I read and heard about that whole tragedy, the more I felt a quaking and stirring in my spirit, as if God were saying, “Frank, here is your reason and your place, and yes, it’s time to talk about it.”

“You may have heard the talk broadcast on the Focus on the Family radio program. When I first delivered it in Ontario, I was almost afraid I’d flopped, that I had failed to get my message across to the audience. As I presented the speech, I was way outside my comfort zone and choked with emotion half the time, being completely vulnerable about my experience. I told no jokes. I did no humorous routines as I normally do. I simply stood on the platform and shared from my heart. Nervous, and with little confidence in my memory, I leaned over my notes, even reading aloud from them. I rarely strayed from the podium, gesturing and moving around as little as possible while I spoke. I agonized through every word of the talk.”

“The audience of fifty-five hundred teens and their parents were receptive; they even applauded at times, but, for the most part, they remained still, subdued, and strangely quiet during my presentation.”

“Afterward, I came to understand why. This wasn’t a talk an audience could enjoy, applaud, and then yak about as they left the auditorium. This was a dig deeper, grave opener that scraped off layers of dirt revealing issues that had been buried long ago but were not really dead. For many in the room, my message was a painful reminder of past hurts and a call for reflection. For others, it was the emotional equivalent of a dentist drilling through a live nerve.”

“It’s not a light and simple matter to open up and admit you’re still harboring wounds from your childhood or to admit that you were the bully in someone else’s life, the cause of the hurt. It’s difficult to admit that you are being bullied or you are the bully right now.” “Heavy stuff. No wonder the audience responded in self-conscious silence.”

“Following my speech, the first feedback I received was from the sound technicians backstage. Of all people! These guys were adults, professional employees of Focus on the Family. They appeared to have perfectly normal, grown-up exteriors, all decked out with their Life on the Edge T-shirts and walkie-talkies. Nobody would have guessed that they had lived for years with a wounded spirit, with memories of sorrow, abuse, and loneliness, of being pariahs at their schools, on the job, or in their families. But they hadn’t forgotten what those wounds felt like, and now, having heard me broach the subject and admit that the faces of my oppressors still haunted my memories, these adults felt free to talk about the ghosts from their past.”

“Later, I sat down with a charming couple, a drama duo who presented some remarkable parables and skits during the conference. They too had a story to tell about demeaning experiences in their pasts, and the similarities were disturbing, disturbing because we could share so freely from a common experience.” “After I got back home, I heard from the organizers of the event. No, I hadn’t flopped, as I had feared. Actually, I hit a nerve.”

“Dr. James Dobson heard a tape of my talk while exercising on a treadmill one morning, and it touched him so deeply he took his wife, Shirley, out for a drive that evening, and they listened to the tape again in the car. They agreed they had to share it with the Focus on the Family radio audience.”

“The opening words of the broadcast are worth recounting. First came the telephone voice of an anonymous woman. “I was one of those kids who at one time in my life was mean to everybody else. I’m sorry … I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. Please forgive me and forgive everybody else, because nobody deserves all that.”

“Then Mike Trout, Dr. Dobson’s radio cohost, gave a warm and evocative introduction. “Did you ever pick on someone? Tease him or her for whatever reason? Well, of course, you did. Unfortunately, it’s an event that happens far too often, and I’ll go so far as to say you remember at least one occasion when you were made fun of too. Those memories are etched in our brains, and each occasion, each offence is an ingredient in the recipe that has come together over the years to create who we are today.” “While we can all accept that bullying and abuse betray a lack or loss of respect for other human beings, there is a deeper issue: the devaluing of human life; and that in turn indicates a lack or loss of respect for the Giver of human life and dignity, God Himself. The message a bully sends is a mockery of God’s handiwork, a lie that slanders God’s handiwork, a lie that slanders God’s nature and negates His love for us.”

Citing Curtis and Eldridge, Paretti says that they can “trace some of our misgivings about God to our childhood experiences, including the infliction of wounds by others. See if you can relate to any of these: “Parents who were emotionally absent; bed times without words or hugs; ears that were too big and noses that were too small; others chosen for playground games while we were not; and prayers about all these things seemingly met with silence.”

“I’m beginning to find out that many people can strongly relate to these issues, more than we’ve ever imagined. It brings an interesting, television-like image to my mind. I see myself walking along in the center of a vast room, sort of like those all-white corner less sound stages you see in a television studio. For a moment, I think I’m the only one with a story to tell about childhood wounds that still hurt, but then, from one side, a sound technician comes along, an amicable guy wearing a life on the edge T-shirt, carrying a walkie-talkie. He was the pariah of his class. He knows what I’m talking about. So we walk together.”

“Then comes a stage technician for Life on the Edge. And then the drama team that performed, and then a lady, a friend and listener of Focus on the Family who could hardly listen to the broadcast because it reminded her of the deeply buried pain from her past. Ah, here’s the middle-aged woman who refuses to sing, even though she has a perfectly good voice and plenty of latent talent. She can remember the very day during music appreciation day in the sixth-grade, when she stopped singing. The other kids laughed at her and told her she sounded like a bird. Humiliated, she closed her mouth and has never opened it again to sing.”

“Here comes a beautiful, well-known screen actress. Nobody would guess that she had to wear a body cast for four years during her childhood. She was treated so cruelly by her classmates that she dropped out of school in the tenth grade and spent her teenage years as a loner, often hiding in the bedroom with the door shut. Years later, after she had established a relationship with Jesus Christ, she was finally able to accept herself and to forgive those who had hurt her.”

“Until now, I never thought I’d be some kind of Pied Piper, but suddenly, all these people who recognize the validity of what I’m saying are coming out of the woodwork.”

“Our society, especially the Christian community has been slow to discuss many sensitive subjects.” “Such offenses happen in Christian homes almost in the exact same percentages as those of non-believers.” “If devaluing human life-and thereby God’s creation-is wrong, why do so many do so little to stop it? Worse yet, why do so many participate as part of the problem?”

“Surely, Mr. M was aware of what his students-and his teacher’s assistants-were doing to that poor little kid in the shower. Surely the teachers and staff at Columbine High School-or any school for that matter-could hear the sounds of bodies hitting lockers, could see the ketchup stains all over some student’s clothing, could hear the laughter of the bullies and the cries of the victims. Surely the bus drivers know when a gang of losers descends on one helpless kid, knocking his books all over the street at the bus stop. Surely the teachers notice when a child comes into class with his shirt torn, his shoes missing, and his clothing soiled. Most certainly, the kids know what’s happening; they’re part of it. They face the bullying, badgering, and other such treatment almost every day in school; they’re immersed in it.”

I hope you folks, as well as those who may read it later, have found this message to be a helpful eye-opener. It certainly contains lots of food for thought. I strongly urge you to please ask God to show you what He want’s you to do about The Bullied And The Bullies in our society. And then do it!

Lord willing, next week….