An Orlando area man lashed out on students on his daughters' school bus. If you didn't catch the story, check it out here. If you want to watch it without spin, the YouTube clip is below. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pvsVHdepsw&]
If you watch the Today Show clip linked above, you'll see that the psychologist's response is that the father stepped out too far and that his actions brought about a bad response. She also says that he must teach his daughter to not be a victim and be able to defend herself. A few questions are begged.
1) Really, who can blame him?
2) Defend herself? Against the kind of actions the kids took on her?
3) IS THIS THE SOCIETY WE ARE LIVING IN?
It's probably a good quality of life if you can live without the actions and words of others hurting you in any way, shape, or form. But NO ONE lives like this. Everyone deals with criticism in different ways, but it always changes the soul.
Bullying though, is like criticism without original fault. Everyone has been bullied in one way or another by someone somewhere. Bullying digs deep into the soul to make the individual most vulnerable. After they are vulnerable, it changes their very way of life. It changes their thoughts. It changes their actions, It changes their mindset. It changes their mood. It draws individuals to do horrible things, even take their own life in some cases.
The psychologist on TODAY suggested that the father ought to find the daughter a new way of transportation (are not the children going to be there when she gets to school too?) and teach his daughter to defend herself (do you understand what this means about society?).
If the SOLUTION to bullying lies inside of a proactive action done by the victim, then we are essentially saying that you must learn to defend yourself against others in order to survive life. Some of you are thinking, "Yeah, that's the world...that's reality...get used to it...you'll never get anywhere if you can't stand up for yourself..." And while we are agreed that confidence has to be a key element in presenting yourself to the world, please understand what this is saying about the world. We are saying that we live in a society that REQUIRES its citizens to defend themselves in order to survive.
I see where this works and flows with Darwinism.
But I don't, from a Christian setting, see where this is AT ALL consistent.
Throughout scripture, both Old and New Testaments, God sticks up and cares for the lowly. God has even gone to extremes to make sure that the needy, less, and unjustly treated are finally cared for and spoken for.
We arrest a man who is sticking up for his daughter (however violently threatening he was) when she is being brutally bullied. He was sticking up for one who couldn't speak up for themselves. THIS is what we are called to do.
IF we allow ourselves to fall into the "teach a man to fish" atmosphere, we separate society into separate beings that don't act communally at all. This allows those who aren't as confident and can't speak for themselves to fall to the bottom, be trampled, and die.
This isn't the Bible I'm reading. What about you?
-B