I just read a story about a mother who said her 2-year-old son was bullied by a grown man. They were in a Wal-Mart store shopping and the little boy was wearing a pink headband. The man took the headband off the boy and cuffed him and said, “You’ll thank me later.” When the boy and the mother objected the man said, (as reported by the mother in the Huffington Post): “’Your son is a f*cking fa***t.’ He then started sauntering out, but not before he threw over his shoulder, ‘He'll get shot for it one day.’”
The mother reports that not a single person in the store that witnessed this interaction said anything to the man, or came over to console her and her son.
I posted the story on my Facebook page today with the question: “Why don’t we speak up to bullies?” One of my friends sent me a private message and thanked me. She said she gets confused in religion about the speaking out part. She said: “Most religion just says love, don't speak out and ‘turn the other cheek.’”
This is my response to my friend. The love and “turn the other cheek” part is when someone you are in relationship with has hurt you, and when you are called to forgive.
The “speak out part” comes when we see injustice in the world. When someone who does not have power, such as a child, is being harassed by someone with power, such as an adult, that is when we speak out. The “speak out part” comes any time we see or hear injustice, bigotry, bullying or harassment.
In this case, a mother was minding her own business, shopping which two young children. A man with his own biases took it upon himself to enter into the physical space of a 2-year-old child and inflict his values onto the child and the mother. He used profanity and physical force.
Over and over again in our world, bullies think they have the right to push their values upon other people. They do it in public: on the playground, in the supermarket, in the boardroom and in the halls of Congress. We the people have the right and the responsibility to stand up to bullies.
As followers of Jesus, we have the responsibility to speak the truth in love to bullies. You do not have the right to rule the world. God gave the world to all the people. We have the right to live in peace in harmony. Each person is of value to God. Each person is a beloved creation of God, unique and beautiful.
Cheri Holdridge is the founding pastor of The Village Church, a unique partnership of the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church, in Toledo, Ohio.
