I remember it like it was yesterday, and I’m still not sure how to think about it.
I believe I was in sixth grade, so I must have been eleven years old. It was a tough year. The usual troubles at home, and my teacher, a forceful lady whose family had had some historical differences with mine (I have no evidence that that fact influenced her), had decided that the only explanation for the trouble I was having in arithmetic class must be laziness. She had made it her business to shape me up. She lectured me often in front of the class. She gave me special punishments. She’d made me one of her personal projects.
One afternoon when school was over, I was coming out into the entryway to the building. There were inner doors at the top of the wide steps, and outer doors at the bottom. Three guys were waiting for me outside the inner doors. They ringed me, blocking my way. “Why don’t you try harder at math?” they asked.
(Yes, they were going to beat me up because of my math grades. Such is the comprehensive logic of schoolboy bullying.)
I knew immediately who the ringleader was. It had to be a guy I’ll call “Moe,” the dominant rooster of the class. The other two were just his goons. Moe was big and strong. An athlete. He bullied all the smaller kids. I wasn’t really all that much smaller than him, especially considering how fat I was, but I was weak and slow, easy prey.
I reacted instinctively. I went straight for Moe. I punched him in the mouth, then ran like a rabbit for my school bus. Moe was so surprised to get any fight from me that I gained the seconds I needed to make my escape.
The next day I told the teacher, and she lectured the bullies—again, in front of the whole class.
They didn’t repeat the attack.
Now here’s my problem. I responded in two contradictory ways. I hit back, and then I appealed to the authorities.
Hitting back was consistent with traditional wisdom. If you give in to a bully, we’re often told, he’ll just keep coming back. Stand up to him, bloody his nose, and he’ll respect you and leave you alone, because all bullies are cowards (this last assertion, I’m relatively sure, is more often than not a lie).
But higher morality says I was right to go to the teacher (proponents of the first alternative call this “snitching”). Personal retaliation, we are told, never solves anything, but just perpetuates the cycle of violence.
I tend to be skeptical of the second alternative. But it seems to be what Jesus was teaching when He said, “If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Luke 6:29)
I’ve never had children of my own, so the issue hasn’t come up again for me since I grew up, but what do you who are Christian parents think about this problem? Do you teach your children to fight back against bullies, or tell them to snitch? Or just endure in silence? Or do you think the commandment doesn’t apply to kids?
I have no idea what the answer is. I’m curious to have your input. Not for any practical purpose, but just to help me think about the problem. (I think I may have come to the question through considering the unenviable position of property owners in London suburbs just now.)
As for Moe, he’s dead several years now. I don’t know it to be certainly true, but small town rumor says he eventually “came out” as a homosexual, and died of AIDS.
Which made it easier, in a strange way, to forgive him.
I’m not a Christian parent, but I teach my kids two things:
1. If the authorities are available, for example in school, use them. They’re there for a reason.
2. Violence is legitimate for self-defense.
I think you did the right thing.
I consider myself a Christian and children I do have. When my daughter was in grade school a boy got another boy to choke her on the bus. She came home in tears, the “authorities” had reprimanded and put on notice not only the bully but my daughter. From then on I said nuts to the authortity, if he does it again you better knock the crap out of him. I’m happy to report it didn’t happen again.
I really hate that “I don’t care who started it” thing. It’s a cop-out by the authority figure, and institutionalizes injustice.
Yeah, but it can be hard to tell. When one of my girls complains about being mistreated, the consequences generally change when I learn that she was harassing her sister beforehand. Having hard rules helps though. If you hit someone in anger, you get spanked, even if she was being a jerk.
I haven’t had to deal with a bully problem. I can’t say I would counsel a child to do what you did, but it seems to be a viable option. I would discourage feeling guilty about it.
There is a limit to how much third party authorities can do.
As a pacifist geeky kid with enough undiagnosed aspergers to not read non-verbal cues well, I endured a great deal of bullying in Jr. High. It all came to a head my sophomore year when I finally let months of torment get to me to the point that I stood up in the middle of biology class, turned around and slugged a kid.
At the conference when my parents came to pick me up to serve my minimum mandatory three day suspension, the teacher told my mom that he had watched the situation develop for months and had done all he could to help me but couldn’t get others to respect me until I learned to stand up for myself.
For me it was a life changing experience. After three years of feeling like the school scapegoat, I was never picked on again after that. Nor did I ever have to fight again to gain my classmates respect.
This all reinforces my own observations. But then what do we say about Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” commandment? Are we saying He was wrong?
I really hate that “I don’t care who started it” thing. It’s a cop-out by the authority figure, and institutionalizes injustice.
The problem is the same as with date rape. It’s a “he said, she said” kind of situation. Teachers don’t really have the time and energy to act as judges.
That’s the whole point, isn’t it, Lars? Jesus said to love our enemies and this from Matthew 5:38-40 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.”
Jesus isn’t urging us to be milquetoast. He is urging us to love strongly, to stand up to someone by saying you won’t fight them back because the Lord is the master of everyone and will judge everyone. This doesn’t sit well with me at all, but I think it is what Jesus taught us–understanding that there is a time to fight and a time not to.
That looks fine, Phil, but I’m not at all sure what actual behavior you’re advocating.
I’m sorry. I’m suggesting that standing up a bully or enemy doesn’t require punching him, and that Jesus was telling us to love those who hate us boldly primarily by showing our faith in God.
But how to school bullies if the authorities can’t do anything? I think you and Greybeard did was good, but I couldn’t advise you to do it.
Well, phooey. I was hoping somebody had worked this thing out systematically. Seems like everybody’s as conflicted as I am.
I think you’ll have to read a book for a answer like that. Maybe Ken Sande’s The Peacemaker, which is a respectable book, but I wasn’t able to push my way through it the time I tried. Maybe I was in a bad mood for a few months.
I ask my wife about this, and she said she would tell our girls to stand up for themselves, and if they were hit, they should hit back. I’m not comfortable with that answer, but somehow we have help each other (esp. children) discern what justice and mercy is, so that we fight properly for justice, not personal revenge.
From the moment I entered kindergarten, I was bullied by one of several students. (My dad was not a popular fellow in the community. My brother and sister were also bullied. Having the entire school bus population spit into our winter hats was a popular way to express their dislike of us….besides beating us up periodically or hitting us with baseballs, etc….)
My dad’s advice was; “Never let anyone lay a finger on you! If you run away from a bully, I’ll make you regret it!!” His next proclamation was, ” If you get into trouble at school, you will get 10 times more trouble from me when you get home!”
And finally, “Never, never snitch!”
Then there was my saintly, Christian mother’s advice, ” Never, ever get into a fight! It never solved anything. If there is someone bullying you, tell the teacher. AND remember, if you get into trouble at school, I will give you more trouble at home with the switch!”
(Dad used to kick us into submission…mom used a branch from a tree that drew blood from our arms and legs…)
I believe I suffered from what is now called a mixed message…or was it something else?
I had a job at one time long ago that caused me to work in a state prison. I was stuck in a salli-port one late afternoon with about 30 or so inmates. At one point I felt extreme heat at my very upper thigh. I also felt someone’s hand enclosing on my…. boy-parts….
I dropped what was in my hands, grabbed at the hand that was getting too personal, twisted the arm behind the owner’s back and violently pushed the fellow into the concrete wall. All the time, someone was yelling for help…LOUDLY! (It turned out to be me doing the yelling…)
In short, I broke the fellow’s arm, his nose and several of his front teeth.
The heat I had felt was the inmate’s cigarette burning a hole in my thigh as he tried to grab my…things.
I was never again bothered by any inmate. Most all tried to chum up with me or tried to tell me a lot of jokes…..
In my observations of life, down-close and personal all the way to the international level…
bullies seldom respect a turned cheek. (Richy, in grade school didn’t who hit me with baseballs on a weekly basis and Hitler didn’t to anyone who tried to mollify him.) Jesus has the right idea and it is a good one. Perhaps I will miss out on some great experience in Heaven..but, here on earth… bullies should be made to feel it is not safe to bully.
Considering we should not encourage others to sin, for example by bullying us, maybe what Jesus meant was in a different context, such as first century Judean politics?
Remember, about 40 years after Jesus the Jews rebelled against Rome. That was as stupid an act as Wherein seceding from the union (not all of Texas, just Austin) would be today. Maybe Jesus meant that kind of political enemy, rather than bullies.
Well, I think Jesus’ point is that we should absorb violence into ourselves, rather than passing it along. However, I wonder if He meant that for kids. Did He really want kids to become like me, beaten down, defeated, and hopeless?
Lars, I taught my daughter exactly what Ori said in his first comment above: Advise the authorities *and* be willing to defend yourself. I taught her she must not bite or hit others, but that she had the right to use the amount of force necessary to stop others who would hurt her, *iff* verbal tactics didn’t work. I also backed my daughter when the school authorities failed to control a situation of which they had been advised and my daughter applied an immediate and violent solution to the on-going (violent) issue. The authorities whined, but the harassment stopped and, because I had backed her up, my daughter had no further problems. To me, that’s pure common sense.
As to the theological issues, I think that Christ meant exactly what He said, but I also think that you have to be able to walk before you can run. Some people are theologically adult enough to live up to that standard, at least sometimes, or we wouldn’t have martyrs and people like the lady in the news a while back who talked the guy who was holding her hostage into giving himself up to the police instead of killing her, himself, and as many as he could of the police who were responding to the hostage situation. However, expecting any child to live up to that standard is, to my mind at least, nuts.
There’s also the point Ori made about not encouraging others to sin, which, if I recall correctly, is the basis of Augustine’s argument for both self defense and the just war.
Christ is the Perfect Man and Perfect God; the rest of us do the best we can manage at the time. For some of us, that means doing exactly what Christ said and dying in the process. For most of us, it’s stopping the crime while allowing the criminal to live and, hopefully, repent. I managed not to repeat the worst of what my parents did to me, and my daughter is happier than I was. I know I made mistakes, but it was still the best I could do. My folks made mistakes, but it was pretty much the best they could do, so I forgave them and did my best not to repeat the mistakes. Hopefully, my daughter will forgive me for my mistakes and not repeat them. Will any of us ever be perfect? No, we’re not Christ, but His perfection makes up the difference between God’s demands and our performance.
Lars –
I identify – very much. I was bullied throughout Secondary (High) School. I finally cracked when I was 15, and punched one of the most obnoxious of the school bullies. After staring in disbelief for several seconds, he followed me inside and we had a stand-up fight for about 30 seconds before a teacher split us up. End result, 1 split lip and a bloody nose (me) and 1 bloody nose and a black eye (him). We were both sent to “Top Corridor” (where the senior teacher’s offices were) for the rest of the day, and interviewed by the deputy headteacher. I was suspended for the rest of that day, he for the next day as well. Formally, we were both “disciplined”. In reality, it was very obvious that the teachers knew exactly what the situation was and sympathized with me. In fact, at least 1 teacher came up to me in the next few days and said (in obviously “off the record” tones) “well done!”
I honestly don’t have a clear answer for the situation with kids. Personally, I certainly intend to teach my kids basic self-defence, and to teach them that they never have to allow someone to hurt them. My wife the Tae-Kwondo black-belt (:-) reminds me that if one knows how, one can defend oneself without attacking the aggressor.
Fundamentally, I think Ori’s 1st post says it all: authorities exist for a reason BUT, self-defence is a fundamental right.
As for “turn the other cheek”: the best short piece I’ve ever read on the relationship between that passage and self-defence is probably this: http://www.corneredcat.com/Christianity_and_Pacifism/
After a week of mulling this over since my last post, I wonder if we apply “Strike on the the cheek” too broadly. In my observation, a slap on the cheek is generally not violence meant to injure, but rather violence meant to insult. Could it be that Jesus was telling us to avoid escalating a situation when insulted? For me that interpretation helps me reconcile this teaching with other areas of scripture where God at times commends or even commands forceful intervention against God’s enemies. In this context Jesus’ command is not a call to all out pacifism, but to all out humility.
That’s a very interesting insight. I must ponder it.
That’s exactly the argument the inimitable Kathy Jackson is making in the essay I linked to. Really, its worth reading. I’ve also read several sermons online interpreting it that way. Lars, if you’re interested, I have several hundred links bookmarked to online articles on the morality of self-defence, I can try and go over them and pick out the best. I got interested in the topic when I first realised I might end up living in the US – the US attitude to self-defense (see, I can spell it both ways now…), and particularly to armed self-defense being so distinctly different to the prevailing culture in the UK. I ended up spending about 3 years fairly intensively (for an amateur, spare time effort) researching the ethics and morality of self-defense, the use of force, the right to bear arms, gun control… the whole shebang. I have several hundred, possibly more than a thousand bookmarks on my browser on these topics…
Thanks, Ian. It looks like a lot of material to study, though. I’ve been lazy.