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What is the worst kind of bullying you’ve ever had to
endure? I was the skinny kid. One of my friends posted a video of a kid who
was taunted as a “pork chop”.
I’m not
here to make light of whatever you might be facing or have had to endure, but I’m
been reflecting lately on how there is a level of bullying that we seldom have
to face here in North America.
I want
to describe a picture for you. It’s the
picture of a woman that was sent to me this past week. She is naked, lying flat on her back in a bed. This isn’t the kind of naked picture you find
in a magazine or on any of your porn sites.
She has been stripped naked. She
also happens to be dead.
I’d
show you the picture, but I don’t believe it would honour her or her
family. Her head is impaled to the
pillow underneath of it, as a crucifix has been stabbed through her oral
cavity, out the back of her head. Blood
poured out of her eye sockets, I assume from having them gouged out. There is a hole in her chest, from where her
heart used to be. It was ripped out,
probably because, “that’s where Jesus was”.
It was
pretty rough growing up as a skinny kid, but never that rough. Getting stuffed in a locker might have been
fun for the people who put me there, but it wasn’t much fun for me. I still remember being afraid to go to some
of my classes, because I knew which people would be there. Yet even the worst of what I faced, and what
many of us face, pales in comparison to what Christians face around the world.
There is
another picture that has been on my mind lately. It’s a picture of another Christian. He is smiling joyfully, with a hangman’s
noose around his neck. He is facing the
ultimate act of bullying, but has the kind of confidence that many of us lack. No terror.
No fear. No weeping. Only joy, knowing that He is about to meet
The One he loves most.
If you
enjoy teasing people, I ask that you would think carefully of the words you
use. Most of the people you interact with
do NOT share the same hope that this man has.
The people we mock, ridicule and persecute are much more likely to cry themselves
to sleep, fall into depression and contemplate taking their own lives,
especially if the ridicule plays on their personal sins and insecurities. That kind of merrymaking can be unbearable,
particularly when it plays with an already muddied conscience.
If you
are the victim, I want you to know that your torment doesn’t have to last
forever. I say that in a couple of
ways. Firstly, school isn’t life. Work isn’t life. Where you are now, isn’t where you will always
be. Nobody is shoving me in the locker anymore. You aren’t alone. We normally escape. The people who torment you now probably won’t
follow you, your whole life through.
Secondly,
there is real hope. It’s not the same
kind of hope the world offers you. The
world tells us that we have to stand up, which is really a good idea. But it’s tougher than it sounds. Isn’t it?
Sure. There are some success
stories, and we celebrate them on YouTube when the bully gets his. Yet the world doesn’t see your bruises from
the time you tried to push back, or the injuries you took after telling the
powers that be.
The
hope that I speak of, is the same hope possessed by the man with the noose
around his neck. It’s a hope that allows
us to stare death directly in the face, with a joyful smile. It’s a hope that allows us to endure. It’s a hope which sounds like this;
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
8 We are pressed on every side by
troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. 9
We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but
we are not destroyed.
I have
seen this kind of hope, only amongst the people of Christ. I’m not saying that all Christians are able
to happily stare death in the face. I’m
simply saying that I have not seen this kind of hope elsewhere.
Unfortunately,
I really do think that there is a torment which lasts forever. However, the pain you’re facing now, isn’t
that kind of pain.
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