We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Responding to Bullying

Robert Martin over at Abnormal Anabaptist posted this video on The Bullying Experiment. While I’m not convinced that shaming people who don’t intervene is an appropriate way to instigate change (shame rarely helps and you don’t know what fears may have kept someone from helping) I’m so impressed with some of the non-violent and courageous interventions you see here. Pacifism is not passive, and if we want to bring peace to situations unfolding around us, sometimes we’re going to have to step in.

Robert shared his powerful reaction to seeing this video as a past victim of bullying:

As someone who, in grade school, found himself withdrawing into the background because, the alternative, was to be mocked, hit, and deliberately embarrassed in public… I cried as I watched this every time someone intervened because, in my mind, I asked “Why did no one do that for me?”

Related Reading

Eye for Eye: That Time Jesus Refuted An Old Testament Teaching

One of the most surprising aspects of Jesus’ teaching is that, while he clearly shared his contemporaries’ view of the Old Testament as inspired by God, he was nevertheless not afraid of repudiating it when he felt led by his Father to do so (Jn. 8:28; 12:49-50; 14:31). For example, while the OT commands people…

Violence: What Did Jesus Do?

Thomas Quine via Compfight Here’s a spot-on reflection on what Jesus taught us about responding to violence. Whatever you think about the justification of violence in particular situations, as Christians we simply cannot escape the fact that Jesus demonstrated another way. From the reflection: And though he had access to unlimited power to have himself released…

How Are We To Love the Soldiers of ISIS?

Over the last several weeks I’ve received some form of this question almost every day. In some cases the question is asked rhetorically, as though the very question exposes the absurdity of suggesting we are to love this terroristic group. Other times the question is asked with a pragmatic twist. One person recently said to…

Should a Christian Serve as a Military Chaplain? (podcast)

Greg argues that both hot water and cold water are good.  Episode 530 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0530.mp3

Little Pacifism

Richard Beck spoke about something he names Little Pacifism on his Experimental Theology website. It’s so easy, in the name of peacemaking, to become angry and aggressive. I suppose this is just part of what it means to be human. However, if we hope to bring the Kingdom of God closer the earth (and to…

Where are the Blessed Peacemakers?

Religion Dispatches Magazine posted an article recently on embracing non-violence in the Christian tradition. In it, Elizabeth Drescher argues that the violent imagery in Paul’s writing accounts for a great deal of the violent posturing going on in churches today, but she also argues that these images have been misapplied and misunderstood. She challenges us…