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

The “Third Way”: Seeing God’s Beauty in the Depth of Scripture’s Violent Portraits of God

A publishing house recently sent me an advance copy of a book written by a well known scholar on the topic of the non-violent God revealed in Jesus, asking me to endorse it. (Publishing protocol stipulates that endorsers not critique a book before it’s released, so I will not mention the name of the author…

God’s Dream for the World

One of the grandest expressions of non-violent nature of God is found in Isaiah 11. Here God is dreaming of a time when his creation would be entirely free of violence. “The wolf will live with the lamb,” Isaiah says, and “the leopard will lie down with the goat.” So it will be with “the…

The Cleansing of the Temple and Non-Violence

Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is the most commonly cited example of those who allege that he did not absolutize loving enemies or refraining from violence. I submit that this episode implies nothing of the sort. First, it is important that we understand that this episode was not an expression of unpremeditated anger on Jesus’…

The Challenge of Malala to the Church

http://youtu.be/f506lCk6Tos I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but it’s Malala Yousafzai appearing on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. At the age of 14 Malala was shot in the face at point blank range by the Taliban while riding to school on a bus, all because she wouldn’t stop speaking up for the right of…

Is Having the “Right” Theology the Core of Christianity?

Last week, we posted a piece by Greg that challenges the practice being violent “in the name of Jesus” toward others who err theologically. (Click here to read this post.) Being that this piece got a lot of attention, we thought it worthwhile to provide some further explication to this point, especially in the light…

Podcast: Is There a Moral Difference Between Killing and Murder?

Greg argues against C.S. Lewis’ claim that not all killing is murder.   http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0223.mp3