I had a lot of confidence issues as a kid. With bad acne, fluctuating weight, and just an all-around lack of cool, I looked for ways to compensate, and unfortunately, I found one: my smart-ass mouth. I could rattle off jokes faster than many of my classmates, and while this was sometimes amusing, it more often came off arrogant, annoying, or even hurtful. For a while there, my best material was insult comedy, or at least, that’s what I thought until the principal called me into his office. In that ornate room, from the other side of his desk, a frustrated but sympathetic Dr. Martin looked me in the eyes and said, “Thomas, you’ve become a bully, but I believe you can change.”
Most of the bullies I’ve encountered in youth ministry and social media are not the stereotypical arrogant jocks depicted in movies like The Karate Kid. They’re more often insecure people with something to prove, and many of these bullies don’t even realize they’re bullies. Take a look at modern internet culture. In the age of instant communication, the geeks really have inherited the earth, but because we’ve grown up seeing ourselves as underdogs, we think we get a free pass to bully others online. You get a similar rationale from white supremacists. How many of the Charlottesville protestors, when interviewed, presented a narrative of being oppressed? And by the same token, the past several decades of conservative politics can be summed up with one tagline: we are under attack, and I will fight to protect your safety and your rights. This narrative falls apart pretty quickly when you note how its most outspoken advocates are also oppressors, and there lies the biggest challenge:
No one wants to admit they’re the bully.
We all want to think we’re the underdog.
Growing up in white Evangelical circles, there was one narrative that played over and over again: We are not of this world, and this world is out to get us. We are oppressed and abused, but we will continue to stand up for Jesus. Almost every piece of curriculum or music would touch on this theme at some point, so I was surprised when I looked at the bigger picture of the last 2,000 years and realized Christians have been in control of western culture for almost all of it. Yep, ever since the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., Christians have been accepted in western popular culture, and the main persecution of Christians has been by other Christians. American Christianity hasn’t had a true underdog narrative at any point in its existence, and yet it’s deeply engrained into our culture.
We’re oppressed. We’re discriminated against. We’re persecuted.
No, not really. Sometimes people just disagree with us, and we don’t know how to handle it because we’ve convinced ourselves we’re not the bullies. We’ve held dominance for so long that any move toward equality feels to us like oppression, and it’s hard to imagine a scenario where we look less like God’s people.
When we read the Bible, we will always project ourselves onto characters, but over the past several centuries, maybe we’ve been reading ourselves onto the wrong people. White American Christians aren’t the oppressed Israelites enslaved by the domineering Egyptians; we are the Egyptians. We aren’t the bold prophet standing up to a corrupt king; we are the corrupt king. We aren’t the secret Christian gatherings under threat from the Roman Empire; we are the Empire.
Let’s come clean.
If geeks are really the victims of bullying,
then maybe we should be more willing to call it out in our own circles.
If America is really about defending the underdog,
then maybe we should pay attention to the real underdogs.
If Christianity is really about resisting oppression,
then maybe we should take careful note of who’s doing the oppressing.
Maybe we all need to hear those difficult words my principal said all those years ago:
We’ve become the bullies, but I believe we can change.