Bullying Article

My article about bullying in the Nutley Sun today was edited by them.  Here is the article as originally written:

Responsibility: the Cure for Bullying

One thing about which the Bible is very clear is that even though God is sovereign over all, we as fallen humans are still responsible for our actions.  Just as the first step to getting right with God is accepting responsibility for who we are and what we’ve done, so too can many social issues be solved simply by responsibility being taken by the appropriate parties.  The suddenly prevalent social dilemma of bullying is no exception.

But where does responsibility for bullying lie?  I am going to place the responsibility squarely on myself and my wife, along with anyone else raising children.  You see, we need to take responsibility for who we are.  We are parents.  We are the ones our children watch.  We are the example they follow regardless of our instructions otherwise.  Make no mistake, they will do what we do, not what we say.  We also need to take responsibility for what we’ve done. And what we’ve done is show our children how to take out frustrations on people who have not caused them.  We have taught our children that aggressive behavior, like raising our voice, is one way to deal with confrontation.  Worst of all, we have on too many occasions shown our children that it is okay to deny responsibility when it happens.

It is very easy to dismiss the problem of bullying when we believe that other people’s kids are the bullies.  It is easier still to just consider this a school issue and leave it to the teachers and administrators to figure out.  But raising children is not easy, and the Bible puts a high priority on raising children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).  And if we look to the both the teaching and the example of our Lord, we will see that grace, mercy, and forgiveness are our calling.  Bullying is the antithesis of these. 

So we need to take on the difficult, and possibly painful, task of looking at our own children and holding them responsible for what they do at school, at home, and everywhere else.  We need to teach them that aggression is not a problem solving technique.  We need to teach them that bullying is often so subtle that the bully is himself or herself unaware of it.  We need to make them responsible for their own actions.  But before we can do that, we need to give them an example.  We need to take a look in the mirror and take responsibility for what we have done.  We need to realize that we have taught our children how to be bullies every time we’ve spoken down to a waitress.  We’ve taught them with every berated telemarketer just trying to do their job, with every frustration from a bad day at the office that we have brought home, and every time we’ve avoided responsibility for any of it.

Fellow parents, bullying is not just our children’s problem; it is our problem.  It is in our power to fix the problem or deny responsibility.  Our children are watching…