MAGA

The Wilderness of Bullies and Victims

~ philipamerson ~ 2 Comments

The Wilderness of Bullies and Victims

Whether national politics or elementary school, we observe bullies and victims. It is not a new phenomenon.  Seventy years ago, at West Spring Street School in New Albany, Indiana – I saw it – and felt it – on the playground. This ancient human reality goes all the way back to Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers, King David and Uriah, Pharoah and the Israelites, or King Herod or his wife murdering John the Baptizer.  Bullies and victims are forged deeply into our emotional and moral foundations.

Literature is built on the anti-hero, victim, and hero motiff.  It is a delicious formula that fits well in literature, movies, and television series.  Still, this easy pattern is missing something critical and complex.  It is the place of responsibility. It is the paradox of the cross. As H. Richard Niebuhr noted in his classic “The Responsible Self” (1963) ethical behavior requires sorting through the ambiguity and distortions of real life.  Ethical behavior requires attention to a universal community and honest observation of the best intentions and failures brought by each and every actor.

A victim can often turn into the bully; the research is clear.  The story of the man bullied at work who comes home to kick the dog is a familiar one. Most adult abusers were abused as children. Limiting our frame to either bully or victim is a gestalt that has gained a wide purchase in our society. It is the core “stuff” of the MAGA movement. It plays out in the courtroom, city halls and, even in the church. Politicians market in meanness. Tough talk and threats are confused as “strong leadership.”  On the other side many can only see themselves as victim. So much of our social service efforts and congregational life assumes a primary task to rescue the victim from the bully – and, of course, we are to be cast as heroes rescuing the victim.

In the wake of the trial of United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño there are persons on each side suggesting they have been victimized – and “the other” was a bully.  What’s missing? I would argue it is responsibility to the larger community. Was it a struggle over power, gender, culture, money?  Perhaps all of these, yes. How did we arrive at the point when good folks on each side are to be sorted into the “bully/victim” divide?  Perhaps one party was unwilling to seek a responsible remedy before going to trial. Perhaps both parties were unwilling.  But here we are… still living in the bully/victim wilderness.

There are many ways forward.  (Many will point to Matthew 18 counsel on how handle a dispute. It is a good place to begin.)  However, I will start by borrowing from Robert Greenleaf’s notion of Servant Leadership.  He writes of a servant leader’s responsibility in this way: “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?  And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will he or she benefit, or at least, will he or she not be further deprived?” (The Servant Leader, p. 7)

Might it be that while dollars, publicity, trust and energy were put into a drama of victimhood or bullying, the opportunity to act on the behalf of the least privileged among us has been lost?

Sunday School and Poker

~ philipamerson

Sunday School and Poker

Recently I visited an adult Sunday School class in a nearby town. It was, well – unusual, surprising, and helpful to my understanding of some of our current culutural divides. In this class leadership is shared among the members.  Folks volunteer and can schedule their time as “teacher.” Greet Idea with lots of benefits.  You can learn about musical instruments, Buddhism, jogging, or one of the Biblical Prophets.  The class is filled with thoughtful and faithful people. It is in my mind one good model of excellence in congregational life.  It is a place of sharing and care.  One quickly can tell that there is much mutual affection in the group as there is an abundance of teasing and laughter. As John Wesley put it, there is a generous dollop of “watching over one another in love” stirred into the weekly fellowship. All to the good.

It is also a place where the divisions and distortions of our current political situation are offered. Among the many points of view, the many topics covered, sometimes a heavy dose of MAGA partisanship is brought to the lectern by the volunteer teacher.  I visited one Sunday morning when the Gospel-linked understandings of faith got more than a little garbled by Fox News “truths.”

That’s okay, good even.  I knew that there would be open conversation and a range of perspectives in this class.  Here is an opportunity for dialogue and the gentle corrections possible through friendship.  I have often thought that Sunday School classes and post-church-parking-lot-conversations serve as a seedbed for improved democracy.  I saw some of that in the class that day. I also witnessed the ways strongly held beliefs or ideological frameworks can disfigure the core message of Jesus of Nazareth.

I knew that members of the Sunday School class cared for this good man, filled with worrisome opinions and muddled prejudices. They knew of his real-life challenges. They were neighbors to one another. They offered each a place of respect. We all face challenges, whether betrayal, addiction, loss of health or loss of a spouse. We all know the dilemmas of fractures with friends or family. We all face loss of health or opportunity.

The volunteer teacher that morning proclaimed that from his studies, there was no guarantee the scriptures were the authoritative word of God, or that Jesus ever told the Good Samaritan story.  He then offered that the best framework for life is found in a poker game. “Each person at the table is dealt a hand at birth; that is the hand we play in life.” The cards one is dealt limit options, but he said this “will also offer some opportunities. The idea is to play the hand you are dealt as best you can when sitting at the poker-table-of-life.  Trying to help people can only hurt them if they haven’t been dealt the right cards.”

Wow!! Quite a framework. Quite a set of assumptions, all wrapped at the edges in the class-warfare encouraged by the Trumpian politics of our time.  In A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemmingway writes: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”  I prefer the answer Jesus gives to the question “And who is my neighbor?”  It begins, “There was a certain man…”

Pondering this in recent weeks, I come to two conclusions: 

  1. There is no coherence to the MAGA movement. It is polyform, a muddle of prejudice, half-truths, wishful thinking, grievance and a struggle for self-esteem. As much as it may claim Christianity as source, it is often (mostly?) untethered from the Gospels.  It is also thickly covered over, cocooned, if you will, by the belief that others are cheating, getting something they don’t deserve. Interestingly, it is a modern Gnosticism, – a belief in a special knowledge each individual may garner by watching the correct rightwing television or a scouring of questionable internet sites.
  2.  Such gatherings at this Sunday School class, and other venues where diversity is welcomed and where all are respected, are all too rare.  These places are a most needed antidote to our current social/cultural/religious divides.

I will plan to return to this class – in part because all the other Sunday School classes I know of near me are filled with folks who all think alike.  I guess this is the poker hand I have been dealt.