As a Christian and a parent, I wish to both protect my children from the dangers of the world while at the same time educating them about the problems they will face in life. Sometimes this comes by way of learning experiences when things happen to them, and other times it comes by way of an event they happen to witness. Then there are those teachable moments when something happens outside of their perception, and you actually bring it to the attention of your child so they can see and understand. Such was the case when I read an article yesterday.
I want my children to be aware of bullying, how and why it happens, and to be able to defend both themselves and others from the practice of bullying by others. However, when I read the article yesterday, it kind of set the whole thing of bullying and intolerance in its proper perspective. You can read the article here: “Anti-Bully Speaker Bullies Christians”
When you read the article, what strikes me most is that Dan Savage, the speaker invited to address specifically the topic of bullying, is a known homosexual, yet many Christians still went to hear him speak – not to judge him, hold up signs, heckle or protest, but to listen with an open mind. They certainly didn’t go there to be bullied. The audience? Teenagers. Not a group of adults, but kids. What happened next is all too typical of what happens by the same people who call Christians intolerant.
Dan Savage chose this moment to address his personal views about Christianity rather than talk about what he was actually there for. Instead of talking about bullying, he cursed, name called, and generally bullied anyone in the audience who was a Christian. Exactly what he was there to speak against, he began to do. The Christian response? They got up to simply walk away. They did not scream, yell, protest, or anything. They quietly rose up and walked out. Dan Savage’s response? He name calls and bullies them even more. Typical.
How does he justify this behavior? He makes a claim leveled by many by saying “there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong.” This is wrong on two counts. First, there are not “many people” doing anything even remotely like “gay bullying” and there is not one single account I have heard of where someone specifically used the Bible as their justification for bullying gays. The Bible does say homosexuality is wrong, but as soon as some idiot bully happens to bully someone who is gay, it is people like Savage that assume the context must be the person was using the Bible condemnation of homosexuality as the cause of the gay bullying. Again, typical.
Savage is but the tip of the ice-burg. The situation in that moment all too clear. Christians, when bullied, are expected to remain silent and are expected to take it, while if the same speech had been given anywhere in the nation by any Christian leader, that Christian speaker would have been labeled a “hate-monger” and accused of inciting “hate-crimes” against gays. Savage is a hypocrite, and a bully. Savage is also just one of many who persecute Christianity and Christians in general for no other reason than that they are Christian. They like to lift their own banner of “free speech” while conveniently labeling any dissent “hate-speech not covered under free speech”, and seek to remove the freedom of religion.
It is one more example I am going to use to educate my daughters about what they will face as a Christian. It is a lesson about intolerant people claiming Christians are intolerant, bullying by those who claim to help the bullied, and hypocrisy from the same people who point the finger at others claiming they are hypocrites. Dan Savage, as is the case with those who hate and do not understand Christianity, is simply ignorant. My task in educating my children will be to teach them how to deal with that ignorance, intolerance and oppression, simply because they are Christians.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Is it possible that Biblical condemnation of homosexual behavior, church community condemnation of homosexual behavior, legal inequality of homosexual committed relationships and parenthood, and occasions where adults and children show various levels of disrespect to homosexual people, are in some ways to some degree related?
If it is possible, isn’t our responsibility or opportunity to consider it thoroughly, if doing so could reduce that disrespect?
I intend to teach my children to listen and try to understand their critics before they reply, not to assume that their critics must be ignorant, intolerant, and oppressive.
I intend to teach my children to be patient and forgiving with an injured person if he lashes out, because patience and forgiveness is required to make peace. And because Christians, when bullied, are expected to remain silent and are expected to take it; not expected by atheist hypocrites; expected by Jesus.
Possible? Sure. Just as there are “bad cops” out there, they do not speak or act for the vast majority who do their jobs with distinction. There are also people who may use the Bible to justify some horrible act, but they do not speak and act for the vast majority of Christians who truly believe in the message of love and acceptance.
I applaud your desire to teach your children to listen and understand before replying. Very commendable. However, in the case of Dan Savage, there is no assumption of ignorance, intolerance, or oppression – it was on full display and without regard to the Christians in the audience. In fact, when the walk-out occurred, he became even more belligerent and abusive of Christians in general? Why? Again, just because they are Christian.
His talk was supposed to be about bullying, and he ended up becoming the poster-child example of exactly what a bully is – ignorant, intolerant, and oppressive.
Can a bad experience with a cop cause someone to have unfair but understandable fear of all cops?
What is our responsibility to correct the impression of homosexuals who’s only experience of Christianity is the minority of Christians who disrespect them?
If we don’t have a responsibility to correct the impression, do we have an opportunity to? How do we go about taking advantage of the opportunity?
Lots of good questions. However, there is no justification for what Dan Savage did, and others like him do just because of some specific impression created by some vague anecdotal evidence. There is a double-standard here that is glaringly apparent. I’m just trying to shine a spotlight on it because no-one else in the mainstream media will.
Name one public figure that bullies gays/homosexuals openly, and can be linked to Christians and Christianity? I’m not talking about someone who says “I believe homosexuality is wrong”, I’m talking about someone who talks and treats homosexuals the way Dan Savage treated the teenagers in the audience that day. As for other examples you seem to be unaware of, try listening to Bill Maher talk about Christians and Christianity. Here is a very well-recognized public figure who has contributed $1,000,000 to the campaign of our current president, and yet there is no outcry, no shock, no protest, nothing about what he says.
It would never be allowed or tolerated for a Christian of his standing to be allowed to say the same things, or hold the same viewpoints about homosexuals and broadcast those viewpoints. In my experience, people who do not see the persecution of Christians today have very selective vision and hearing.
I guess I’m not really interested in proving or disproving that the climate of the national media and politics is hostile to or critical of Christianity. I am not interested in anecdotal or paradigmatic examples of atheist hypocrisy. I am not interested in proving that we are right and they are wrong. I’m not interested in proving that Christians are victims who need sympathy. I am interested in exploring the responsibility or opportunity of average Christian people to examine our relationship with homosexuals and repair them. Dan Savage aside, there are not many gay and lesbian children comfortable with going to church; do you understand or acknowledge that reality? My question is, assuming that these kids aren’t all god-hating, intolerant atheists, why don’t they feel welcome, and what are we going to do about it? Do we take time to cry foul about CNN or HBO or the DNC and relish in our righteous exposure of hypocrites? Or do we figure out what happened to make so many gay children afraid of Jesus Christ? Dan Savage, whatever you think of him now, was once one of those scared kids. You think engaging him in a fight is the solution to our problem?
That’s easy. No one who is choosing to sin is going to feel comfortable when going to church. If a gay man shows up to church one Sunday, he doesn’t have a sign that tells others he’s gay. He either advertises it, or no one knows. The reason why he would feel uncomfortable though might actually be God telling him that he needs forgiveness. Just a thought!
Again, it’s not that I’m unaware of people like Maher. It’s that I don’t think encouraging outcries of our victimization or the hypocrisy of our critics is any way to live or practice gospel. We’re not an interest group to be rallied; we’re a community on a mission. You think I’d agree that we ought to spend time drafting a list of wrongs and enemies if only I knew how long the list would be? You think that peacemaking is only the responsibility of people who haven’t been injured?
I’m tired of the “peacemaking” responsibility being that of only Christians. The point is, people like Dan Savage who elevate themselves as “peacemakers” and show up to speak against bullying only to then bully are not only unhelpful, but damaging to their own cause.
While you ask a lot of good questions, it becomes difficult to have a meaning conversation addressing those questions when the very people the answers would help are lashing out at the very people who could actually help them. What Dan Savage did is inexcusable, can we at least agree on that? If it had been done by a Christian, it would have been condemned. The lack of condemnation about what he did poisons the atmosphere and makes any attempts at peacemaking difficult at best.
Those truly seeking peace should speak peacefully, and when bullying is present on either side, it should be vilified. What’s missing here is the condemnation of bullying by a bully.
Peacemaking is the responsibility of Christians because the gospel is the means of making peace. And it will be difficult. And we shall have to overlook our injuries. There is no such thing as “inexcusable” when you’ve already forgiven, and whether or not CNN has reported or condemned an act of bullying has no bearing on my ability to understand and reconcile.
That I forgive does not mean the act is excused. Commit a crime, I’ll forgive you, but the law will still hold you responsible. What I don’t understand is your inability to see what is plain – a man who espouses to speak against bullying is the one doing the bullying. It is hypocrisy, and I’m calling him out on it. That one blogger calls him out on it is but a drop in a bucket of what should be an outcry by the ones who think such language is offensive if it were to come from Christians, but fall hypocritically silent when it comes from one of their own.
It is not a lack of forgiveness to point this out, it is exactly the recognition of it that I must teach to my children so they can understand why they will also be bullied simply because they are Christian.
Don’t excuse, but understand. Of you teach your children to see themselves as victims of ignorant, intolerant atheism, instead of messengers capable of bridging misunderstanding and fear with understanding and reassurance, then you perpetuate the conflict by lying to them about it’s context. “Dan Savage inexcusably overreacted because some Christians use Christianity as an excuse to pass discriminatory laws or ostracize gays from church, and we need to shout peace louder than they shout war, in order for peace to be heard.” Not “I don’t know why my brother is crying, Dad, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
There is no way I could possibly be lying about the context of his rant. The context was given by Dan Savage himself, I just shed light on it. The victimization of Christians in the audience that day is not imaginary, nor the words he used and the manner in which the teenagers who went to hear a speech about bullying were in turn bullied. You can try yelling peace louder than those who shout war and all you’ll get is a shouting match. I’ll speak peace while pointing out the ones who say they seek peace are actually shouting war, then maybe (just maybe) they’ll understand why they don’t get peace.
I don’t by context mean the rest of the speech, but rather the culture of legal and church discrimination. I’m starting to suspect that you just don’t have any experience with that dynamic in Christian communities. It would be wise to obtain some, so that you could understand, not merely vilify, your enemies.
Vilification and condemnation is unspiritual following, not spiritual leading.
And finally, it’s not missing; you have done it. What has it accomplished? Now what is to be done? Must we amass a mob at Savage’s home? Rally evening news anchors to wag their fingers? Or can we turn attention to our own behavior, not because he is faultless and we are faulty, but because we have better work to do then pointing out the people who aren’t working?
I have one further thought.
“Savage is also just one of many who persecute Christianity and Christians in general for no other reason than that they are Christian. They like to lift their own banner of “free speech” while conveniently labeling any dissent “hate-speech not covered under free speech”, and seek to remove the freedom of religion.”
In my admittedly limited experience, few people persecute Christianity and Christians in general for no other reason than that they are Christian, or seek to remove the freedom of religion. More people have the impression that Christianity, by sins of commission and omission of thought, word, and deed, contributes to the inability of homosexuals to have their marriages recognized by the secular state, or to adopt children, or to the incidence of homosexual youth being expelled from their churches or homes, or shamed into running away or killing themselves?
Are these impressions right? I don’t know for sure. But I’ll tell you the truth, I would not ask that question of someone who claimed that these critics hate for no reason, or that they want to remove the freedom of religion and expect an honest and accurate answer. I don’t expect people who mischaracterize their enemies to be honest about their own mistakes, anymore than my mother believed me when I would get into a fight with my younger brother, then claim when we were caught that “he started it for no reason” and “it’s all his fault.” That’s the sort of inability to self-reflect that kept my mother probing for the rest of the story.
Note: I did not say for “no reason” I said, “for no other reason than that they are Christian. Savage assumes, wrongly, that the act of a few represent the whole.
In my experience, Savage is not the exception. It is far too common to see atheists, especially public figures, who are intolerant of Christians and Christianity in general, and bully Christians with the “free-speech” flag flying behind their back. However, if a Christian ever stands up for his viewpoint and says he believes homosexuality is wrong, he is immediately labeled “intolerant” and a “hate-monger” who “incites violence” – and the “free-speech” flag is quickly done away with for him.
The persecution of Christians is not merely common, but is exacerbated by the fact that it is not covered by the media, nor thought of as “a big deal”. However, let one Christian leader do what Dan Savage did, using the same words against homosexuals, and the outcry and uproar would be deafening. Bullying isn’t just what you say to someone, it can be encouraged by what you don’t say to stop it. This has been going on with Christians and Christianity for some time, and where is the outcry?
This story about what Dan Savage did never made it past the article written. Again, what would have happened if roles had been reversed?
Even if I understand my enemies, as you put it, how does that excuse the bullying of Christians teenagers at a conference where they were expecting to hear someone speak out against bullying? It’s as if you want to justify Savage at the expense of those he vicitimized. Whether or not, or even how and when Christians respond is not the topic of this post.
I need not “understand” Dan Savage or “the culture of legal and church discrimination” to “understand” what he did was flat out hypocritical. I’m merely pointing it out, and that is the topic of this post.