Actually, this is nothing new; we see selfish competition among the apostles, and factionalism in the early church. Slander and backbiting can become contagious in a church. Cruelty and bullying seem to be the way of the world, and the churches are all too worldly.
One Gospel story begins with the apostles arguing “as to which one of them was the greatest” (Luke 9:46). Could they have been any more selfish? This is where Jesus shocks them by using a child to show them that “the least among all of you is the greatest” (9:48). The apostles will get into the same dispute again later, and he will have to tell them that a real leader is a servant (Luke 22:24–27; Matt 20:25–28). Of course, many church bullies are also volunteers who “serve” the church, but their service is poisoned by aggressive behaviors, the psychological roots of which are unconscious. Religious people can practice a moralistic and judgmental kind of bullying, commonly recognized as a “holier-than-thou” attitude.
Jesus as Defender of the Vulnerable
Jesus defended many individuals against bullying, and took steps to restore their self-respect. As he was walking through Jericho, he encountered a blind man begging. The blind man, finding out that Jesus was walking through the town, shouted to him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38). The crowd that was with Jesus “sternly ordered him to be quiet,” but he shouted all the more. Jesus had the man brought near and simply asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Healing him, as the man requested, Jesus finished by saying: “your faith has saved you” (Luke 18:42). Jesus builds up the self-respect and praises the faith of this man whom others were trying to silence. I cannot imagine this man being silent ever again! He would have been a beacon of praise and gratitude from that time on.
Perhaps even more embarrassing (in that day and age) than a blind beggar was the woman with an issue of blood, who approached him as he was on his way to heal someone else. Here is another person shunned by her society, “suffering” (Mark 5:25), and bent over by shame. Yet she musters the courage to secretly approach Jesus, to touch his garment, and gets healing even from that timid step of faith. Jesus calls her forward and “she came trembling” (Luke 8:47), but he gently encourages her, saying “take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well” (Matt 9:22). Would anyone dare to shun her again? Would Levites and priests cross the street when they saw her coming? Or would they shun her for a different reason, because of the story she now undoubtedly had to tell?
Another important instance of Jesus stopping an act of bullying was when a woman was being criticized for anointing his feet. Jesus leaped to her defense: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me” (Mark 14:6). Notice that his main concern is that people “let her alone”—stop criticizing her. All too often we focus on the Christology in this passage, but what about the simple kindness, the compassion of Jesus? That is where he begins: “let her alone.” He stands up for her in the face of a contemptuous crowd of people (including his own followers) who were considered socially superior to the woman. His defense of her is a defense of human spirituality, in opposition to labels of class, gender, and reputation. We should begin there, too, affirming respect for every child of God.
When the people of Jericho grumbled against Zacchaeus the tax collector, with whom Jesus said he would be staying, he defended the man, building up his self-esteem with the remark “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9). He could not have said anything more confidence-building than this! The man is a son of Abraham, the friend of God and father of the faithful. In that society, one gets to take on some of the prestige of one’s ancestors, so Zacchaeus, too, is faithful, and a friend of God. What a different message than the sneering attitude of the townspeople toward Zacchaeus!
In these four examples, we see Jesus uplifting people who had been marginalized because of deformity, impurity status, gender, and profession. But the most celebrated instance of Jesus’ defense of marginalized people happened when the apostles rebuked children for coming up to him. Jesus not only defended them (“let the little children come to me”), but “he was indignant” with the apostles (Mark 10:14), and he held children up to be emulated. Jesus says “the greatest in the kingdom” is the one who “becomes humble like this child” (Matt 18:4), something completely counterintuitive to the way we still think. He is highlighting the child’s trustingness: adults must be receptive, must “receive the kingdom of God as a little child” (Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17), and that means they must “change” (Matt 18:3). The receptivity of children is the standard by which one gains admission to the kingdom.
No other sage or prophet, no founder of a religion is so well-known for showing a high regard for children. There will be more to say about this in the section on Jesus’ critique of the patronage system. Here we must point out that Jesus also stood up for adults who were unjustly criticized. When his apostles were accused of breaking the Sabbath by gleaning, he defended them with two biblical stories, capping it off by saying, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matt 12:1–7). The criticism arose out of a fixation with ritual rules; the critics did not know the value of “mercy” (or “compassion,” NASB). God desires compassion more than any ritual observance, and the obsession with ritual correctness can lead to bullying—religious bullying. Fixation upon purity rules is devoid of love. Today there are many Christians (on both the Left and the Right) who have a kind of purity system which they use to judge and bully those who do not rank highly on their purity scale.
Jesus offered many lessons that militate against bullying, such as parables in which he exalts people from despised groups: a good-hearted Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), a self-effacing tax collector (Luke 18:13–14), a merchant who wants pearls (Matt 13:45–46). He works against the common bias against Samaritans, who had a variant version of Israelite law and cult. He questions the popular resentment of tax collectors, even having a tax collector as one of his apostles (Matt 9:9). He even undermines the smug contempt for merchants, building a spiritual teaching on the image of the merchant’s love for fine jewelry. There is something useful even in human connoisseurship. He repeatedly mocks the “holier-than-thou” attitude of those who looked down on merchants, tax collectors, women, and Samaritans.
Further, he undermines the contempt for foreigners several times, commending a Roman centurion and a Syro-Canaanite woman, and he even travels to Gentile territories (Mark 5:1; 7:24; Matt 15:21) and interacts with Gentiles. He honors a centurion because the man recognizes order in the universe (“I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes,” Matt 8:9), and knows that Jesus has a position at the top of the spiritual order (“only speak the word, and my servant will be healed,” 8:8). The Syro-Canaanite woman is honored for her faith, her persistence, and perhaps even her sense of humor, though it may be that the evangelists do not recognize her humor. (I see humor in Mark 7:28/Matt 15:27, but Jesus’ reaction in the following verses in those gospels does not indicate any recognition of that humor).
Jesus showed so much love for ordinary people, for needy people, for children, even for Gentiles, that any description of his personality must emphasize this feature. When faced with cruelty, he could comment on it with objectivity, without wrath. After being struck by a temple guard, Jesus said “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” (John 18:23). If the guard had any conscience he would have felt shame after this. Jesus calmly appealed to the guard’s sense of justice, trying to reason with the bully. Experience shows that this usually does not work; once people start acting violently, they become moral cowards, and their conscience is stifled. We do not know what the result was in this case. There was at least one person with whom this worked: the centurion at the cross, who, after Jesus’ death, said “Truly this man was a son of God.”10
The most amazing statement of forgiveness was when Jesus forgave his killers from the cross (Luke 23:34). Again, his considerate approach gave people a chance to
