Have you ever been bullied? Perhaps you were but you did not know what bullying was.
Imagine: One day you are spending time together with several people in your extended friend group. You recently become passionate about something new in your life. You begin sharing what you know about this subject with emotion and conviction.
Several individuals in the friend group have strong differing perspectives on this topic. Due to your passion and convictions, they are uncomfortable sharing firmly with you, they have no interest in this new passion you are consumed with.
Those tired of hearing about your new passion form a mini-friend group, to gossip and plan how to get you to stop talking about this subject.
They create a great storyline: how they have become fearful of you being around them, because you are always bringing up this subject and speaking so strongly about it.
They approach the head of the organization where everyone gathers frequently, and demand something be done before their fears and discomfort spread and infect the whole organization.
Since there is a policy forbidding bullying within this group, they accuse you of bullying them and demand you be restricted from talking about this topic with anyone within the organization. They refuse to allow their names to be shared with you, because this is an extended friend group, and many relationships might perceive them negatively if word got out they had worked diligently to remove this topic from everyone’s conversation.
The authority intervenes on their behalf and instructs you to cease talking to anyone about this subject. Next restrictions are placed on you to keep you isolated from everyone in the organization to “protect” the few organizers who united to restrict your freedoms and ability to serve within the organization.
Because no one ever shared real details with you about the basis of this group’s fear and accusations, you have no clue why such severe sanctions were put in place, and you have now become isolated from everyone within the organization.
Eventually you determine this mini-friend group is actually bullying you. You just do not know who they are. And since the authority is putting sanctions in place, they must be in on the bullying.
Wow, this is a long-winded story. Almost four hundred words.
This would be a good test to see how an AI assistant would shorten the story to be used in a daily blog of five hundred words or less. Let us hold this thought for a future blog.
I wrote this story to present the thought, our society has lost the courage and boldness to address issues and to focus on relationships.
Too many in our society are consumed with protecting people’s feelings and discounting the need to pursue truth and relationships of real value. Relationships where we readily share our joys and our struggles as we encourage one another to grow and be all God intends for us to be.
Today, let us be bold and truthful with compassion and grace.
