Trump is Testing Our Bully-Resistance. Jesus can help.
Bullies are boring for their predictability. For their gaslighting — their tedious self-referential talking and unrelenting lying. For their lifelong cohabitation with fear — always afraid, projecting their own narcissistic tendencies on others, expecting the worst of everybody. As kids, we have to learn to deal with bullies — on the way to school, in the hallways, whenever the teacher isn’t looking.
Jesus had Herod the Great to contend with as a child (the Herod who turned the holy family into asylum seekers). Then later in life, Herod’s son, Herod Antipas. Jesus lived under the shadow of these two bullies who lived by the same monotonous bully script. To the bully, everyone is a potential rival. Herod Antipas grew up in a family whose father murdered at least one wife and two of his own children. Bullies live in a world of fear breeding a world of hurt.
Like his father, Herod Antipas was a complicated man — ethnically Arab, religiously Jewish, culturally Greek, and politically Roman. Authoritarians either wipe out religious elites, or curry their favor, whichever is easier. One thinks of Vladimir Putin staging a baptismal re-enactment last year, in front of Russian church leaders, a hand-picked crowd, and State television cameras. He removed his upper garments (a favorite Putin photo-shoot move) and waded into the frigid waters on Epiphany, according to national religious custom — crossing himself, of course.
One thinks of Richard Nixon, arranging his own hacking of the DNC, yukking it up with a naive and ambitious Billy Graham, regaling Graham with his anti-Semitic jokes and slurs, to Billy’s apparent delight. We do tend to mirror the powerful, often to our shame. At least Billy had the decency, years later, to apologize when the Nixon tapes were released to the public.
None of it original, spare, strange, or new. And here we go again. The only novel twist? The aptly-named bully pulpit has a new platform: Twitter.
So it might be time to brush up on how Jesus stood up to Herod Antipas. Two occasions stand out. One time Jesus was in Herod’s territory (northern Israel) doing his preaching-healing thing. Some religious leaders who were trying to contain Herod’s worst impulses — perhaps cooperating where they could, perhaps offering the bully-crack of praise (“never said a truer word, chief!”) in order to nudge Herod in a less dangerous direction. Out of genuine concern for a fellow Jew, they warned Jesus that Herod was out to get him — mirroring, as we so easily do, the fear that drives and surrounds the bully. Jesus would have none of it. “Go tell that fox for me [no one in Israel liked foxes, it was an insult] I’m doing this that and the other, today, tomorrow, and the next day, and then I’ll move on.” Don’t mirror the bully’s fear. Stand up to it. (At the same time, get out of his way as necessary.)
Later, when Jesus came before Pilate, the Roman governor in Jerusalem sent him to Herod, who was in town for the festival and wanted to see Jesus — one celebrity craving the attention of the latest cultural phenom. It says Herod “questioned Jesus for a long time” despite the fact that Jesus stood mute before him. What would that be like? Lengthy questioning in the face non-responsive silence? Today we call it gaslighting. Bullies dominate the air space, spinning a web with words, an alternate reality with alternate facts that we used to call lies. Herod probably laced his early question with praise of Jesus and when that didn’t work, embellished his questions with veiled threats. When that didn’t do the trick, maybe he dropped all pretense and bellowed out threats like, “Don’t you know who I am? You’re in a fix and I’m the only one who can fix it!”
The cognitive scientists tell us our brains have to first entertain every lie as a possible truth before deeming it false, a move that takes a little extra mental effort each time we make it. For this reason Mark Twain said, “A lie is half-way ‘round the world, while the truth is putting on its shoes.” A neurological truism — a lie travels half-way through our brains, posing as a truth, until we finally catch on and say to ourselves, “Wait a minute! That can’t be true!”
Jesus didn’t mirror these verbal bully-tactics with his own long-winded responses. He offered only silence. I imagine he looked bored and didn’t bother to mask it. Since the early morning tweet-storms commenced, I’ve had a fantasy: gathering with my fellow gaslit citizens outside the North Lawn of the White House for sunrise when the tweet-storm usually starts. We all turn off our mobile devices and face East, away from the White House, and silently say our morning prayers or do our mindfulness meditation or think of our loved ones for a half-hour, before we quietly disperse.
Depending on the circumstance, Jesus spoke up to resist Herod (“go tell that fox for me … ”) or paid him no mind when Herod, craving attention, spun his word-web face-to-face. The one thing Jesus did not do was go along to get along. In order to be a true friend to the people who needed a friend, Jesus had to resist the bully — in his time, Herod. As do we, in ours.
Ken Wilson and Emily Swan are co-pastors of Blue Ocean Faith, Ann Arbor, a progressive, inclusive church. Visit us at solusjesus.com
