God Sister Teresa

One hears awful tales about bullying in schools and elsewhere, and it is becoming an ever-growing problem.

I don’t know if a tactic that worked for a friend when she was teaching some 40 years ago would succeed in today’s much tougher and more sophisticated world.

When she realised that a neatly dressed and clever little boy was being secretly terrorised by other children, she decided that drastic action was required.

She summoned his two largest, scruffiest (and dimmest) classmates and told them that she was appointing them as his bodyguards: they were to go everywhere with him and make sure that no one tried to frighten him. Part of the deal was that she would keep their cigarettes in a safe place during school hours.

It worked. All three children were the happier for it: the big boys were thrilled to have been given responsibility for once, and the little boy was left in peace.

‘Leave her [or him] alone’ is the typical rebuke of someone springing to the defence of a bully’s victim. I wonder if people, when they say this, realise that they are echoing Jesus’s reprimand to Judas after he complains about Mary having anointed Jesus’s feet with a pound of very costly ointment (John 12:7).

I also wonder whether Jesus or anyone else in his immediate entourage had had reason to say these words to Judas on other occasions. Judas is a sad and unattractive character: to thief, hypocrite and traitor, bully is added.

Ultimately all bullies, Judas included, are to be pitied because they cannot recognise the necessity of love, not only in their victims’ lives, but also, and equally importantly, in their own. Who knows where this tendency to uncalledfor violence originates? Perhaps in resentment: it is often discovered that bullies have been bullied themselves.

This sort of behaviour is catching, ever-expanding and should be a matter of great concern. Punitively returning violence for violence (whether verbal or physical) is not the answer.

Most bullies are cowards and it is all too easy to have the illusion that we have won – forgetting that, in order to achieve this apparent victory, we are not only going to be the cause of yet more resentment, but also that we are using violence ourselves. Should we be?

How to get this across is beyond me; the lame tag ‘inappropriate behaviour’ isn’t much help; perhaps because it is no more than a neutral term.

Although there are some protective measures around, there is nonetheless no remedy for far too many people. I can only come up with good example and praying for a change of heart.