Past

 If you’re still peacocking about, beating your chest and insisting that America is a Christian nation, you are as untethered from reality as a biological man claiming to have become a woman by putting on a dress. The sad thing is that as little as a decade ago, that would not have been deemed an edgy statement or something that might get you censored by the overlords of the interwebs. Not the thing about America being a Christian nation, the thing about men being men and women being women. In the grand scheme, a decade isn’t that long, but it shows how quickly the enemy has moved to consolidate his power and begin silencing dissenting voices.

It doesn’t matter how plush and thick the velvet glove is; if you’re squeezed hard enough, you’ll begin to feel the iron fist beneath it. We’ve come a long way, baby, but unfortunately, in the wrong direction.

We’ve gone from live and let live, to submit or die in the blink of an eye, and as has become customary, even expected, the church is silent, asleep at the rudder, waiting to pick its spot, its moment, that battle that will finally be worth getting out of bed for. If nothing else, it’s an excellent way to justify protracted cowardice.

I realized early on that I was a bully magnet. Come the third grade; I was a Rubenesque kid wearing pin-striped polyester pants to school that my grandmother had sewn for me, so I wasn’t screaming cool or anything. Thankfully I wasn’t the only goofy-looking third grader, so the bullying got spread around. There was a Korean boy with Coke bottle glasses that got his fair share and a Mexican kid named Alberto who always brought enchiladas for lunch. By always, I mean every day, five days a week, with no exceptions. I think he had a culinary version of my grandmother living with them. I got pants; he got enchiladas.

In third grade, I learned what inmates refer to as prison rules. If you let a bully bully you once, he will continue to do it for the rest of your life. Win, lose, or draw, if you stand up for yourself the first time, the bullies will tend to pass you by because even if you don’t know how to fight, there’s still the chance of a busted lip, a black eye, or some scratches if your victim puts up a fight.

I don’t even remember the name of the boy who messed around and found out, but he was Mexican. Not that it matters, but even in elementary school, there were cliques. The big clique was the Mexican kids because, even back then, they were the majority. We didn’t have many white kids attending, perhaps a handful; it wasn’t that kind of neighborhood.

Perhaps two weeks into my third-grade year, my time in the crosshairs finally arrived. My mom had made crapes for lunch, rolled up with some jam in the middle. They are quite lovely, actually, and I still enjoy them to this day. When the lunch bell rang, I found a table outside and unwrapped my lunch, only to see a shadow blocking the sun shining on my face a moment before.

“What’s that?” the Mexican boy asked.

“Crapes,” I answered.

“More like crap,” he said, snickering, waiting for the kids at the other tables to join in. When they didn’t, he got angry and punched me in the shoulder. It didn’t hurt. I was bigger than he was, and he hit like a girl. I told him to go away, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“You think you’re tough? Come on, crap eater”, he said, pumping himself up for another swing. My backpack was a briefcase. Leather, brown, well built, with a rigid handle, hard edges, and a two-clasp closure. It was sitting on the bench next to me. It was one of the few things the Communists let my parents bring from the home country when we got exiled. I think because it was empty and ugly.

I grabbed the handle, and as I pushed myself up to stand, I swung the briefcase at his head as hard as I could. It connected. He went down, and I was never bullied again.

The same can’t be said for my friend Kwan, the boy with the Coke bottle glasses. Every time he’d get picked on, I’d ask him why he wasn’t standing up for himself, and his answer was always next time. He never did, though, and he was constantly bullied until they moved away sometime in the sixth grade.

Bullies don’t stop on their own. They must be stopped. The devil doesn’t stop on his own. He must be stopped. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity to resist the devil. There will never be one. The Bible doesn’t say to resist the devil when you feel like it, or when all your laundry is done, when your kids are off to college, or when your retirement is all squared away. The Bible says to resist the devil, and he will flee.

Most people just don’t want the conflict. They don’t like the discomfort of being contrarian, so they keep taking the abuse until abuse is all they know. The enemy is counting on your silence. He expects the church to do what it’s done for the past few decades and just roll over and take it.

If you want to scare the devil, break the pattern. Stop taking the condescension, the bullying, and the verbal harassment from the intellectual midgets who represent him. Resist him, and he will flee, and so will his minions.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.