Dear Editor:
As Mike Tyson is often quoted as saying, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” But for at least two people, soon-to-be Kansas Sen. Adam Hamilton and myself, the opposite — oddly and blessedly — is true. Sometimes the punch births the plan.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, E.J. Dionne quotes Hamilton: “There were a few years in elementary school when I was bullied. And that has always made me want to speak up for people who are being bullied. So as a senator, I want to stand up for people who are being hurt by what’s happening in Washington on matters like immigration, health care, nutrition benefits and on our farms.”
For me, a similar defining moment came as a first grader on the Glenoaks Elementary playground in San Antonio, when some big kid ran me over and left me on my face in the dust. This became the first moral decision I ever remember making, as I said to myself through a few tears, “When I’m big, I’m not going to do that.”
Bullies clarify. Bullies delineate. Bullies force us to ask, “Am I going to beat them or join them?”
Sadly, much of American Christianity has spent a decade following The Bully of Mar-a-Lago more than Jesus of Nazareth.
Thanks be to God for signs of a nation saying no to bullies. Thanks be to God for a nation (for once at least with the help of a few preachers) beginning to say, “No. That’s not who we want to be.”
Chris Caldwell, Louisville, Ky.