Bullying in the Churches. Stephen Finlan

others. Is the person mature or not? Is the person experiencing spiritual transformation or not? These are the key questions for most of us.

      Self psychology may help us to recognize that all people have selfish needs, and thus get us to recognize the gray area in human affairs, but sometimes we need to sharply distinguish between black and white. Sometimes we simply need to know whether or not it is safe to talk to a person, whether that person will become enraged by any attempt to have a dialogue.

Rediger’s much less clinical approach may be helpful here. Rediger speaks of a sequence of “agendas” or psychological needs. At the bottom are a person’s survival needs, where feelings are dominant; above that are identity needs, where thinking is dominant; the highest level is relationship needs, where thinking and feeling can be integrated.26 There are negative and positive emotions on each of the three levels. When one’s survival feels threatened, one feels fear. When one’s identity is threatened (often the case when attacks take place in church), one feels anger.27 When relationships fail, one feels sadness. To some degree, Rediger’s three levels can be made to correspond to the three different narcissistic needs of self psychology: the survival level pairing with the need to be praised, the identity level corresponding with the need to have an idealized caretaker, and the relationship level to the need for fellow thinkers. But again, it seems clear that, for practical purposes, we can focus primarily on the need for maturity, ethics, and transformation.

      There can be no transformation for an unreflective person, someone who sees no need to change. The narcissist refuses to accept that there is any problem with his/her behavior or thinking. If members of a congregation are growing spiritually, the stagnant narcissist will stick out like a sore thumb. Only in a spiritually crippled congregation can a narcissist fit in nicely and not be recognized by others as someone who is not experiencing growth and transformation.

1. Bandy, Road Runner, 89–90.

2. McGrath, “Bread and Bullying”; “Exploring Our Matrix” blog entry for December 16, 2013.

3. Parker, “Twelve Reasons Why It Is Good to Be a Church Bully” on the site “The Millennial Pastor.”

4. Ibid. The article is followed by a helpful conversation among many participants.

5. Haugk, Antagonists in the Church, 25–26.

6. Maynard, When Sheep Attack!, third page of the Introduction, no page number given. Maynard’s website is Episkopols.com.

7. Maynard, When Sheep Attack!, 13.

8. Ibid., 114.

9. Ibid., 103–5, 110, 113.

10. The noun huios, “son,” without any article, should be translated “a son.” The NRSV gives this as a marginal translation in Mark 15:39 and Matthew 27:54.

11. Erikson, Identity, 70–71.

12. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, from http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/dsm-iv.html.

13. Randall, Pastor and Parish, 13–14.

14. Ibid., 34, 46.

15. Kohut, Analysis of the Self, 4; Randall, Pastor and Parish, 78.

16. Rediger, Clergy Killers, 123.

17. Ibid., 85.

18. Randall, Pastor and Parish, 118.

19. Ibid., 40.

20. Ibid., 117.

21. Ibid., 105.

22. Ibid., 108.

23. Ibid., 127.

24. Ibid., 122.

25. Ibid., 156.

26. Rediger, Clergy Killers, 113.

27. Ibid., 115, 117.

      2 — The Jesus Response

      Jesus was very much aware of bullying behavior, and he stressed, especially to his apostles, a new and higher law for responding to mistreatment: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27–28). This was an unexpected response, and one whose practice demands enormous strength of character. And Jesus practiced what he preached: “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten” (1 Pet 2:23). We saw this in his calm question to the bullying guard in John 18:23.

      How difficult it is to live this way! There are some hard truths about this way of living, but first I should start where Jesus himself started.

      The Easy Yoke

      Jesus said “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:30). There is a theme of joy running throughout Jesus’ teachings, even though he anticipated how his life would end, worried about the difficulties that his apostles would face, and mourned for poor, foolish Jerusalem. And yet joy—and the teaching about joy—were central for Jesus.