According to Wikipedia, bullying is \u201cthe use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate.\u201d It is a serious issue in our culture today. While I am totally opposed to bullying, especially when it happens to the young, I think there are times, we can laugh it off and go on with life, thankful that we were noticed. These times come when there is a lighter, less-serious side of bullying that, depending on the recipient, might be called \u201cbantering,\u201d (defined as \u201cto address in a witty and teasing manner.\u201d) In my global travels, I have endured the Mexican people calling me \u201cGringo\u201d (which I was told meant, \u201cperson with the green money, go back home\u201d) the Chinese people calling me \u201cbig nose\u201d (for obvious comparative reasons), the little west African children singing to me, \u201cYovo, Yovo, bonsoir.\u201d (\u201cWhite person, white person, good day.\u201d But \u201cyovo\u201d can also mean \u201ctalking dog.\u201d), and the Hispanic children calling me \u201cBobo Grande\u201d (\u201cBobo\u201d meaning \u201cfool\u201d and a big one, at that). I watched teen-agers in Germany laugh as they called my wife, \u201cBig hair\u201d (again for obvious reasons). As for my students, I don\u2019t even want to know what all they called me. Actually, neither bullying, nor bantering, is new. When Elisha went from the spring of water up to Bethel, the scripture says, \u201cThen he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, \u201cGo up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!\u201d (2 Kings 2:23. Read the rest of the chapter to see the tragic ending for the \u201cyouths.\u201d). Again, let\u2019s do what we can to stop bullying, especially among the young, but let\u2019s also take some things less seriously. Lighten up, and have a good day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Wikipedia, bullying is \u201cthe use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate.\u201d It is a serious issue in our culture today. While I am totally opposed to bullying, especially when it happens to the young, I think there are times, we can laugh it off and go…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2956,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions\/2956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}