Bullying

All of my life I have had to contend with bullies all who have tried (in one way or another) to make my life miserable and difficult as they could.
Growing up in the Great Depression and having to live on the poorer side of town lead to my being beat-up regularly by gangs in that neighborhood.
In high-school I had one big kid that seemed like his only goal in life was to make me miserable as he could. At one time I even considered taking Dad’s gun from the dresser drawer and putting an end to his harassment.
After much thought I decided I would first try another way. This kid’s locker was next to mine so that put him nearby several times each day and each time he would hit push or call me bad names.
The day of my decision he started by name calling. I looked at him and smiled. Then: with every ounce of force I could muster I through that punch. I had intended to smack him between the eyes but my aim was low-I hit him on the end of the nose-breaking it-blood spurted all over his face and shirt. I took out my handkerchief and started helping him blot up his blood. He was still bleeding profusely when the principal came running up.
The bully explained to him that he had stumbled and hit an open locker door. My principal looked at me and winked.
My revenge was complete when the tape came off the broken nose.
The nose had healed with the outer half-inch pointing at about a forty-five degree angle from the other part! He would always look down, then think twice before calling anyone else names. He would always have to live with that kink on his nose and remember how it got there.
Throughout my school years my coaches were always some of the worst other bullies. They all wanted “to make a real man out of me”. It never worked and apparently they never understood that I was happy with the man I already was.
I ran into the same type of bullying when I “had words” with my drill sergeant in the military.
The very worst of the worst bullies I have run into are the ones that I call “Bible Bullies”, the priests, ministers, and lay persons that use their interpretation of the Bible to threaten the lives of people who trust them.
An example of this follows: I was sitting at a restaurant in Canada I had been with our group visiting a museum. I was tired so I went there ahead of the rest of the entourage. I was sitting at a table watching the waitresses prepare for our group. Suddenly one of the waitresses stopped at my table, she was a lady probably in her early to mid twenties. She looked at me with tearful eyes and then she said “My life is over, I’m going to Hell.” I sat there, shocked for an instant, I never had a stranger start a conversation that way before. Before long I learned that her minister had told her she was going to Hell with no recourse or repentance. Later (after I had explained that the Instruction Book I read would give her many ways to prevent just that from happening) she confided in me that she had married “out of her church” and that’s what brought her world tumbling down around her. As I walked away from that restaurant I could not envision what book her minister had been reading. I always believed the Bible I read to be the instruction book to heaven and it never was to be used as a threat to keep anyone from walking in their promised land.
I have witnessed both priests and ministers denying the sacrament to members of their churches. I ask My Friend about this.
This was His reply; “The sacrament should never be used as a tool of punishment either by the church or oneself. Everyone who partakes of the sacrament is worthy, for it is a tool of faith”.