There are two qualifications to be a bully: being big and mean. At the age of seven, the bully on my block was named Coledo.

What made the situation especially miserable was that Coledo was a girl. Having a girl bully you is the picture of humiliation.

“Want to play house?”

“No.”

“If you don’t play house, I’ll beat you up.”

“All right, I’ll play!”

Coledo’s entire family was intimidating. Her dad was a Vietnam vet who kept two fierce Doberman pinschers in his back yard. He had them trained to attack himself if he ever had a flash-back and started hurting his family. I don’t know who I was more afraid of: the dogs or him.

Coledo delighted in reminding me that she was bigger and stronger. I remember the summer day my dad was instructing me on how to mow our lawn with an old rusty push mower. It weighed three times as much as I did, and didn’t actually cut the grass; it just sort of flattened it. And even flattening the grass wasn’t easy because of its cumbersome size and the steep slope that ran from the sidewalk up to our house. It was in the middle of my struggle to master this rite of manhood that Coledo showed up. Of course, she couldn’t just walk by; she had to stop and observe. I could feel her watching me as I tried unsuccessfully to get up the slope. I became more and more anxious each time I moved it a few feet, only to have it roll back on me. I was hot, sweaty, and humiliated to have Coledo there. She stood by with an amused smile on her face and then blurted out in her cocky, self-assured manner, “I could do better than that!”

Before I could muster a response, my dad, who had been passively watching from the sidelines said, “Well, why don’t you give it a try, Coledo?”

“What is he thinking?” I asked myself. Didn’t he know she probably could do better than I? Didn’t he realize that she was bigger and stronger and was only doing this to embarrass me? Suddenly my pent-up frustration turned on my dad. “A real dad would chase this stupid girl home or better yet own a real lawn mower!” I decided it was his fault I was in this predicament.

“Go ahead, Josh. Let Coledo give it a try.” my dad said, seemingly unaware of my frustra­tion.

I angrily stomped aside. Coledo placed her hands firmly on the handles. She turned her head and smiled smugly before bracing her feet and beginning to push. I stood there readily expecting her to zoom up the hill and mow the entire lawn without breaking a sweat. But something unex­pected happened. Coledo pushed, but the old mower would not so much as budge. She pushed harder, but it refused to move at all. She strained against the mower with all her might, her face twisting and contorting as she held her breath and pushed—nothing. Finally, she stopped, wind­ed and humbled. “I guess,” she panted, “it’s not so easy after all.”

I was too dumfounded to respond. I watched her run down the street to her house. I knew Coledo was stronger than I. How was it that she couldn’t get the lawn mower to budge? I looked up at my dad and found him standing there with a satisfied grin. Seeing my puzzled expression, he winked at me and then bent down slowly and removed a small stick that was jamming the push mower’s wheel. “I have a great dad,” I thought to myself.

Twelve summers have gone by since then. We have a riding lawn mower now. I don’t know what happened to Coledo. But she hasn’t been the last bully in my life. Today as a Christian I sometimes feel like that little seven-year-old again getting pushed around by a world that has turned its back on God, a world that seems to delight in reminding me just how puny I am. Nowadays I can’t pick up a magazine, watch TV or go to a movie without someone mocking what I believe and scorning my faith. It seems the same in the political arena. Every month I get a letter from Dr. Dobson telling me we’re losing but to keep praying. I’m tired of praying! I’m ready for the fire and brimstone! “Hey, God! Why aren’t you handling this? Why don’t you chase them away? Why don’t you make me strong enough to bully them?”

But I’ve realized that this is not the attitude he wants me to have. I don’t think his greatest con­cern is saving me from embarrassment. He’ll let the world push me aside; he’ll allow me to feel puny and weak—because that’s exactly what I am. But when the world tries to push against him and his established word, he stops them dead in their tracks. He reaches down and jams a stick in their wheels. From the emptiness and danger of sexual relationships outside of his will to the utter disregard for the value of human life so evident in a generation born under the shadow of Roe vs. Wade, the truth of his precepts resounds over and over again. Those who violate his laws face the unhappy consequences. “Why,” David asks “do the nations rage.. .and the kings of the earth set themselves.. .against the Lord?”

I’ve been guilty of being more concerned with saving face than in saving a world that desperate­ly needs God’s truth. I want to be against the world for the world’s sake. God’s goal is not to make me the “righteous bully” on the block. He wants me to know that nothing I or anyone else attempts will succeed apart from His plan and His guidelines. When the bullies in my life seem to overwhelm, I take comfort in the truth of Proverbs 21:30, “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD.”