Bully Pulpit

Photo by Dr Josiah Sarpong on Unsplash

When my husband and I were first married, it seemed that I was often bickering with my brother in law over something. When the sequel to the Matrix came out and he told us it was great, I was angry that he didn’t tell us about what I refer to as the “orgy” scene. I was steeped in purity culture and determined to keep my eyes pure. After a weekly gathering one day I told him that he was causing us to stumble as we argued back and forth over whether or not we should watch movies with suggestive content. My friend-the leader met with me the following week to let me know that it was me, not my brother in law, who was causing people to stumble. He asked if he’d sinned against me and I said, “Not intentionally. By omission, yes. He knows how we feel about sexual content and he left that part out when telling us about the movie.” He told me that I was the one who was in the wrong and needed to consider others before having conversations like that in public. End of discussion.

This was at the height of my religiosity. I was in good company, though. The year before, my brother in law had threatened to boycott our wedding reception when he heard that our first dance would be to So Amazing by Luther Vandross. He asked why we would choose a song by someone who also sang about “secret love”. The rest of our wedding was only religious music because I, just like he and my husband, had decided to get rid of all my secular music and only listen to gospel artists. But, we wanted a love song for our first dance and it was the “purest” song I could think of. The funny thing is I don’t even like that song anymore, but at the time, I thought Luther was God’s gift to romantic music and my brother in law was not in agreement. He and my husband were as close as brothers can be, so it didn’t register to him the same as it did for me that he was crossing a line.

Our wedding budget was so low that we used decorations my future sister in law found in the trash when we went to pay for the venue. Some of our friends had given their guests burned CDs as wedding favors, and we decided to follow suit. It was the perfect way for us to evangelize by way of gospel music, and fit into our non-existent wedding budget. A few months after our wedding, I was crushed when a friend told us that burning CDs was illegal. I had sinned against the Lord by stealing artist’s music and giving it to our guests! When my brother in law and his fiancée were preparing for their wedding the following year, my husband told me they were also going to give their guests burned CDs as favors.

I was teaching a bible class before the weekly gathering and felt “led” to confess my sin and hopefully, deter my sister in law from doing the same. As if it came out of the clear blue sky and was not related to their wedding, I told the small group of women that we should avoid sin at all costs. “For example, burning CDs is a sin. It’s stealing from other people. We did that at our wedding and didn’t know that it wasn’t right. Unless you have permission from the artist, this is sinful.” People nodded their head in slow agreement. My sister in law didn’t flinch, didn’t roll her eyes, didn’t change her expression. She just rolled with the punches as if I’d said nothing. After telling my husband about the lesson, he said “Oh, my brother already contacted each artist and asked for their permission to use their songs on his burned CDs.” Had he told me that ahead of time, I wouldn’t have put my foot in my mouth.

Over time, there were soft jabs that I’m sure he’d say were nothing. But, as a newly married woman trying to create a life with my husband, I hadn’t bargained for his brotherly advice and commentary. That tension came out again when I was teaching the morning bible class before the weekly gathering. He had a habit of saying “Umm” when he would talk in front of the group. It seemed like every few words, his thoughts would be interrupted with Umm. Umm this and umm that. I veered from the lesson and said to the women’s class, “It bothers me when people have speech impediments. When they just say “Umm” all the time, I can’t focus.” I looked at my sister in law and she gave a knowing but uncomfortable chuckle. I’d already said this to her, so she knew I was referring to him. For some reason, I thought she saw our alleged beef the same way I did and would be on my side. I wanted to take the dig at him and move on, but was interrupted by a young lady saying, “My dad has a speech impediment. He stutters and has worked really hard to correct this. I don’t have a problem when people have things going on like that because it’s not their fault.”

She went on for a few minutes, and I couldn’t back peddle my way out of it. I had used a term not realizing it could be taken to mean that it was about people who stuttered. I was just trying to poke at my brother in law’s tendency to say “umm”, which is a dysfluency, not a speech impediment. But, for what? To plant a seed in these ladies minds so that when they heard him say, “Umm”, they’d say “I don’t like it when he does that?” Even in the midst of my righteousness, bitch mode had been activated. I had done twice what I’d complain years later my friend-the leader and another person had done to me when they delivered messages at the community gathering. I was talking about my husband’s brother without referring to him by name, pointing out his “wrong” or mocking a habit. It was a women’s class, so he didn’t see me do it. But, his fiancée did. For whatever reason, she never treated me coldly, never lashed out at me in retaliation for him, never created an us vs. them environment and never took advantage of the tension. She didn’t agree, but she also didn’t treat me like the jerk I had been.

The only other time I remember using the stage to disparage others is during the time when I was planning a party with the leader’s wife and a close friend of the person we were celebrating. I didn’t agree with the theme for the party, but the friend had taken the lead and said the decision was hers, and that the leader’s wife had given her blessing. I was teaching the women’s class before the community gathering and again, talking about righteousness. I said, “I don’t argue with people about whether or not something is right or wrong anymore. I will just hand them a bible and say ‘Here you go. Show me where it says that.’” It seemed like she got the hint I was talking about her because we were barely speaking to each other after that.

I had used my position to irresponsibly vent my frustrations. Thankfully, I didn’t have the influence required to allow me to continue with that behavior. I had no supporters joining me in my bullying attempts. Those are the only instances I know of where I intended harm. There were other times where people believed I had harmed them, when I had no awareness of how I was coming across. Once, I was delivering the message for the weekly gathering. I was reading a scripture when I noticed a man in a wheelchair wheel himself out of the room in a huff. Later, my brother in law told me the man said he couldn’t stand to be in the room to hear me talking about Jesus when I had offended him. A few weeks prior, we had gone back and forth online about whether or not something that I believed to be racially motivated in national news was nothing more than sinful people being sinners. I felt compelled to call him to listen to his perspective and make amends.

Another time, I was in charge of the team who led prayer time before the weekly gathering. I noticed that the team, with the exception of one person, would only show up when they were leading the prayer time. Otherwise, they arrived right before the gathering started. Prayer was poorly attended, but my friend-the leader wanted us to have it, even though he wasn’t there. My job was to make sure that both the music team and those who led prayer could be counted on for attendance every week. To enforce this, I addressed the prayer leaders generally, assuming that the one woman who was there each week knew I wasn’t talking about her. That evening, I received a strongly worded email from her where she laid out how offended she was by the way I talked down to her and overlooked her faithfulness. I affirmed what she said and assured her that I wasn’t talking about her and hadn’t realized that wasn’t obvious.

I was leading the prayer time a few weeks later and noticed one of the other leaders had shown up early. I couldn’t believe that someone had taken what I said to heart! However, I noticed she seemed kind of… uncomfortable. I wondered if whatever was going on in her life was the reason she’d arrived early for prayer. I was confused when she didn’t show up the following week when she was supposed to lead, leaving me to fill in for her unexpectedly. It turned out that I had my weeks mixed up and she was scheduled to lead prayer the previous week. She hadn’t been moved by my plea to be there when she wasn’t leading. She was there because she was on the schedule. She assumed that because she was a few minutes late, I’d decided to step in and lead in a power move. She calmed her anger with self talk about the importance of honoring commitment and being subject to authority. Since I was a part of the decision making leadership team, she thought I was trying to teach her a lesson in respect. I told her that I would never operate like that, and that I wasn’t her authority. It was nothing more than my own clumsiness at keeping track of the schedule. We had an awkward chuckle at the mishap, but I also scanned my memory for other times a similar misunderstanding might have happened with someone else and I hadn’t had the fortune, as I did with this situation, of being able to talk things out.

There were times when I acted like the b word and others where I was oblivious that I’d come off that way. I get that goes both ways. There were times when my friend-the leader and his wife were oblivious to the ways they had come across to me. What didn’t go both ways was accountability, grace for my perspective, or admission of having intentionally taken a dig. When I shared that I was offended by something or had perceived a situation a certain way, I was met with the 1-2 punch of defensiveness and offensiveness. On his part, it was “That’s just your opinion. That’s not on me, that’s on you. Those are your issues.” On her part, “I can’t believe that you would ever think that I would say or do something to harm you.” It was like I was being strong-armed into only assuming positive intent. Opening up about things that I found offensive or raising questions wound up backfiring on me.

There was no, “I can see how you could have come to that conclusion,” or “I didn’t realize I was coming across that way,” or “Sometimes, I do use the platform to vent my frustrations and I’ll be mindful of that.” I would leave the conversation feeling guilty or stupid. He’d ask me to "just trust him”, seeming wounded when I’d “assume the worst”. He wondered aloud why I couldn’t give the grace to him that he’d given to all of us. But when they were offended by something I’d said, or had assumed my intentions toward them weren’t noble, I couldn’t convince them otherwise. My role and reputation in the community could be impacted by their perception of me. There were times when it seemed certain women would greet me with a hint of coldness as if it was a show of solidarity to his wife. I avoided interactions with them that weren’t related to logistics about the community so that there was nothing for me to “misunderstand”. That way, my childhood trauma wasn’t to blame for not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

When the rift in the community happened, there were two things my friend-the leader said that stood out to me. “We’re not perfect and never claimed to be,” and “I’m going to fall on the sword, but not all the way.” Given that I had carelessly used my leadership position to take jabs at people, or had done things that had legitimately been misinterpreted by others, it seems reasonable that they’d have had even more opportunities to do the same. They’d say things from time to time like, “I can be a hot mess” or “Everybody can’t handle me”, admitting to the possibility of generalized fault. Neither of them admitted to specific times when they treated someone poorly or misread someone’s intentions. It was a way of taking responsibility while not being remorseful or apologetic. Kind of like owning up to a fart in public, but talking about how it’s something we all do as humans instead of acknowledging that it isn’t socially acceptable to go around farting. Apology is the language of imperfect people. Allowing people to misinterpret a situation without pathologizing them, but talking through things instead, helps to build bridges. Recognizing that you have also misinterpreted others is a great way to signal to the community that you aren’t perfect. I’d not noticed him even going near the sword, let alone falling on it halfway. Besides, what’s the difference between falling on a sword partway or completely? Wouldn’t you die either way?

And, who else was supposed to be on the sword? Who else could dismiss someone’s complaints by saying, “That’s just your opinion” without repercussions from him? No one else had the power to frame like him and as far as he was concerned, he was the embodiment of humility. The problem was that he had been misunderstood. And now, he was the victim of a few misunderstandings that had fueled a rumor mill and led to the rift of the community. Hearing this narrative pushed and “Amened” at every weekly gathering was an indication to me that the only perspective that was welcome was his. I could only imagine if I’d stood up during the weekly gathering and slipped in my perspective on the community rift. Yet the people allowed him to do so every week. I’d already used the platform early in the community days to disparage others or justify myself. Now, he was using the platform in the same way. No remorse. No apology. He wasn’t wrong… it was just my opinion.