Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, are we raising bullies? This is prompted by an article I read recently in the Wall Street Journal about a new phenomenon in American schools called lunch shaming. And basically, here's what it boils down to. kids with cell phones are recording video or taking pictures of other kids in their school cafeterias eating, for the purpose of making fun of them. Now, that can kind of look in two different ways. The first is sometimes they're making fun of the way they eat. You know, they're their chewing habits or their facial expressions or some idiosyncrasy involving the way they actually go about eating. And then sometimes it's what they eat making fun of how little or how much or just the nature of the food they eat. this phenomena is becoming kind of an online trend. And in fact, one, high school senior, I mean, think about that. A high school senior that, they talked to in the writing of this article says that they were bullied this way about 40 times over the last year. In fact, so much so that he ended up finding an isolated place in the school he could eat by himself so as to avoid finding himself later. On the Internet, 14% of elementary students and 18% of middle school students report bullying happening to them in their school cafeterias. this is resulting, researchers tell us, in a number of issues related to body image, food allergies, socioeconomic status. In fact, the only hope schools have really found, is tell me if you've heard this before, is as they institute cell phone bans, they've found that this happens less and less. But short of taking away the cell phones, there really isn't a way to prevent this behavior. You know, whenever I read a story like this, I have kind of two immediate responses. The first is to be heartbroken. if you've ever experienced any bullying, and I have in school, it is an incredibly difficult experience. It makes going to school every day terrible. Either you experience bullying, which is hard, or you fear you will experience bullying all day, which is its own kind of difficult. It is a psychological kind of torture I wouldn't wish on any kid for any reason at any time. So my heart breaks. But also I get frustrated with parents because kids who engage in this kind of activity have clearly not learned some pretty important lessons about the value of other People. In fact, when I read a story, like this, at least from a Christian perspective, I think of Deuteronomy 6, the passage where God is telling fathers to make sure that his law and his character is passed down to the next generation. He says, write it on your doorpost, put it on your eyelids, put it on your hands, put it on your, your fence. Put it on everywhere you can remind your children who I am and what I want from them. In Deuteronomy 6. 7, he says, to impress these things on your children. The language there is kind of like a seal to wax, like, so drive these things home. That everywhere your kids go, they go with the understanding of who I am and that every person is made in my image. I know you could say, well, hold on a second. These kids who are doing the bullying, you don't know if they come from Christian families, and you don't know if they have parents who even knew to teach them better. But look, if 14% of, elementary school students and 18% of middle school and high school students are experiencing bullying in the cafeteria, some of the kids doing the bullying are Christians, or at least coming from Christian families. we can't pretend they're not. And so it falls on parents to make sure we are having conversations about how people are made in the image of God, regardless of how they eat, regardless of what they bring to eat, that people matter, that bullying isn't funny, that it is trading the value of a human being for a quick laugh or for personal enjoyment. It means having actual conversations at the dinner table about bullying. Are we experiencing it? Are we participating it? It means workshopping scenarios like, what would you do if you saw bullying taking place? What would you do if you experienced bullying? How, what would it look like in that moment to follow Jesus, to live out the values that the Bible teaches us? Look, if you're not having these conversations, I don't think it makes you a bad parent, but. But it probably stops us short of being great ones. Because great parents understand that high school, middle school, and elementary school cafeterias, can be like the Wild West. Great parents want their kids to learn the value of other people in even standing up for other people for the glory of God and for love of their neighbor. Great parents want to know if their kids are doing the bullying or being bullied. Make sure you have those conversations, because people really do matter. And there are a lot of adults whose stories involve painful moments of bullying just like this. Let's try to keep those stories from continuing in the next generation. Hey, thanks for checking out Wake Up, Look Up. For more content, be sure to visit the Christ Community Chapel app or website ccchapel.com.

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