The rumor mill in town is
reporting on a sexual harassment situation lodged against a community leader. Numerous
people saw the incident, which took place at a concert where alcohol flowed
freely, but witnesses closed ranks protecting the victim, the perpetrator and
themselves. Wearing my reporter hat I tracked down multiple leads who verified
the rumors; however, the verifications came with a price…they were off the
record and official the response was, “No Comment.” Many of us, particularly as
it applies to believers, underestimate the burden of silence. The psalmist wrote, “When I kept silent, my
bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and
night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of
summer” (Psalm 32:3-4 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----I’m not so sure what to think of this kind of silence anymore. Sexual harassment seems to keep getting more and more irritable. When those charges first began to be thrown around, I thought it was a lot of ado over things better handled by a well swung purse full of horseshoes. But everyone wanted government instead; we‘re not smart enough to take care of ourselves. Now things are so microscopically examined that even noticing that another person might be female could get you a sexual harassment charge, and a little wink added is rape. I wonder what this perpetrator did. Maybe did a little wry humor crest the top? Or were hands badly out of place?
-----For me, the question isn’t so much about the “poor victim”. Oh boo-hoo, the victim’s little feelings got hurt! Feelings get hurt every day. People violate each other’s dignity by habit in the course of every day life; you just need a microscope to see it. But then, all the microscopes are used up hunting down sexual harassment, so we don’t notice the rest of the minor violations so much, do we?
-----For me, the question is about a healthy public. Sexual harassment is no good, even if you do need a microscope to locate it. God made life so intricate that it takes a library to blueprint a body, a library which He wrote into a chain of molecules seven miles long then folded into the center of every one of your cells. And the beauty of joy and kindness and people being more than decent to each other is just as intricately precious. Even if sexual harassment now needs a microscope for detection, it yet lumbers through the emotional garden God wants us to make of one another like a rhino wrestling through a pimpernel patch. But worse yet, any big media/government involvement is like a raging bull-elephant joining the romp in that delicate patch. Swatting flies with a 30-06 is never good.
-----It isn’t that I think sexual harassment is ok. It is just that I think a purse full of horseshoes would do a lot less damage to the pimpernels. Everyone would get a kick out of well swung horseshoes! And by the glee on all the spectators’ faces, the perpetrator would have received immediate, greatly embarrassing, lesson teaching consequences from friends and neighbors, no less, if the public were healthy.
-----I long for a public healthy enough to take care of its own little matters. But our public has been taught to rely on the wrathful, bull-elephant. Really good people wind up on life ruining sexual harasser lists over things that would have straightened up quickly with just a bagful of horseshoes. Yet, rather than going home with a bloody nose and a lesson well learned, they must go through life as damaged goods, never to be the same again over what took a microscope to see. Bloated government in every way is the deadly virus to a healthy public. Maybe it was best that everyone kept quite. But then again, maybe what this perp did was next to rape. Only a healthy public knows for sure. Maybe that’s why they were silent. Maybe not.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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