One time, my daughter told me about some mean kid at school.  I just told her to leave him alone.  Ok, I know, I won’t win the Christian Father of the Year award.  What I could have said was “Be nice to him, maybe he’s just lonely and misunderstood.”  But I was younger.  And maybe he was really a mean kid.

Watch the Enemy’s Camp Burn from Across the Shore.  The first of the 36 Stratagems I taught her.  We even role played this principle out with her Dr. McStuffin bed.  You don’t have to intervene or engage when someone evil is floundering.  The illustration I use is from Batman Begins when Bruce Wayne tells his former mentor and teacher Ras Al Ghul, who is dangling from a moving train about to crash into Wayne Towers – “I’m not going to kill you.  But I don’t have to save you.”

A pastor once taught that the best things about bullies is many don’t grow up.  Doesn’t sound too hopeful on the surface, but on closer inspection, it’s a poor end for those who torment and abuse others.  At the end, they know what they did.  No scrambling, mental gymnastics, prayers for forgiveness is going to change that.  (Yes, I believe in grace and the forgiveness of sins, but not erasure of the past).

Again, yes, not biblical – probably supposed to do good for those who persecute us, etc.  Not perfect.