Nobody's Perfect (and other lame excuses)

"Nobody's perfect, you know!"

If you've ever left a church for anything other than geographical reasons,  I would bet money you've heard someone say this.

The implication behind it is that you're an ungracious, unforgiving jerk face.

Of course, people (myself included) never say this about things they DON'T like.  At my former church, the pastor (and people in the congregation) would complain about other churches in the area and how most of them weren't "bible believing".  Not once did anyone follow this with "But nobody's perfect, you know."

But as soon as people started leaving THEIR church...

"Nobody's perfect!"

"The church is full of sinners, same as everywhere else!"

"You're being divisive!" (one friend of mine was told that there was a "spirit of divisiveness" in the church, which is a passive aggressive way of saying the same thing).

Etc., etc.

The great thing about using "nobody's perfect" as a verbal sparring tool, is that it is absolutely, 100% irrefutable.  Because it's true.  Nobody can launch a successful defense against it.  Show me one perfect person.  One!  Go ahead, I'll wait. And you can't say Jesus.

See?  Case closed!

Only, not so much.  Because if you look closely, it's a strawman argument.  It assumes that the person leaving is looking for a perfect church.  I can assure you, no one has ever left a church because it isn't perfect. 

In the end, everyone leaves a church (or anything, for that matter) for the same general reason: their needs aren't being met.

Some of my Christian readers might be offended by my use of the "n word".  The rest are wondering why I referred to "needs" as the "n word".   Allow me to explain.

You see, in some churches the leadership doesn't like people to talk about their needs.  Because it takes valuable time away from talking about the church's needs (which, coincidentally, are always God's needs).  Ask not what your church can do for you, ask what you can do for your church!

Now, I'll admit, no one likes a whiner (I can attest to this, having done my fair share of whining).  And some people's list of needs is longer than others, and contains things not on most people's lists.  But that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about a pervasive attitude within a church where talking about what you need is generally discouraged, no matter what it is.

It's toxic.

People have needs.  This is just as irrefutable as "No one's perfect, you know!"

Let's be fair.  Is there a strawman lurking behind my argument as well?  Is the job of a church to meet the needs of it's members?  If not, then I don't have a leg to stand on.

Well, it certainly shouldn't be the ONLY job of a church.  Churches are supposed to help people other than it's members.  There's much spirited disagreement on what form that help should take,  but it's generally agreed that some form of helping should be going on.

This is a difficult question.  Quick, to the analogy!

A few months ago I had a "skip level meeting" at work.  This is simply a meeting between me and my bosses boss (the VP of engineering at the software company I work at).  I.e I "skip" my boss and talk to his boss.  The VP tries to do this with every engineer on a semi regular basis.  It's not a performance review, just a chance for the employee to talk.

The engineering veep at my company is different from others I've had.  He's always asking people if they enjoy what they're working on.  And he's not a twenty year old with a pierced tongue and a degree in cheese appreciation.  He's fifty, hard working, and he's not afraid to fire people when the need arises.  So why does he ask people this?  Surely the job of a business isn't to meet the needs of it's employees, it's to meet the needs of it's customers!  What kind of namby pamby hippie crap is he trying to peddle?

I asked him this once (minus the phrase "namby pamby hippie crap").  He told me happy employees work harder and better than unhappy ones.  He continued by saying that it was also the company's responsibility to train us in useful, marketable skills, and that we should tell him if we felt this wasn't happening.

He told several engineers this, and the idea was so alien that it caused a rumor to start that the company was going under (which he quickly quashed).  He was honestly concerned about the careers of the engineers under him, partly because an engineer who felt their skill set was stagnating might choose to leave the company.

Many feel that churches behaving like corporations is dangerous, but in this case I think some churches could learn a valuable lesson.

While it's not their ONLY job to meet the needs of its members, it is beneficial for them to do so.

But some churches don't want to hear this.   They treat church membership like military service. Once you're in, you're in for life.

Except it's not like that.  Each country has only one military.  You'd have to emigrate to join another one.  Whereas you can get in your car and drive down the street to a different church (in some countries).

I know, I know.  There's only one 'Church' (note the use of the Capital 'C').  To those not familiar with Christian speak, the capital denotes the worldwide church, i.e all Christians ever, throughout all time.  It has no geographical borders, and it isn't limited to church buildings.

But isn't it funny how many pastors that proclaim that "there's only one Church" still hem and haw when you want to leave their church (lowercase 'c')?  When new people attend their church, that's proof that they're doing GOD'S WILL (tm).  When people leave the church, that's proof that... the people leaving are divisive, selfish, and impossible to please. 

I admit that some people ARE divisive, selfish, and impossible to please.  But sometimes people leave because their very reasonable, very necessary needs aren't being met.

Then again, what do I know?  I'm just a heretic.

Hugo Schwyzer, my father-in-law, and the problem of grace

For the story on Hugo Schwyzer, you can read this.

For the story on my father-in-law, you can start here.

For those who want a quick summary:

Hugo Schwyzer wrote about women’s issues for Relevant Magazine.  The magazine chose not to disclose Schwyzer’s checkered past, which included an attempt to kill his girlfriend and himself.

My father-in-law molested his son, and sees no reason that the church he pastors needs to know about this.

---

grace
noun

1.  Favor or goodwill. Synonyms: kindness, kindliness, love, benignity; condescension.
2.  A manifestation of favor, especially by a superior: It was only through the dean's grace that I wasn't expelled from school. Synonyms: forgiveness, charity, mercifulness. Antonyms: animosity, enmity, disfavor.
3. Mercy; clemency; pardon: He was saved by an act of grace from the governor. Synonyms: lenity, leniency, reprieve. Antonyms: harshness.

---

One fallacy that many Christians subscribe to is that all sin is equal.  Adolf Hitler perpetrating the Holocaust is no different to God than you uttering a choice bit of profanity or not going back into the grocery store when you realize you forgot to pay for something.  

If God exists, I’m not going to speak for him/her/it.  I will say that even a cursory examination of the above sentiment should cause any rational being to see that it is, to put it lightly, a bunch of horse shit.  There’s no legal system in the history of the world, to my knowledge, that operates in this manner.  No country (or parent, for that matter) has equal consequences for every crime.

But not only do some Christians believe that all sin is equal, they believe that the consequences for all sin should be equal - namely, that there should be none.

Oh, sorry - did I say all sin?  I meant their sin, of course.

People who defend Mr. Schwyzer my father-in-law have a common refrain: the past is the past!  Forgive!  Don’t these people deserve GRACE?  After all, we’re all sinners!  Do YOU give everyone a laundry list of every offense you’ve ever committed before you apply for a job (in the case of my father-in-law) or make a blog post (in the case of Mr. Schwyzer)?

Well no, of course I don’t.  That would be ridiculous.  
You see, folks, this may come as a shock to some of you, but not every situation is the same as every other one.  Some things, such as the application of grace, must be judged on a case by case basis.

Shocking, I know!  But you see, as I have never committed a felony, the government doesn’t require me to list any of my past grievances on a job application.  My potential employer doesn’t care.  They might ask me what my biggest weakness is, but I’m free to make up a bullshit answer like “I’m such a perfectionist!” or “I just love working overtime so much!”.

I don’t post about my own sins on my blog because...well, to be perfectly honest, it’s my blog and I’ll post about whatever the hell I want, thank you very much.  But there’s another reason: None of my posts, so far, relate to any of my particular vices of choice.  I wrote about "pastor" Sean Harris' inflamatory remarks, but I’ve never said that children should be beaten for not conforming to gender roles.  I wrote about the problems with the leadership at my former church, but I’ve never committed adultery or gotten divorced (both of which pastors at my former church did).

I am, however, obsessed with my blog stats.  That’s why this article contains three, count ‘em, THREE links to previous posts.  There, I got that off my chest.  

Different actions have different consequences.  Hugo Schwyzer tried to commit a murder-suicide, with the target of the murder being his girlfriend at the time.  He seems to have cleaned up his act since then, but if he wants to write about women’s issues, he should disclose this.  Why?  Because it might change people’s attitudes about what he writes.  If he wrote about amateur carpentry or stamp collecting, he should not have to disclose this.  Why?  Because, in that context, it wouldn’t matter.  Woody Allen does not open every one of his movies with a disclaimer that says he had a sexual relationship with his adopted daughter.  Why?  Because in that context, it doesn’t matter.  He’s just providing entertainment.  If he wrote a book about parenting, yes, I would expect it to be addressed.

(Another confession - I’m lazy when it comes to research.  Thus the link to Wikipedia for the Woody Allen reference.  Be grateful you got a link at all.).  

Likewise, if my father-in-law didn’t work at a job that put him in a position of authority over minors, I wouldn’t expect him to tell his employer that he molested his son.  In fact, he works at a grocery store in addition to being a pastor, but my wife and I aren’t expecting him to tell them what happened.

But some people break out in a rash at the thought of not handling every situation in the same manner.  They can’t handle shades of grey.  Well, I’ve got news for you:  grey is just the beginning.  There’s blue, red, purple, something called “chartreuse”, and that’s not even getting into the ridiculous names they’ve come up with for house paint.  

These colors are all  around you.  When you have a conversation with someone, you handle each one differently depending on who you are talking to and what you are talking about.  When you’re watching TV or reading a book, you are entertained by some things but not other things.  And, when someone wrongs you, you handle it differently depending on who the guilty party is and what the offense is.  If I get mugged, I call the police.  If my four year old daughter is rude to me, I put her in timeout.  No one gets up in my grill for “not showing them grace”, and if I called the police on my daughter or tried to put the mugger in timeout, I would be rightfully considered a lunatic.

So why are so many Christians so quick to defend people like Schwyzer or my father-in-law?  I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s some perverted application of the Golden Rule; after all, I’m sure they would want the same treatment for any of their past transgressions.  

Or maybe they feel that the in-equal application of consequences is a direct attack on their faith.

After all, they believe Jesus paid for everyone’s sins equally, right?  He didn’t die more for some people’s sins, and he didn’t forgive some more than others.  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”, etc. etc .  If they are forced to admit there are, for lack of a better term, different “levels” of sin, or different consequences for different sins, why, that might just burst their neat theological bubble.

Perhaps the bubble needs to be popped?  Just a thought.

What do you think, dear readers? 

Chapter 12 - In which the use of nuclear weapons has been authorized.

The hold music for Child Protective Services is oddly upbeat.  

Two hours after last week’s post went live I was on the phone listening to it.  And when I got off the phone, I thought “Why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?”

Some actions that can only be compared to nuclear war, because they will leave a smoking crater in your life.  They are a last resort. Divorce is one such thing.  Reporting your father-in-law to Child Protective Services for molesting his son is another.

Except not in this case.  Because, according to the case worker I spoke to, my father-in-law didn’t commit a crime.

Why?  Because to the best of my knowledge, the molestation happened after my brother-in-law was sixteen.  That’s the age of consent in the state they live in.  But they opened a file.  I don’t know why, if he didn’t do anything illegal.  But there’s a record of it in case anyone else files a complaint.

So the next nuclear option is to tell the deacons of my father-in-law’s church what happened.  This is where it gets a bit tricky.  I live five states away.  I don’t know their names.  And my father-in-law picks up the mail at the church.  They used to belong to a conference of churches, so I started there, but it seems they voted to become independent, so there was no contact info there.

I can’t exactly ask anyone in the family for contact information, as it would seem suspicious.  Many of them agree with us in principle, but I don’t know how they would feel about what I want to do, and I don’t want to risk any information getting back to my father-in-law.  First I’ll go the easy route and see if the church has a website with contact info.  

The use of nuclear weapons has been authorized.  Such drastic action requires two people to turn their missile key.  In this case that would be my wife.  

The day I called CPS she had a glass of wine with dinner.  A FULL glass, which amounts to about half a bottle.

She agrees it needs to be done, but she can’t do it herself.  I don’t blame her, if it were my father I would probably feel the same way.  I think she would be OK with filing the CPS report and leaving it at that, but she sees the need for the deacons to know.

Honestly, part of me hopes that my father-in-law gets fired and her parents just write us off.  In some ways that would be easier.  Currently they call every few weeks and my wife has an awkward conversation in which they pretend everything is OK.  

I haven’t talked to them since the meeting.

Every year we have a family vacation at my family’s beach house.  They weren’t invited last year, and they’re not invited this year.  The rest of my wife’s siblings are coming.  We’re told my mother-in-law is very sad about this, as they will be away on her birthday.

Well, tough shit.  We told you what you needed to do to have a relationship with us, and you refused.  You made your choice.  You chose your church and your beliefs over us.  

This has been a pattern throughout my wife’s whole life.  My father-in-law wouldn’t dance with her at our wedding because he “has a conviction about dancing in public”.  

In public.  He’ll do it if no one else is watching.  Hmm, that seems to be a pattern in HIS life.  

For my non-Christian readers, a “conviction” is when you believe God is telling you to do (or in this case, not do, something).  He also “has convictions” about drinking alcohol (but he works for a grocery store that sells it), and watching movies in a movie theatre (but he has a huge DVD collection).

I guess God forgot to convict him about not molesting his son.  Well, I’m sure he’s a very busy deity.  He was probably appearing as a face in a blueberry muffin somewhere and just forgot.

Well, I haven’t forgotten.  I hope I will have the courage to take the next step.  I’ll keep you posted.

The Broken Yoke

I wrote a guest post for Alise Wright called The Broken Yoke.  Here's an excerpt:

Somehow I always knew that my faith wouldn’t survive a Real Test. Being a middle class white American male, it wasn’t tested that often, so it wasn’t really an issue. The question of “why does God allow bad things to happen?” was purely philosophical to me. Most of the time I was comfortable with pat answers, or I just didn’t think about it.

Then, about a year ago, a perfect storm of circumstances occurred. Toxic behavior by the leadership of our church, combined with the revelation that my father-in-law (a pastor who was one of the people who led me to Christ) had molested his son.  Almost worse was the fact that he didn’t see why his church needed to know about it.

My faith packed up and left town in the dead of night with the headlights off, leaving in the same mysterious way that it had arrived ten years earlier...[read the rest here.]

Amendment One: This Too Shall Pass

Today there are many people celebrating, and many people mourning.

To those celebrating the passage of Amendment One, I'm not sure I understand what you're celebrating.  Gay marriage is now...what, twice as illegal in North Carolina?  Wasn't it already not allowed?

To those mourning the passage of Amendment One (regardless of your sexual orientation), I'm not going to pretend that I know what you're going through.  I feel for you, but I have no common frame of reference.  I'm a white, straight, middle class, American male.  I've never been denied a right that I can remember.

I understand why you're mourning the amendment's passage, and I don't fault you for it.  But hear me out - I think you should take encouragement from the fact that it was even on the ballot.  Can you imagine people voting on this 30 years ago?  Of  course not.  Because the idea was ridiculous to most straight people thirty years ago.  The fact that this amendment exists is proof that the opponents of gay marriage are scared.

This is a last ditch effort.  A last stand.  A doozy of a last stand, to be sure.  But amendments can be changed.  Remember Prohibition?  Nope, neither do I.

An amendment makes a fine stronghold.  So did the Alamo.

Each successive generation seems to grasp the concepts of equality, compassion, and grace a little more firmly than their ancestors did.  The supporters of Amendment One will grow old and die.  They will pass their ideas onto their children, and their children will carry on the fight, with a little less fire in their belly than their parents.  And eventually, one generation will simply give up the fight.

I've heard it said that any idea is one generation from extinction.  In most cases, I agree.  But there are some ideas that we gravitate towards.  They are a part of the human condition, as instinctive as the need to eat, or the need to breathe.  Everyone, at a minimum, wants freedom for themselves and others like them.  Understanding the need of others to be free is a short jump from there.

True, it's a jump that seems impossible for many.  But it will be less daunting for their children.  It will be within reach for their grandchildren.

I understand that it's easy for me to say all this.  My rights aren't being infringed.  I'm not saying that we don't need to teach our children these ideals.  Selfishness is just as much a part of the human condition.  And I'm certainly not saying the fight will be an easy one.  Amendment One is proof of that.  

I'm just saying that time is on your side.  Take heart: this too shall pass.

Chapter 11 - In which we confront the crazy in-laws head on, with little effect.

To understand this post, you should really read the previous one.
Trigger warnings: child molestation, religous wackjobbery.

I shivered and considered asking for the heat in the counselor’s office to be turned up, then thought better of it.  I wasn’t cold.  I was furious.

My in-laws had agreed to meet with us, my wife’s counselor, and our pastor.  It wasn’t going well.

My wife and I talked a bit about why we were mad.  My in-laws had come to visit before we knew about the molestation that had occurred.  Our three year old daughter had slept in their bed.

But my mother-in-law assured us that she “had prayed about it” (for my non-Christian readers, this is Christian-speak for “If you tell me I'm wrong, you're disagreeing with God, who conveniently agrees with me”).  And she had asked Nathan if he thought his father was a threat to other children.  He had said no, he didn’t think so.  Well, gosh, how could we be mad when she had done such exhaustive research!  She had asked a deity!  And the victim of her husband’s abuse!   

Then, we laid out our requests/demands, which seemed very reasonable to us: we wanted her parents to get professional counseling, and tell the deacons of their church (where her father was the pastor) about the molestation that had occurred.  

My in-laws had assured us they weren’t going to try to defend themselves during this meeting.  They then proceeded to defend themselves for two solid hours.  They threw up excuse after excuse for not telling the deacons: the molestation had occurred before they were at this church.  It had occurred years ago and had been dealt with.  This was the first church where my mother-in-law felt like she had a real church family.  They hadn’t sought out this church, the church had sought them out (which they offered as ironclad “proof” that it was “God’s will” that they be at this church.

“Well, if your god is SO all powerful, why don’t you just tell the deacons what happened?  If he really wants you to be at this church, he’ll make sure you stay there no matter what.” I said angrily.

They danced around that question the whole time without answering it.  Because they didn’t have one.

Real counseling was out of the question.  It wasn’t “biblical”.  When I asked them why they didn’t have a problem with doctors (another topic not addressed in the Bible) they hemmed and hawed and didn’t really answer the question.  Because they didn’t have one.

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS!” I screamed.
“Well, I think you’ve made that perfectly clear.” my father-in-law replied calmly.  Oh sure, make ME look like the crazy one.

We were assured that they had gotten counselling with a pastor.  That’s past tense - the counseling is over as far as I know.  This pastor who found the question of whether my father-in-law should confess to his deacons such a stumper that he had to ask multiple other pastors about what the correct course of action was.  And when those pastors couldn’t agree, he told my father-in-law what they had said and left the decision up to him.

Gee, I guess the Bible isn’t as clear as some make it out to be.

They didn’t come out and say that the molestation was Nathan’s (my wife’s brother) fault.  But they didn’t have to.  Nathan had come to HIS bed, my father-in-law insisted.  And he was sixteen, not a child.

Here’s the thing: if you’re a parent, and your kid crawls into bed with you and initiates sexual contact (I find clinical words to be very helpful when writing about this), you have....oooohhhh, let’s say, five seconds to stop it.  That’s the amount of time you need to have this discussion in your head:

“Oh, my kid is in my bed.  Weird, since they’re sixteen...”
“Now they’re...”
“HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP IT RIGHT NOW!”

And then you JUMP THE FUCK OUT OF BED.  Like there was a king cobra in it that was about to strike.  And get your kid some counseling.

If you are fully or partially asleep, I’ll be gracious and not count the time spent waking up toward the five second limit.  I’m a reasonable man.

Not only did my father-in-law violate the five second rule, it happened several times (I’m not privy to the exact number).  But, my father-in-law assured, he had PUT A STOP TO IT.

Eventually.

Here’s the other thing: sixteen is below the legal age of consent.  What my father-in-law did is a crime. Statutory rape.  

Somehow we never got around to that subject at the meeting, I don’t know why.  I wasn’t thinking very clearly, to be honest.  At one point I was yelling so loudly that someone in an adjoining office had to come in and politely ask me to keep it down.

One thing did keep coming up:  why was it any of the deacons business?  After all, my in-laws pointed out, everyone’s a sinner.  No one gives a list of their prior sins at a job interview, even pastors.  

Funny - my in-laws are ultra conservative Baptists, always bemoaning the fact that nobody takes responsibility for their actions, and that churches don’t talk about sin enough and portray God as loving but not judging.  Now they were suddenly concerned about grace.  Oh well - Michael J Fox probably didn’t care about Parkinson’s disease before he was diagnosed with it.

This, of course, would have been the perfect time to point out that what my father-in-law had done WAS A FELONY, but like I said, it didn’t occur to me.  We did point out that my father-in-law was head of the youth ministry, and had lock-ins at the church with the youth group.

We were informed that was OK, because there was a chaperone.  Who?  Why, my wife’s younger sister, of course.  The one who just couldn’t understand why we were so mad about the whole situation.  Phew, what a relief.

My in-laws asked for some time to consider whether they would tell the deacons.  We were OK with this.  They still refused to get counselling.  They said it “was OK for some, but it wasn’t for them.”  Huh, the fundamentalists who insisted upon black and white answers to everything were now suddenly comfortable with shades of gray.  Halle-freakin-lulah!  Well, forcing them to get counseling wouldn’t really do any good.  Counseling is only effective if the people being counseled want to be there.  So we were disappointed, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

What did the counselor and our pastor do during all this, you ask?  Well, not bloody much.  To be honest, I didn’t expect the counselor to say much, she was there as more of an observer and for moral support for my wife.

The pastor in question, for those of you familiar with my blog, was not the one who had been caught in adultery, or in an unspecified “inappropriate relationship” with his secratary.  It was the head pastor.   We had hoped he could talk to my father-in-law pastor to pastor and talk some sense into him.

Well, he didn’t say much either.  In fact, he said almost nothing.  He did say that my father-in-law should consider telling the deacons so he “had some accountability”, but that was pretty much it.  It was pretty anti-climactic.

In fact, my father-in-law told my wifes other siblings that he felt vindicated because both our pastor and the counselor agreed with him that he didn’t need to tell the deacons anything.

What.  The.  Fuck.  

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.  Sometimes it’s a river of shit running straight through your living room.  

So now my wife and I are faced with a choice: do we notify the authorities of what happened?  Do we tell the deacons at her father’s church for him?

The answer, of course, is YES WE SHOULD.  The authorities can’t do much because my brother-in-law has said he won’t come forward as a complaining witness.  Also, he’s no longer a minor and isn’t living with his parents.  Our counselor confiemed as much (since she’s a mandated reporter).  I don’t know what the deacons would do if we told them, but we taped the entire meeting and didn’t tell my in-laws, so we have proof.  

Tee hee!

And if this involved Joe Schmoe down the street, we would have done so already.  But we haven’t.  You see, I’m a coward when it comes to conflict.  And I don’t think my wife or I wants to believe that this was anything but an isolated incident.  Who wants to believe their father is a predator?

So I’m pressing you into service, dear readers.  True, I blog anonymously, but I am hoping comments from you will light a fire under my cowardly ass.  Because the fact is, we don’t know that this was an isolated incident.  And if this happens to another kid, we need to know we did everything we could to prevent it from happening.

It’s what I would want someone else to do for my children.

Some Thoughts on Sean Harris

Sean Harris, a pastor in North Carolina, said the following.  You can see the video here.

"So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, 'Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,' you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed. 

Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you reign [sic] her in. And you say, 'Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.'"

So your pastor starts to preach that children must be beaten if they don't conform to gender roles, and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying "You're fired." you laugh?  You say "Amen!"?

Folks, the second you hear your pastor preaching this garbage, you should walk up to the pulpit and crack his jaw.  Give it a good punch.  Ok? Tell him to get out there and help the poor, the sick, the hurt, and the defenseless, because that's what Christians are supposed to do.

And if he says "This is America, I have the right to say what I want!" you say "Oh, you do, sweetheart.  But we don't have to let you say it here."

Reign him in.  Because no one else is going to do it.  He's a bully, and bullies must be stood up to.