Many toddlers bite other children. Not sure why, but it happens fairly often. Human bites hurt, and little ones rightly protest when they’ve been bitten. Parents and caregivers must deal firmly with biters and teach them better ways to deal with their frustration and anger.Fortunately, most children learn that this particular behavior is not acceptable. However, could it be possible that the tendency to bite just gets channeled into behaviors that are considered more acceptable but still use the mouth? Might those substituted behaviors be equally as hurtful as the actual physical bite?
In the last few weeks, I remember feeling bitten by several people. Anger, frustration, misunderstandings boiled over (and probably the prolonged heat wave exacerbated this) and some people to whom I am especially close lashed out. After one particularly painful encounter, I thought, “Wow, that one bites hard!”
I may not have visible bite marks from these encounters, but the marks on my psyche definitely exist. Bites hurt.
As I seek continued maturity as a Christian, I have been training myself to ask when feeling hurt or misunderstood, “When have I done exactly the same thing to someone else?”Asking that question does several things for me.
- First, it reminds me that I’m hardly without sin, so I’d better be careful before I start throwing stones at someone else.
- Second, it opens the heart doors to a more empathetic response to the other.
- Third, and most important to me, I consider how I want to be treated when I’ve let my own anger and frustration boil over and have hurt someone else in the process. Once I know how I want my own stuff to be received by others, I can begin to treat others in that way.
OK, true confession: I really want to be handled gently and with immense kindness when I’ve messed up. I want compassion, sympathy, immediate forgiveness, no experience of vengeance, and generous understanding in response. Wow–that puts a pretty big burden on me to offer that to others, doesn’t it?
I was asked this week, “Why don’t you just wash your hands of the person who bit so hard? That’s what I’d do.” My response: “Because that person belongs to God, just as I do. If God does not find that person disposable, what right have I to do that?”
Simply put: it is part of my spiritual journey to offer blessing for curses, to express willingness to serve the one who bites so painfully, and to make space for the Spirit of God to work in all of us.
Sometimes I manage this; sometimes I don’t. The best times are when I refrain from biting back, when I refrain from excusing my bites by referring to their bites (“but you bit me first!”), and when I find I can love when I don’t think I’m being loved in return. The worst times are when I let my need for vengeance win and I slam those biters with all my power against the nearest wall, and leave them there, bleeding and blackened with ballooning bruises.
It’s taken me a lifetime to figure this out. I still can’t get it right every time. But I’m working on it. I keep thinking there is something that Jesus said that sheds some light on this, something about “turning the other cheek.” Easy for him to say . . . until he landed on the cross and still said, “Father, forgive them–they really don’t know what they are doing.”
Biters will always be with us. Our job is to stop the cycle of mutual hurt, not perpetuate it.
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