‘The Heart of a Baby Bird’

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

The Bible makes it clear that the Lord hates injustice, bullies, tyrannical rulers, those who oppress the helpless and murder the innocent.  Yet our fallen world is full of all this, is it not?  We have seen such injustice and tyranny throughout all the history of mankind, but it has been increasing to near unbearable levels recently, as government leaders pursue the devil’s agenda and crooked judges persecute the poor and innocent, and most especially, the Godly.

These things have weighed heavily on me for a long time now, much moreso in recent months as I have seen the terrible injustice, unjust discrimination and outright bullying of Christians who have had their life savings, their businesses and even their freedom taken away by the stroke of a pen of evil, wicked judges who hate God and seek only to defy Him at every opportunity.  These wicked magistrates have destroyed so many lives, hopes and dreams of God’s people — for the sake of furthering a Godless agenda of legalized and legislated immorality.

Psalm 94 reads like the desperate cries of so many of God’s people today:  “How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant?  They pour out arrogant words;  all the evildoers are full of boasting.  They crush Your people, O LORD.”  David goes on to cry out to the Lord:  “Who will rise up for me against the wicked?  Who will take a stand for me against the evildoers?”   David was fighting a battle against evil, and, just as it is today, there were very few willing to come to his aid, to come alongside and comfort him, or defend him from his oppressors.

This is not to imply that we are to become vigilantes;  our job is to warn the wicked, and teach His righteous decrees, but never to do evil ourselves.  Romans 12:   “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  These words are living truth from God’s word.

Yet let us never forget:  our job is still to warn the wicked!  We are not to be silent.  This is not easy, because most of our pastors have trained us to be cowards.  Still, we must always be ready and willing to give an account for the faith that we have, whether “convenient” or not, in season and out.  In church — or better yet, out on the streets!  Ezekiel makes it clear that if we, as Christians, fail to warn the wicked and present to them God’s offer of forgiveness if they will repent, the wicked will perish in their sin, but their blood will be on our hands!  What’s more, Christians are to be people of courage and action.  We are to rescue the oppressed, speak up for those who have no voice and defend the poor and innocent.  THESE ARE OUR DUTIES AS CHRISTIANS, but sadly, these are the very obligations most Christians run away from, because of the fear of men, their own selfishness and their Laodician apathy.

Instead we piously persist in vain Bible studies, “always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” straining at a gnat while swallowing camels whole.  And this is why we have 7,000 so-called “Christian” churches in Wisconsin alone, but on any given day, you would be hard pressed to find five or ten faithful Christians standing up to defend innocent babies being murdered, ripped apart, beheaded, burnt alive with chemicals, torn limb from limb in their mothers’ wombs.  This goes on every single day, while our pastors and pew-warming church-goers somehow do not feel “called” to reach out and even try to save these precious little ones, knit together by God Himself in their mothers’ wombs.

I can relate to injustice so very deeply.  All this “bullying” of the poor, innocent and oppressed is so painful to me, at the deepest, most intimate levels of my being.  You see,  I’ve had to endure awful, heart-rending, painful persecution my whole life.  It was horrible then, but now I understand that all these trials were God’s precious gift to me — His gracious training up of my mind, body and soul — to prepare me for the work of true ministry.  My spirit has been scarred and traumatized for life, but not without purpose.

I know, now, that God made me this way, gave me this suffering as a gift and allowed me to endure unbelievable injustice in order to raise within me a heart for the downtrodden, and those oppressed by the evil one.  My story is painful.  But I’m about to share some things with you that I’ve never told a single other person in my life, ever.  I do not share these things to solicit your pity, but rather to encourage you that God allows us to go through these traumas for greater purposes — to train us up for service to Him, and to have a heart of compassion for others.

Growing up, I was always a sensitive kid, with a tender, loving heart.  At the age of 5, I got on the school bus for the first time and headed off to Kindergarten.  I had no idea what horrors awaited me there.  To put it bluntly, my Kindergarten teacher was the meanest, most evil woman I’ve ever known.  The things she did to me, a young five-year-old child were unspeakable, and they have scarred me emotionally for life.  Now in my 50s, they still haunt me to this day.

I was admittedly an awkward and odd looking little kid — I had typical “Irish” ears — too big for my head …and I had a funny last name: “Pue,” which she lit upon immediately, to ridicule and humiliate me with, teasing me about my last name in front of the whole class every single chance she got.  And she encouraged all the other kids to pick on me as well.  I was not the only kid she tormented.  But I was her favorite target.  I remember her taking roll call each day, and when she got to me, she would yell out my name much louder than the others, just for effect, holding her nose and shouting “Robbie Peeee-Yewww!”  To the delight and roars of laughter from the rest of the class.  Every single day.  Yes, she did this to an innocent little five year old boy.  Me.

I never told my parents.  I never told anyone.  I was too ashamed.  I can’t tell you how relieved I was when Kindergarten was finally over and it was time to move up to first grade, at age 6.  To my horror, the first day of school, as I found my name on the list outside my classroom, I discovered this very same teacher had now been promoted from being a Kindergarten teacher to being a First Grade teacher — MY first grade teacher.  And the torment continued, but even worse than before.  On one occasion, I had to go to the restroom, but she would not allow it.  She made me BEG her repeatedly for permission to go to the restroom, which she laughingly denied.  She delighted in seeing me squirm, wondering how long I could “hold it.”  Until she finally made me wet my pants, right there in class.  Then she humiliated me further, by spending the next hour taunting me, making me clean up the mess while the rest of the kids laughed and teased me.  Afterwards, with my pants completely soaked with urine, she made me stand in front of the class for the rest of the day, laughing and joking to the other kids how “Robbie Peee-Yeeewww” stunk.

She also made sure I remained completely friendless.  She encouraged all the other kids to tease me as much as possible.  At recess, I would just wander alone, walking the perimiter of the playground, so as to avoid all the other kids, lest I get beaten up, once again.  And whenever I was beaten up at recess, this teacher always blamed me for causing trouble.  It was a very small rural school; and by the time I got to second grade, my fate was sealed.  This teacher had made sure that  I was picked on, humiliated and ridiculed EVERY SINGLE DAY of my life — all the way through High School.   I was not a stupid kid, I didn’t stink, as the teacher liked to tease me about because of my last name.  No little kid should ever have to go through what I did, but this was my life.

Being a tender-hearted child, I have always loved animals, and especially birds.  I’m probably the world’s biggest bird lover.  Anyone who knows me knows how I seem to have a special bond to God’s beautiful feathered friends.

Though I endured GREAT injustice and horrible abuse, what haunts me the MOST about those days is an incident that happened on the playground one rainy day at recess.   Some mean kids had found a baby bird, which had fallen out of its nest.  I wanted to rescue the bird, place it back in the nest in the safety and care of it’s worried mother who circled around, frightened for her baby, but helpless to save her from these fiends.  These mean kids were torturing the baby bird.  They had an empty film cannister and they filled it with water from a mud puddle.  And they laughed with delight as they dunked the poor, helpless baby bird’s head under water, slowly drowning it.  They’d pull the baby out just long enough for it to choke and cough and sputter, struggling to survive.  Then they’d dunk it back in the cannister of water, providing a long, slow torturous death.  I yelled and screamed at them to stop.  I ran to tell the teacher, who accused me of being a trouble maker and a “tattle tale,” and later she punished me for causing trouble on the playground.  I could not save that little bird, and it breaks my heart to this day.  The mean kids killed her, then I watched in horror as they squeezed her until her insides came out, and finally they stomped her under their feet.  I was in tears for this poor helpless creature and what they had done to her.  I was in tears for her mother, still circling, still trying in vain to do SOMETHING to save her baby.  When recess was over, the teacher again stood me in front of the class to humiliate me, saying, “Look at ‘Robbie Peee-Yewwww’ — look at the crybaby!  Poor little crybaby.”  I had to stand there in front of the class the rest of the day, all because my heart was broken for the injustice of these mean kids killing a poor, helpless baby bird.

This was my life as a child.  Looking back now, I am not sure how I survived it.  And it got worse as I got older.  By second grade, the world’s meanest bully surfaced, and he made it his life’s ambition to pick up where this evil teacher had left off.  The torture was relentless, every day of my life from the age of 5 years old.  But I’ve come to realize that while these evil people meant to harm me, the Lord turned turned their evil to good.  What I once viewed as an unbearable curse, I now understand to be a blessing from God.   You know, a lot of people today think Christianity is for wimps.  Real men, they say, have to swear and curse, talk about their lewd sexual exploits with women, and complain about their wives;   real men have to be hard drinkers, sports fanatics, porn viewers.  They need the biggest trucks with the loudest mufflers, and they think church is for women and wimpy men.  Even most church-goers believe the Christian life should be all “sweet” and “pretty”  —  false teachers will even tell you Christianity is your ticket to “easy street.”

The truth is, the REAL Christian life is a one of hardship and heartbreak.  It is not for the faint of heart.  It is not for the weak.   Because the truth is, the “mean kids” are all grown up now, and they’re running things and they haven’t gotten any nicer.  On the contrary, as Jesus Himself said, “they are of their father, the devil and the deeds of their father they will do.”  And so it is.  If you want to be a real Christian, a real child of God, then you’re going to be a minister of God.  The definition of “minister” is “servant.”  A real Christian is a servant of the Most High God, our Creator, our Lord, our Savior, Jesus Christ.  I suggest you look into it.  You will find God’s men were never wimps, they were not weaklings.  They were anything but….  and the same is true today.

So do you want the real thing?  Have you wearied yet of vain, powerless “religion?”  Then you must understand the Christian life means having the courage to speak up against lies, to proclaim truth, though it will never be popular in this fallen world, to stand up and interpose for and rescue the helpless and innocent, who are being tortured, killed, oppressed and persecuted, simply because they will not compromise on the truth of God’s Word or forsake their Savior.  Being a Christian means being a warrior.  It has absolutely nothing to do with a weekly “pep rally” at a “social club” we call a “church.”

What the devil, the world and all those who have tormented me unjustly most all my life have meant for evil, God has turned around for good.  He has helped me grow into a man with the skin of an alligator but the heart of a baby bird.

I still remain scarred for life, but I bear the scars for the glory of God, and the things I endured were really nothing compared to those of God’s faithful servants down through the ages.  My prayer is that my brief story here will encourage you.  If you’re a serious Christian, then no doubt you, too, are experiencing injustice and incurring the wrath of the world.  But Jesus has overcome the world, and those who endure to the end, faithfully serving the King will one day, soon, hear those precious words, “Well done, thy good and faithful servant.”

So praise Him for the privilege of enduring persecution for His name’s sake.  Praise and thank Him for training you through the hardships that you’ve endured.  The evil one meant it for harm.  But our faithful Heavenly Father turned even these traumas into a lifetime of “Spiritual Bootcamp;” raising us up to be faithful servants in the Lord’s army of mighty warriors.  Be courageous, and be thankful.  And fear not!

Audio CDs and transcripts of this message are available when you call me at Wisconsin Christian News, (715) 486-8066.  Or email [email protected] and ask for message number 184.

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Rob is the founder and publisher of Wisconsin Christian News, a regional Christian newspaper. While the main distribution of the paper is Wisconsin-based, WCN also has subscribers in nearly all fifty states.  He writes a monthly commentary for WCN, and can also be heard twice weekly, (Tuesdays and Saturdays) nationwide on the VCY America Radio Network, with his “From the Editor’s Desk” commentaries.  Rob’s messages offer unique teaching and insights from God's word, dealing with the most important issues of our day.

Rob Pue

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