Shapiro's SHOCKING Advice | BULLYING Is Not the Worst Thing for Kids

I have a very weird perspective on bullying as somebody who was viciously bullied when I was in school, like really badly bullied, which is I'm not sure that it's like the worst thing for all kids and not that I'm pro bullying.

No kid deserves to be bullied. It was a terrible experience. I hated it. Did it damage me? I think in some ways it made me a lot tougher.

Something happens to a young man when he realizes that he can take a punch and keep moving forward. There's just something about that realization that I want my sons to have while at the same time I do not wish them any harm at all.

You know what I mean? Are there any dads here that know what I'm talking about? You know, the moms in the audience are like, get out of here, Nate. You're crazy. Ben Shapiro is a highly successful political commentator and intellectual.

He's made a name for himself as someone who can stand up to false ideologies and woke talking points. But did you know that he was bullied in high school? In a recent interview, he talks about his experience being bullied at school.

And I think this actually helps to reveal that bullying can teach us something biblical. Really, Nate, that's crazy. We'll stick with me and we'll get right into it first. Welcome back to Wise Disciple.

I'm Nate Sala, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be. Don't forget to like, sub and share this video around, but only if it blesses you. Amen.

The Value of Adversity and Hardship in Forming Character

Can we talk about your time in school? Sure. Yeah, I. I'm pretty fascinated by this. What do you think? Looking back, skipping grades, social challenges, how do you reflect on that time? What are the main lessons that you took away from your period in school?

So there are a few different lessons. So when I was so my family became Orthodox when I was 11, which means that I wasn't really part of any clique in school. I was kind of in and out of different schools.

I went to public school, then I went to private school, then I went to public school again, then I went to private school. And so I didn't really have kind of a social sphere that was very stable in terms of friend groups.

I was also two years younger by the time I finished high school than ever.

So I definitely resonate with this. And I grew up in a similar situation. My family was chasing jobs in the early 80s. They were high school graduates. But no college. And so and praise God, I mean, they had the opportunities to chase after some very interesting jobs that took care of us.

You know, we were still poor when I was growing up. My family and I sometimes had nowhere to live. Nowhere to call home. And we had to take advantage of the food pantry at local churches. But I thank God every single day for this country that gave us the opportunity to level up our status from from what is technically referred to as lower socioeconomic status or lower class to upper middle class.

And that's I don't know. And that's probably another discussion for another video or another channel or something, maybe. But you'll often hear politicians talk about these statuses. Right. Or these classes as if no one can leave them.

You know what I mean? As if people cannot level up and move out of one particular class into another one, as if that's not actually the experience of most people in society as they start out at their first job at the age of 15 or 16, mine was 15, and then they work their way up.

That's exactly what America is all about. That's why brown people like my father come to this country in the first place. And my family did that, OK? And by the time I reached high school, they had achieved a level of success in the workforce that were that it caused them to move up and become upper middle class.

That's what high school graduates can do in this country when they work hard. They can they can even go on to become billionaires if they want. I mean, that's what America is supposed to be an environment in which people thrive.

They can thrive if they put in the hard work. And of course, pray to the God who gives the increase. Amen. I'm digressing. So my family get all these jobs in all these new cities as I was growing up, which meant that I moved schools around a lot as a as a kid.

And so I resonate with Shapiro here. It's not easy.

Everybody else, which is not conducive to either situations with girls or to or to close friendships with other dudes in your class when you're two years younger, a lot shorter, a lot shrimpier and and, you know, smarter than some of the other kids in the class.

That's not like recipe for social like ability. Yeah, exactly.

Well, and I also resonate with this as well. So isn't that interesting? I'm not sure why. So Shapiro, he started school earlier or whatever it was. I'm not sure why, but my mom had me test out of one of my elementary grades.

And so I ended up entering an upper class as somebody who was one year younger than everyone else. Although I was, you know, I'm a big Samoan kid, so nobody suspected that I was younger. But anyway, I'm just resonating with all this.

This was my experience.

You get stuffed in a few lockers is is a thing that happens. And so there are a few there are kind of two key lessons that I learned sort of from my schooling experience. One was pretty early. I was going into, let's see, would have been seventh grade at a at a magnet school's local public magnet school.

And they had to give you some sort of is basically a rudimentary IQ test to get in. And so people who, you know, scored above a certain threshold, which is very high, high threshold would get in. I made it in.

I didn't make it in by like 20 points. There were kids in my class who did. There was there kids in my class with IQs 180, 190. And and I remember sitting in class and saying to my dad, like, some of these kids are really, really smart.

I mean, there's a girl in our class is seventh grade. She was doing like senior level calculus and from college. And my dad said, well, success is a combination of inherent ability and effort. And so you're going to have to outwork them.

I'm going to let that one sit for a moment. Actually, that's so good. Let me play that one more time. That's so good.

And my dad said, well, success is a combination of inherent ability and effort. And so you're going to have to outwork them.

You're going to have to outwork them. So notice this specific environment in which Shapiro found himself. He's not actually the smartest kid in the room. There are kids in his class with 190 IQs. By the way, that's insane.

Seventh grade. And so he goes to his dad and his dad tells him essentially, that's OK, son. Just outwork them. There is there is so much wisdom in what his father told him. I don't even think we appreciate it in the moment.

Like what is this is one of those where you have to put the video down and then you walk away and chew on it, right? Just how profound that idea is. But I can tell you that this completely connects with a concept that the Bible teaches.

Where once you grasp this concept, it's going to unlock discernment in your life. And we're going to get into all of that in just a moment.

Humility, Knowledge, and the Danger of Pride

All right. He said, you're probably rarely going to be the single smartest person in the room. You can be in a lot of rooms with smart people. And for sure, on any given topic, there's going to be somebody who knows more than you do in a room of 100 people.

And so the best thing that you can do is just work really, really hard and assume you're not the smartest person in the room.

OK, let me just point that out. Again, assume you're not the smartest person in the room, by the way. What do we call someone who exhibits the opposite of this quality? Right. Who, when they walk into the room, assume that everyone is dumber than they are.

What do we call these type of people? People prideful, arrogant. Yeah. Shapiro's dad says, don't do that. Don't be that kind of person. And it absolutely helps that Shapiro was younger than everyone in his class.

I'm sure it was a younger and smaller. I'm sure it was like this physical constant reminder of this particular axiom that his father taught him. Which, again, was the same for me. You know, I could never assume that the older students around me were dumber than I was.

I was the youngest person in class. Not only in class, but in my friend group, you know, and also at home and pretty much everywhere. Right. Even if I were to outperform someone else right on a test, they still probably knew what it was like to be a year older.

You know what I mean?

Like, just by experience, they still knew more. To have this kind of humility. It really does help you in so many ways.

And that was really good advice. And I've taken that very seriously. It's why I take, you know, it's why I take other people's opinion seriously. If they have knowledge on a topic, I think, you know, there's a sort of now earned hatred of the experts because the experts have failed on so many occasions.

But I don't think that the answer to that is to I think the answer to that is better experts. I don't think the answer to that is just knowing nothing and just like, OK, well, now I'm an expert like Twitter expertise, right?

I became an expert on the situation in Singapore today because I read like three sentences on Wiki. So that was one. The other one was that, you know, when you take a lot of crap, you either tend to basically learn to tell people to fuck off or you end up tending to cave underneath it.

And so I have a very weird perspective on bullying as somebody who was viciously bullied when I was in school, like really badly bullied, which is I'm not sure that it's like the worst thing for all kids and not that I'm pro bullying.

No kid deserves to be bullied. It was a terrible experience. I hated it. Did it damage me? I think in some ways it made me a lot tougher. He's like, OK, well, that's what life is going to be. Life is going to be a lot of people who very often don't like you and they're going to do mean things to you.

And you can either just kind of deal with it and try to find a solve for it and whether it or you can cave underneath that. And success is the best form of revenge, basically.

And so I've I've had similar conversations with my wife at home. OK, I have two sons and and I do not wish them harm in the slightest. You know, it grieves me like any father to no end to see that they are in pain.

However, I do know that should the day come when someone tries to punch them in the face, they will survive. As a matter of fact, something happens to a young man when he realizes that he can take a punch and keep moving forward.

By the way, I was bullied in school, too. OK, nothing dramatic, but you know, the bigger, stronger kid on the playground made himself known to me by shoving me down and kicking me while I was on the ground.

And then doing it again and again the next day and the next day. But guess what? I survived. And I realized that I could get back up. And there's I don't know, there's just something about that realization that I want my sons to have while at the same time, I do not wish them any harm at all.

You know what I mean? So it's weird. I don't know how to are there any dads here that know what I'm talking about? You know, the moms in the audience are like, get out of here, Nate. You're crazy. All right.

And so that was something that I sort of cultivated in my in my high school years.

When you talk about experiences with bullying being pretty rough, what do you mean? What do you refer to?

I mean, so there was an overnight with with other members of the class where I was hit with belts. There was a there was, you know, a lot of situations where I was physically hit like that. That kind of stuff wasn't super rare.

And and I'm not talking about like a big public school. This is actually like a Jewish day school. But again, no matter what you kids are kids. And honestly, like I know a lot of people who did this now and they're adults.

And I've never mentioned the names publicly nor would I. Because it turns out that 16, 17 year olds are real dumb and they do dumb stuff. And and so, you know, I give them credit for for becoming better human beings now.

And, you know, that's that that is what it that is what it is. Kids are going to be kids no matter where you go. And particularly young males are going to do aggressive and bad things to each other.

Biblical Wisdom on Suffering, Mercy, and Spiritual Blindness

That's one. And that's forgiveness, right? I mean, hopefully that's what I'm hearing from Shapiro. He's he's forgiven his bullies and they have learned the error of their ways and repented.

Amen.

One of the oddest horseshoes that I've come back around to. So I was quite badly bullied in school as well. And to realize that not only was this thing that at the time you really didn't enjoy and then for a period, you're kind of at the mercy of and you've compensated in many ways and it's changed the person that you are.

But then you end up on the other side of it, being somebody that you're very proud of. And then you start to think, well, hang on a second, maybe without those things, I wouldn't have become this thing.

But then you also should does that mean that I should be thankful for it? Well, maybe not thankful, but grateful. But then does that disempower the work that I did to alchemize the thing? Something bad happened to me and I made it into something good.

So I should be thankful. No, maybe I should be proud. And it's a very messy lineage. Have you have you managed to undo this Gordian knot?

I mean, I think that, you know, all I can control is the things I can control. What I would if I could retcon it and go back in time, would I have preferred to have not been bullied? Sure. Because and what I have kids who are now, you know, 10.

Yeah, but he would not be the man he is today. So, you know, I'll go ahead and undo the Gordian knot for for Chris Williamson. Yes, the answer is yes. You know what I mean? Well, well, for Christians anyway, right?

Christians can be thankful for the experience of bullying. Why? Because if you're a believer in God, then what you are thankful for is God's presence in the midst of any kind of suffering. Take a look at this.

As always, I'm using my trusty logos Bible app. It's the app that I use not only to read the Bible with you here, but also every single morning in my own studies of the scripture. And I just cannot recommend logos enough.

OK, they're very cool features for you to check out, especially search and fact book here. Very, very neat stuff. Go check it out along with my special discount. It's logos .com forward slash wise disciple.

All right. Psalm chapter 34, verse 18.

Look at this.

It says the Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Now, this salvation does not necessarily mean physical relief in the immediate moment. See, we tend to look at suffering and I would include being the victim of bullies in this category.

Right. And we see it only with our physical eyes. We don't try to see with our biblical or spiritual eyes, because if we did, we would recognize that suffering makes our souls mature. There is something that happens to our spiritual selves in the face of suffering that can actually be of great benefit.

That's why the Apostle Paul says it like this. Second Corinthians four. So we don't lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day for this light momentary affliction.

This is what he calls real suffering in this life. He calls it light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

All right. Now this isn't exactly what I wanted to showcase in this video, but I think it's worth pointing out. Suffering is not something to be avoided at all costs. The Bible teaches that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.

That's Romans five. And I think everybody, whether you believe in Jesus or not should appreciate that the Bible teaches precisely what people need to be resilient in the face of, uh, not only bullying, but all adversity in general, all of it.

But it boils down to understanding that the God who made you is with you and gives you what you need to stand strong and to be resilient.

And eight, four and one. Do I want them bullied in school? Of course, I don't want them bullied in school. However, do I want them to experience enough adversity that it toughens them? Yes. And whether that comes from other human beings or whether that comes from just life itself, I mean, there's a lot of adversity in life.

If you're not prepped for that, you are going to collapse under the weight of it. And so if you don't have adversity in your life, thank God you should find adversity. And by that, I don't mean, you know,.

People who are going to treat you horribly, start a fight in the street. Yeah,.

Exactly. But I do mean like if you're 15 years old, 16 years old, and you have like a really great life, go work for a living, like go, go for a summer and get a job at McDonald's and get bossed around.

Like do things that you don't like to do and, and find the qualities in yourself that you feel like need to be cultivated and put yourself in a situation where you're forced to cultivate those values.

I mean, whenever I talk to people who have done much more than I have served in the military, for example, they say the same thing. They said they'll go in and very many of them are confused about what they're doing with their life and they come out and they just feel more empowered and like they're ready to take on life and attack life because they've actually been faced with forced adversity, things that they didn't actually want to do and hated in the moment.

And I feel like that's true of so many things. I mean, it's, it's true in relationships. I think it's true in exercise. I think it's true in everything. Like if you're not, if you're not pushing yourself and working to better yourself, you, again, like you wish that you could grow without the pain, but I don't necessarily think that that's the case.

I think that you require that in order to grow as a human being.

Humility as the Key to Wisdom, Discernment, and God's Will

Okay.

This is probably a good place to springboard into what I want to show you because I don't think Shapiro is going to go there. So I'll take you there myself. All right. Everything that he said is true by the way, and absolutely needed for the next generation to be taught and to appreciate.

Adversity is not a foe. It's a surprising agent of your own maturity as a human being. And the sooner you can realize that the sooner you can become what you, we're meant to be. But there's another benefit as well that comes out of this kind of adversity because the whole conversation has been about adversity to various degrees.

I mean,.

Even for Shapiro to enter into school at a younger age and be smaller, right? Younger realize that people are smarter than he is. And he has to perform work alongside these folks. That can be a kind of adversity in my opinion.

But what all of this should produce in you. And so now here's where God's word comes in is humility. This is what I want to talk about with you for the rest of the video. Okay. Humility should be the by-product of being around folks who are smarter than.

You.

It should be the by-product of experiencing adversity from bullies in life circumstances. All of these things should keep you humble. Now I say should, because ideally that's what should happen, but that's not always people's reaction to adversity.

People often get angry, they get bitter, they get resentful, which does something more harmful than I think people realize. Okay. So that's not the proper response. Now, the question is, you know, why is humility so important?

It's because humility not only safeguards you from a deleterious spiritual harm, particularly in the face of adversity, but there's another benefit to it. It also opens up your eyes to see the opportunities and the insights that prideful people miss all the time.

How do I know that? Well, because the Bible teaches this very thing. Take a look. First Corinthians eight verse one. This is what it says. Now concerning food offered to idols. We know that all of us possess knowledge.

Here it is. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Notice the contrast. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. That bears repeating. So let's wrestle with this together.

If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. Isn't that interesting? So a couple of things here. First, Paul is appealing to folks who are clashing over what to do with food sacrifice to idols in the church in Corinth.

Okay. The point is that Paul is making is a Christian has the liberty to eat this type of food, but liberty is not how they should make their decision. Wait a second. I thought in Christ, we are free, right?

Who the son sets free is free indeed. Amen. Right. Okay. Paul says, in light of the freedom we have in Christ, how you make decisions should not be based on liberty. It should be based on love. Hmm. Okay.

Something to chew on, but wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. What kind of love are we talking about? The word in the Greek is agapeion, which comes from agape, right? This type of love is a self-sacrificial love that if you think about it, it necessarily elevates humility and it destroys your pride.

Jesus used the same word for love to say this, John 15, 13 greater love. There's that word again, has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends. Think about that. That's a love that is fundamentally shaped by humility.

That's the type of humility infused love that Paul says in first Corinthians, that we must pursue as Christians. Why? Because there's something about it that leads to the right kind of knowledge. That's why Paul contrasts knowledge that puffs up and love that builds up.

And this right kind of knowledge, it begins by knowing that you don't know, as you ought to know, that's the right kind of heart posture. That's the right kind of humility that I'm talking about here.

This is the type of humility that God wants you to have instead of pride. See friends, pride makes you incredibly short-sighted. So, so I wear glasses and it's not for television. Okay. You know, it's not cause I'm playing a role.

It's cause I'm actually myopic. You know, I can't, in other words, I can't see far distances without my glasses. If I take my glasses off, the only things I can see are just what's right in front of me.

Everything else goes out of focus unless it's right in front of my face. That's what pride does. Pride. Ultimately it zooms you in on the situation that's right in front of your face to the point where that's all you see.

You can't see anything else. Okay. The only thing that's in your line of sight is filtered through yourself in whatever situation is taking place right in the moment. If there's an obstacle in front of you that you do not immediately understand, well, that's horrible, right?

That's a problem that can cause much frustration and resentfulness. And because of that, you end up blind to the God who put the obstacle in your path in the first.

Place,.

Who puts you in this incredibly difficult situation in the first place for another reason that you cannot tell or see. Why? Because all you see is yourself in this obstacle. That's what pride does. Ladies and gentlemen, that means that the, the way to understand with clear spiritual discernment, what God is doing in your life right now and why it comes down to getting rid of your pride.

And that's humility, developing a humble character, being the type of lowly person that sees people and sees the world through a self-sacrificial love. This type of person extends grace to those who don't deserve it.

And mercy to situations that would make everyone else angry, resentful, and bitter. I've used this illustration before, but it bears repeating because I mean, this just clearly demonstrates what I'm talking about.

Look at this in Matthew 12 real quick, and I'll pull it up here in Matthew 12. Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees because his disciples are eating the heads of grain on Sabbath. Now I'm convinced that Jesus says something in this passage that goes right over most of our heads in today's churches.

That's why I keep bringing this up. This is not the first time that I brought this up in a video. Okay. But when this fully sinks into your bones, what Jesus says here and what it means. Once you see this, I pray that you never unsee it because it's the key to unlocking wisdom and discernment in your own life.

Look at this verse one. At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, his disciples were hungry and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat but when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

Now their concern doesn't come out of nowhere. Okay. They have concerns because of their desire to obey Torah properly. So it's not like they're, you know, trying to be difficult for no reason, but here's where things go wrong for them.

They entered into this exchange with Jesus having no humility. They most likely got angry in the first place because of their own pride. They saw something they didn't understand and it just triggered them.

They got upset. How do I know that? Watch this. Verse three. He said to them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests.

Or have you not read in the law, how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless. So what Jesus is doing here is he's pointing out to these folks. Um, there is biblical precedent for this, for what they're witnessing.

His disciples doing not only did King David and his men do the same kind of thing, but the priests, every Sabbath do the same kind of thing. Now, if the Pharisees, uh, know about these particular exceptions, which they should, right?

Because they teach Torah to the rest of the Jews, right? They understand Tanakh. They memorize large portions of it. Then why are they so quick to judge Jesus and his disciples? Is it possible that Jesus and his disciples also fit the bill for the exceptions that Jesus raises like King David, like the priests, right?

Is it possible that the Pharisees don't quite understand what Sabbath is really for? They don't think that way at all. Do they? They, in their minds, they're like, no, none of that's possible. Right? Uh, they immediately just condemn.

Why? Because of pride.

When,.

When you get to that point where you're not even stopping and entertaining the idea that maybe what's happening right in front of you, uh,.

That you,.

That you don't understand could actually be a work of God and not something wrong. If that's not even possible to you, then pride has blinded your discernment. And that's the question that we have to ask as good Bible students, isn't it?

How is it possible that Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh is standing before these very experts in Tanakh and they don't recognize him. God's doing something wonderful in their midst and they are angry about it.

And we know that they were angry. I mean, the gospel of Luke says that they were filled with fury at Jesus. And the answer to this is because they lack mercy. They do not look at Jesus and the disciples with, uh, as Paul says, love that builds up.

They look at Jesus and the disciples with knowledge that puffs up, right? Look at this verse six. I tell you something greater than the temple is here. Now here's the key passage or the key verse, verse seven.

And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless. So Jesus diagnoses the Pharisees problems. They lack what?

Mercy.

Jesus has a lot to say about this particular quality friends. You can take a look at the Beatitudes for more on this. Jesus is looking for this type of person who has mercy, who is humble and who is radically generous in their outlook on the world around them.

Why? Because it opens your eyes to see the activity of God all around you. That's Jesus point in verse seven. If the Pharisees had only developed those qualities, they would not have condemned God and his disciples lacking mercy, made them spiritually blind.

And no amount of miracles that Jesus could perform was ever going to change their minds at this point, right? They were rigid and inflexible in their understanding. This is the takeaway for you. Ladies and gentlemen, how does Ben Shapiro or somebody like him thrive in difficult situations?

Because his father prepared him to have what's called epistemic humility, to not think too highly of himself, but to enter into situations, uh, checking his pride at the door to the best of his ability.

Now, whether or not he does that perfectly, I'm not sure, but this is a biblical quality that God wants you to develop in yourself. You also must have this kind of epistemic humility. You must be thinking about people through the lens of self-sacrificial love, through the lens of radical mercy and forgiveness.

You must get rid of your pride and recognize that you don't know how you ought to know. And this attitude is what's going to happen is it's going to, it's going to open your eyes to give you the wisdom and the discernment for what is happening all around you.

Somebody is actually right now, wrestling with what to do. You are faced with a situation and you want to know what the Lord's will is for you. This video is your answer. Stay humble, work on your heart, stay close and clean to the Lord.

My friends, the next time an obstacle or a difficulty is in your path, let go of your desires and your goals and ask the Lord for wisdom. James, uh, look at this. I'll end here. Uh, James one, five says this.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all, without reproach and it will be given him, but do so with a humble infused loving heart that trusts the Lord completely and desires to see what is happening around you with radical mercy so that you will not be blind to God's activity.

Amen. All right. Well, now it's your turn to weigh in. Do you think adversity in general can make people stronger? Do you actually have a story to share along these lines in your own life? Let me know in the comments below.

I'd love to get your thoughts. As always, if you made it this far, you got to get yourself over to the Patreon community like right now. A lot of cool features, a lot of great live streams and zoom, hangouts and one-on-ones that we're doing together.

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