PASTOR HITS WOMAN

I know it happened, because I was an eye-witness…sort of. And I am very close to this situation, because it was an associate pastor of mine who hit the woman. And I will not reveal his name; but since I have only one other pastor on staff, it won’t be too difficult to figure out! Now, please don’t flood Steve’s e-mail box with complaints and judgmental comments. Oops…did I let his name slip? Oh, well…[he deserves it.]

I know, I know, you want the juicy details. Well, I will tell you what I know. The woman he hit didn’t do anything to him. As far as we know, she made no obscene gestures, rude comments, or gave any dirty looks. In fact, it doesn’t seem she said one word to him, until after he hit her. This surprised everyone.

Up until he hit this woman, he seemed fairly subdued. He was having a bad day, and that was obvious by some of the grunting and exasperated motions he had been making in the hour or so leading up to his assault on this woman. I am making the assumption, that since she did nothing to provoke him, he was simply taking out his anger and frustration on the nearest target, so to speak. He probably didn’t hit me, because I could have fired him, and I suppose he wanted to keep his friendships, so he didn’t hit his friends with us. Instead…. He choose to take it out on a poor, unsuspecting, older, helpless, woman; even one he had never met before that moment.

I saw him swing his clinched fist, in fact, both of them, one right behind the other; but I didn’t see the actual impact. Perhaps we were all so surprised by his actions, that we froze, and didn’t see this woman get hit. She was obviously upset, and so were the friends with her, understandably so! We were out in public and when we were confronted by group of elderly friends, they could have driven over him with the car they had idling right in front of us.

Do you want to know his excuse, by the way, for his assault? You’re not going to believe this: he said he didn’t see her, but was just swinging his fists without knowing where the impact would be. Oh, please… The women were much more understanding than they should have been. You know what? Now, that I think about it more, Steve, I mean, my associate, deserves your judgmental e-mails, for his thoughtless, reckless act. Feel free to send them to sstrong@gbcwestlake.org

Let’s stop the thoughtless violence…NOW!

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Oh, are you still there? After I finished my story, I thought perhaps I should share with you a few other, insignificant details, just in case you have a thirst for more. Steve and I, along with another pastor and his friend, were on the tee box at a golf course that gave pastors free golf. Steve swung his club (with his fists clinched around it, one after the other), and the ball went far left, over a hill and out of our sight, toward another green. We didn’t see anyone down there, so no one yelled “four” as golf etiquette teaches. Soon after, a woman appeared from below, came to the top of the hill and said: “you hit me.” Then, as we approached the women, another said: “you hit her”. We caught up to them as they were approaching the next tee, and Steve apologized for hitting her. The ball had hit her in the thigh and she was doing o.k.; although she thought it would bruise. She and her friends were pleasantly surprised that Steve would come and apologize to her.

Now, that kind of ruins the story, doesn’t it?