Her name is Megan Crosby, and she plays softball in Texas. If you look on YouTube and other social media outlets, she recently surpassed Hitler, Saddam, Pol Pot, Caligula, and Usama bin Laden as the worst person who has ever lived.
I’m working with my iPad and not sure how to embed the video. If you haven’t already seen it, just google Megan Crosby or go to Youtube and look for “Ejected or Not? 6/6/15” and the video will come up.
Megan is a junior catcher for the Needsville high school softball team, which was in the championship game of the state tournament in Texas. Twice, she gave the bionic elbow (in honor of the late Dusty Rhodes) to girls from the other team as they were scoring runs, though there was no play at the plate.
It was not right. She made two dirty plays. I’m not sure why the umpire did not eject her from the game. If I were the coach on the other team, I’d have probably gotten thrown out complaining!
But in typical American social media response, here’s what has happened since.
- Megan has been called pretty much every name in the book. No amount of discipline is good enough for her!
- It is assumed that not only is she a terrible person but her family, and especially her parents are also terrible people to have raised such a horrible daughter.
- She has
been signed to play college softball and many have demanded her scholarship be revoked. - She has been hounded off social media by twitter and Facebook bullies.
- She has received death threats.
- People have actually been driving by her house repeatedly. Police have had to take to patrolling, according to reports I read, because of the threats and because of suspious activity near her home.
Note: the other team, while unhappy about the incidents, won the game and wants to let bygones be bygones. This is all driven by social media crazies.
- There is a pack mentality that develops in social media in which people gang up to bully those with whom they have a disagreement. These trends are prevelent.
- Someone points out an injustice (or at least a perceived injustice – it might be real, it might not) and addresses it. Then, the swarm forms and people begin to chime in. Person after person must add their voice to the din.
- Often, as the herd mentality develops, anger and insult get worse and worse.
- Those who disagree or defend are often steamrolled by the stampeding herd.
- The “offender” (real or perceived) is often labelled in the extreme. Megan was called the dirtiest softball player ever in the link I saw first. Really? Worst EVER? EVER?
- The pack digs in and goes for blood. At some point, basic human decency, respect and courtesy are lost in the frenzy to destroy the enemy.
- The pack is often only content when the enemy is destoyed, or perhaps when there is a fresh kill to turn to.
Would that this tendency only occurred in sports, politics, entertainment, and other forms of social media., Would that the pack-mentality, bite-and-devour, kill-and-destroy attitude was absent from Christian social media. It is not.
The solution is Christ. Grace must becom more than soteriological buzzword, it must be our plan of operation. Love must be our norm. 1 Corinthians 13 must not simply be a passage read at weddings, then ignored. It must govern our actiions daily.
Megan Crosby made a mistake. But the social media wolfpack that sought to destroy her is more evil than anything she did at homeplate on the softball field.
May the spirit that sought to destroy Megan Crosby be banished from among us in the Christians blogging world.
Whew! When I saw the title of your article roll past, I thought you were filing another report on a speaker at the Pastor’s Conference! ;^)
“May the spirit that sought to destroy … be banished from among us …”
Dave, there is no doubt that the destroyer is at work in the Christian blogosphere. May we all be more discerning in the future to try the spirits whether they are of God … and not to personally go where we should not go in what we say and do.
Couple of cases recently jumped out at me regarding this phenomena. The first was the picture that blew up facebook of the girl at Arlington Cemetery who flipped the bird and appeared to be screaming at the SILENCE AND RESPECT sign at the entrance. Here is her update of the aftermath.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2964489/I-really-obsessed-reading-Woman-fired-photo-giving-middle-finger-Arlington-National-Cemetery-says-finally-Google-without-fear.html
However inappropriate, this girl was simply being stupid. That’s not that surprising for that age demographic. Note that she did not commit any crime, do anything dangerous, just being silly and letting her friend document her stupidity. Should that be held against her by potential employers? Absolutely! Should she be permanently banned from employment and threatened with death?
What about someone completely innocent?
Somehow missed this when it happened two years ago, but heard about the documentary about the incident on NPR:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0425/Sunil-Tripathi-body-found-Brown-student-was-misidentified-in-Boston-bombing
This was the case of the person mid-identified as a bombing suspect. He sunk into depression (possibly pre-existing) and ended his life. All because a bunch of amateur detectives on Reddit think they had the ability and knowledge to accuse someone.
This is a crazy world we live in!
Dave: This an awesome post. You have outdone yourself. What you have written is a challenge to every Bible believing Christian; it is a confrontation, an invitation, a summons to take a road even less travelled than the one in the poem and in the book that bears that title. The directive of I Corinthians 13 is a behavioral modification of the most extreme nature, because it is so contrary to our ordinary responses to the get-even mentality. Basically, the behaviors are those that reflect the influence and the presence of the Person who embodied them in His conduct and did it in the supreme way, giving Himself for those who were His enemies. A woman whose husband was killed by the Communists during the days of the USSR took care of the man who had been charge of his execution and won him to Christ. Like an American lady said to a friend who won her to Christ: “O, it was so wonderful that I could not resist it.” When some one goes out of their way to do another good, another who is an enemy, that is the behavior that wins the day.
Is this at all related to the increase of what I’m starting to call “Social Extortion” – basically, “you will agree to conform your speech and beliefs to what we say, or we will take away your freedom and livelihood”. There’s no room for discussion, or even for evaluating whether the charge under consideration is even accurate. I get this picture of SJW types walking around, swinging a chain, and saying “Nice family…nice job. Wouldn’t it be too bad if something should…..happen to it?”. It’s just that what they’re extorting isn’t money, it’s your freedom to disagree with them. And I’m not sure the tactic is limited to the left. It makes for a very *ugly* culture.
I would say so.
Also, the overwhelming anger in people.
We are such an angry culture. On the roads. In places of business. Customer service. And in social media.
Unfortunately, instead of undergoing sanctification and allowing our anger to be taken away in Christ, we simply baptize our anger and call in righteous. We justify it and say it serves God.
Dave, in light of your last comment:
Is there such a thing as righteous anger? And if so, can you define it?
Thanks.
There is, perhaps, something called righteous anger. I think that 99% of what we call righteous anger likely isn’t.
So could you offer a definition or some guidelines? Perhaps with examples?
I’ll give it a whirl.
We have examples in the Bible of Jesus being angry when he overturned the tables of the money changers. Now, unless we claim to be sinless, I don’t advocate going out and overturning tables just to make a point. But I would say that Moses was a good example of righteous anger. Moses never got angry when people crossed him. He got angry when people crossed God. If you’ll notice, Moses never stuck up for himself. God stuck up for Moses. So the focus of Moses’ anger was on God’s behalf.
To be certain, Moses didn’t get angry with people outside of the Israelites. There was only that one time recorded when he killed the Egyptian, but 40 years of goat herding humbled him considerably from that.
So, Moses was given a charge, and he was justified being angry when his charge was disobedient toward God. I’d say that’s at least the start of a full-fledged doctrine of righteous anger.
I can think of examples. Here’s one: My parents were justifiably angry when their oldest son discovered that rocks make a cool sound when dropped into the gas tank of the family car. It cost them a pretty penny to have it fixed. I was their charge and it was right for them to be angry with me. I wasn’t even intentionally being bad, but their anger was instructive. They didn’t punish me inappropriately. We weren’t wealthy and meeting the budget was very important for our well being.
Thanks, Jim.
Well said. Proportional response needed. Suspend her for a game. Make her apologize. Write 1,000 times “I will not play dirty.”
But she is not the Anti-Christ. No need to crucify her. I agree with you on this one, Dave.
Very good, Rick. Yesterday, I watched an interview of a young woman on BookTV.org. Her name is Kirsten Powers, and she has written a book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech. She is on the left side, and now she has found out that the left will tolerate no dissent. In fact, her book, according to the interviewer, documents many instances of such egregious actions where they shut the person up and out who dares to violate the standards, any of them, any time. What the Baptists have been about is the need to persuade, persuasion, not intimidation, manipulation, force, governmental decree, or any such thing. That is why we have had differences among us as Baptists. After all, we were the original advocates of Freedom of Religion.
In any case, the constant irritation of the American Public where they get nothing in return for their efforts to establish a peaceful society makes them susceptible to the arcane tactics of the brainwashers who want a society that is one in expression, thought, and conduct. One of my sources by email today pointed out that the aim of the same sex marriage advocates is not co-existence; it is assimilation. I wonder what their next solution will be when we don’t assimilate, when we, in fact, become indigestible? What is worse, and the Washington Post printed an article by a writer for the National Review about how some of the same sex folks are calling for more extreme measures. I have known for about 25 years that that group has been advocating assimilation. I can still remember reading a quote from one of their journals (?) that they intend to turn all of our churches into temples for the worship of the bodies of young men!!!! We are at the beginning of a struggle, the likes which we have never seen or expected to see, a strife marked by the used of overwhelming techniques involving micro radiation, weather, extreme pressures financially, socially, occupationally, judicially, etc. Now is the time to rise up and begin to really prepare, to plan to take action with a view to surviving the onslaught, and it will be an overwhelming onslaught, more psychological and spiritual (evil) than anything else. God grant us grace for this trying hour.
This is the difference between the world and Christianity. Many people seeking to reject Christ use Christian judgmentalism as an excuse. There is a point at which Christians have followed the world in this, and so there is often a legitimate complaint. But it’s no excuse to reject Christ for Christians not behaving like Christians.
The whole purpose of church discipline is reconciliation. That’s why there is a tiered approach to church discipline. If someone repents early, then grace demands discretion. Even if sin escalates to public knowledge, the goal is still reconciliation.
But the world doesn’t practice this. The world preaches tolerance and practices destruction. There is no discretion. There is no reconciliation. What should remain a local issue is now a public issue. Those of the world see the occasion to bolster their own self-righteous glory by placing themselves in judgment over someone else and proclaiming their sentence of destructive ostracism over them. They are willfully blind to their own sin proclaiming it for all to see along with their verbalized lust for social blood.
Recently, a young man in my area abused his own dog to the point that it has to be put down, by dragging it behind his truck.
That was vile behaviour.
However, the comments sections of our local media have been overwhelmed by commenters saying that he should be tied behind a truck… and then commentors suggested that he be violated in many many other ways, in extremely graphic detail.
That’s just as abhorrent as what he did– aggressively detailing a way anyone should be harmed. It’s is, perhaps, even more despicable, because it is most definitely suggesting premeditated violence.
God demands justice, but not at the keyboard of the unaffiliated outraged
Good article. I agree with the sentiment, but I’m not sure how your conclusions would work out in a practical way for a lot of situations with varying degree of nuance. I can see the problem in going “too far” but nothing about what happens in not going “far enough and the dangers therein. How would your solution a dress that?
So glad there was not social media and cameras evrywhere when I was young. Juvenilles do juvenille things. This girl is just a child with her whole life ahead of her. She has had her life ruined by this video of her. If you have ever played competitve sports you know that in the heat of battle your emotions can boil over. It is understandable. It was wrong what she did but the reaction from the ump and opposing coach was a suprise too. Then social media blew this way out of proportion. Its what people seem to love this day and age. Love to build chaos and drama. We know who the father of chaos is and how it can destroy lives. I hope this girl has a great life.
This is a great article that is missing its third part. “The solution is Christ,” followed by an immediate wrap-up of the article seems abrupt. The problem was well described, but the part where we can change things through Christ is underwhelming.
(Disclaimer: I’ve preached sermons just like this, so I may be ranting at myself. Twenty wonderful minutes of buildup and a quick Jesus is the answer, Amen.)
Turn the last 3 mini-paragraphs into 5 paragraphs of pratical steps, and we have a winner.