General Question
Was I wrong for wanting to help, but wanting to stay neutral, too?
I am stuck in the middle of a bad situation and I have not put much input in, but I am turning into the bad guy.
Recently, July 3rd, my parents were cooking and taking a big part in our church homecoming. This church is our family church. It is VERY small and most of the member are related. Maybe, 35 people show up every Sunday. My parents are the youth directors, so they had the youth come in and help set up the morning of the event. One of the youth members is a 14 year old foster child to my pastor. He is very troubled. He just recently got off of probation and gets in trouble frequently at school. My pastor along with many members of the church are trying to help help him improve his behavior, as often as possible. This particular morning my parents had him and several other male youth helping to carry in food items and set up tables. They all spent the weekend at our house to prepare to get up together that Sunday morning. All of the boys knew that they were there to help. Once we got to the church, the pastors foster child decided that he was not going to help. My mother and another female member of the church asked him to carry some sodas over to a certain section of the kitchen. He responded, “I’m done, I’m not doing anything this morning”. Of course, this was disrespectful and the women asked him several times more, “come and help us with these items. He refused a few more times with less than angelic terms, and they said that they were going to get my father in the kitchen to straighten him out.
To make it clear, my father has a type A personality. He is a police officer who does not have to hide behind his badge because he has the nerve to be as tough without it. He is retired military. Did I mention that he was born and raised in Spanish Harlem? I have learned to deal with his personality, but some kids don’t understand just how much he means business. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE my father, but he is a TRUE individual.
So, once my father entered the kitchen, he confronted the boy. Once again, he is no gentle man, so he said, “young man!” The boy responded, “yes sir”, suprisingly. My asked him what his problem was and the boy stammered for a moment. Before he could get it all the way out, my dad yelled “get out of my face!” The boy replied, “you’re going not to talk to me like that!” To sum it up, they began arguing, my dad pointed in the boys face and the boy began to curse and tell him to get his finger out of his face. my dad replied, “what are going to do” several times. The boy ended up pushing my dad and my dad slapped the boy. of course through all of this people were trying to get in between them and make them stop, but their 2 extreme personalities did not mix.
This was so unfortunate. It happened IN MY CHURCH. Both my dad and the boy were in their own rage for a bit. This was a days where I felt that the devil was trying to take over our church.
So, my mom sent them in seperate directions to cool off, once the situation ended. I, a 22 year old who is pretty close to the kids in the church, went up to talk to the boy and tell him where the situation really went wrong. I told him, “those women were simply asking you to do what you came up here to do, HELP”. I told him, “you were WAY out of line for being so disrespectful to them, when they were being PRETTY gentle with you”. While I knew he had common sense, I wanted him to understand that even someone who is usually on his side saw the error in his ways.
Now, understand, I do not condone what he did. Nor do I feel that my dad should have let a child provoke him so easily. I decided that I wasn’t going to try to solve the situation. But, was I wrong for telling the boy what he did was wrong?
My parents felt that I interfered with the situation and shouldn’t have said anything to him. This led my father to stop talking to me. It has been 2 weeks, now.
What makes this situation even worse is that my parents tried to call a meeting with my pastor and my pastor felt that it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, they took it as a refusal. They feel that our pastor isn’t dealing with the situation the way he should, so they haven’t been back to our church since the incident.
This is what put me in the middle. I am still a member at our church, so why should I stop going? I don’t want to take sides, and I wasn’t a direct part situation. I decided to go back to our church this morning. My mom mentioned to me, don’t talk to people about us. Of course this was never my intention, but she expected this to be my purpose of going. Funny thing is, today when I went to church, the boy came in front of the entire church to apologize for the way he has been acting and being so disrespectful. The congregation grew teary eyed and accepted his apology. He seemed very sincere.
Once I got back home, today. My mother wasn’t talking to me and a lady from church had already called to tell her what happened. I feel so lost. The sad thing is I move out of my parents house this coming weekend , July 22nd. I am taking my first full time teaching position, in another town.
I feel like I have to follow my heart about this situation. It hurts so bad, though, to have my famil so upset with me. Was I so wrong for telling the boy that he was wrong for coming off so disrespectful? I thought that he may have needeed to hear it from someone closer to his level.
I AM SO LOST!
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