The most positive experience which has made me the person I am today started in the summer after my freshman year of high school. No matter how I try to break down this turning point in my life unravels into a string of events which could fill a book.
I had been raised to accept people for who they are and not judge them on the way they appear. I never completely practiced these beliefs mainly due to ignorance of the moral. I would occasionally act stuck up depending on the company present, always changing my pretense to everyone else’s agenda. Essentially, I was a young man that needed to quit with the façade and find himself.
Upon entering my freshman year of high school I had no “real” friends, I had acquaintances. They were mostly people …show more content…
That summer I had few things going on, but my church youth group trip was the main event. The trip was to Colorado and began as expected, wake up early and pile into a bus with about 40 other people. The first leg of the trip was more of a meet and greet, a “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m going to fall asleep with my face on your shoulder drooling on you,” kind of meet and greet. They were very accepting and friendly people, but we attended many of church district gatherings so I knew what to expect, or so I thought. It took me two days to start seeing the other side of the people I was sardined with inside the bus. I know if you have people in a confined place for an extended period of time enemies are made but it is not a guarantee. Intolerance was my biggest pet peeve, and one man was dancing on that nerve more than others; he was the pastor delegated to be in charge of the trip. He would periodically speak over the bus’s PA reading scripture, and saying prayer before we would stop to eat, completely standard and acceptable things. Meanwhile, he would berate people for how they dress, their music or movie choices, and was just generally unaccepting of people from other walks of life. Before the old Steve would have just gone with everything he was saying and doing, ending up making many enemies, but now it simply angered me to watch. …show more content…
That day I happened to leave a studded bracelet, which I had found while walking in Fort Collins, in my room. It was your standard square pyramid studded leather bracelet, not even close to being dangerous or used as a weapon in any fashion. Out of everything this man found in the rooms and talked down to people about I was the one who he decided to treat like garbage. He got in my face yelling at me, with spit flying from his tonsils and out of his mouth as he poked me in the chest and threatened to have me fly back to Pittsburgh on my parents’ dime. This man literally knew nothing about me other than my first name, which he just learned. He did not realize I did community service every week, nor did he know that I went out of my way to help people on a regular basis. He judged me and cast me to the side as a subhuman, as he should have known he had no right to do. Because as ‘The Bible’ clearly states: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Authorized King James Version, Matt. 7.1-2) Consequently, every chance I had I would rebel against his instructions which were more so orders (i.e. not to talk to homeless people in a very public place next to the Sears Tower in Chicago),
I had been raised to accept people for who they are and not judge them on the way they appear. I never completely practiced these beliefs mainly due to ignorance of the moral. I would occasionally act stuck up depending on the company present, always changing my pretense to everyone else’s agenda. Essentially, I was a young man that needed to quit with the façade and find himself.
Upon entering my freshman year of high school I had no “real” friends, I had acquaintances. They were mostly people …show more content…
That summer I had few things going on, but my church youth group trip was the main event. The trip was to Colorado and began as expected, wake up early and pile into a bus with about 40 other people. The first leg of the trip was more of a meet and greet, a “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m going to fall asleep with my face on your shoulder drooling on you,” kind of meet and greet. They were very accepting and friendly people, but we attended many of church district gatherings so I knew what to expect, or so I thought. It took me two days to start seeing the other side of the people I was sardined with inside the bus. I know if you have people in a confined place for an extended period of time enemies are made but it is not a guarantee. Intolerance was my biggest pet peeve, and one man was dancing on that nerve more than others; he was the pastor delegated to be in charge of the trip. He would periodically speak over the bus’s PA reading scripture, and saying prayer before we would stop to eat, completely standard and acceptable things. Meanwhile, he would berate people for how they dress, their music or movie choices, and was just generally unaccepting of people from other walks of life. Before the old Steve would have just gone with everything he was saying and doing, ending up making many enemies, but now it simply angered me to watch. …show more content…
That day I happened to leave a studded bracelet, which I had found while walking in Fort Collins, in my room. It was your standard square pyramid studded leather bracelet, not even close to being dangerous or used as a weapon in any fashion. Out of everything this man found in the rooms and talked down to people about I was the one who he decided to treat like garbage. He got in my face yelling at me, with spit flying from his tonsils and out of his mouth as he poked me in the chest and threatened to have me fly back to Pittsburgh on my parents’ dime. This man literally knew nothing about me other than my first name, which he just learned. He did not realize I did community service every week, nor did he know that I went out of my way to help people on a regular basis. He judged me and cast me to the side as a subhuman, as he should have known he had no right to do. Because as ‘The Bible’ clearly states: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Authorized King James Version, Matt. 7.1-2) Consequently, every chance I had I would rebel against his instructions which were more so orders (i.e. not to talk to homeless people in a very public place next to the Sears Tower in Chicago),