Trying To Be Nicer, But So Difficult To Turn Away

As a man who feels deeply and thoroughly commissioned by God as a missionary of Divine mercy, I recognize complications in my role as a “foul-caller” regarding the pathetic treatment of people seeking assistance from my town’s homeless shelter where I worked for a year and saw ridiculous undignified and disrespectful treatment launched against scores of people, and tried to tone down the impact of this offensive conduct against vulnerable people.
You see how easy it is for me to use “Divine mercy” and “ridiculous” “offensive conduct” in the same sentence.
That is, indeed, the complication. On the one hand I am bound by faith and conscience to express the mercy of God. On the other, I am bound by faith and conscience to speak up when I observe injustice against another. The former involves the sanctity of my responsibility to God, and the latter involves my responsibility to the sanctity of life as flows out of my relationship with God.
These don’t ride together very comfortably in the backseat of my car.
Some of my advisors – very helpful and wonderful people in my life – want me to nicen things up. I like being liked, but this wrong-doing at the shelter is too horrible to turn away from.
I still need to deal with a question: What is the role of a man of mercy who sees Person A beating Person B? Stop the beating? I think so.
I believe that the person or people responsible for bewilderingly poor treatment of people at the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter have perhaps slowed down and thought twice before treating vulnerable people dismissively, patronizingly, and even unauthorizedly and unadvisedly diagnosing people as being mentally ill … to their faces.
They are being watched. This is a good thing. Maybe 2008 will only be half as cruel as was 2007, or 2006, or 2005, or …