No High Five?

When trying to help someone, you can be made to look like the one doing something wrong.

At the end of the game, Harlan is giving high fives to all the players, but Crew doesn’t lift his hand and tells Harlan to stop getting in his face.

Christians,

One problem to be aware of when trying to stand up for someone is that people will sometimes try to make you look like the one doing something wrong.  You will also likely face related consequences.  You can be left wondering if you really did do something wrong on some level or if you should’ve just avoided the trouble of it in either case by not intervening in the first place.  Consider the following scenario of some friends playing basketball.

Jace misses a shot, and his teammate Crew says something about him that is demeaning.  Harlan, who is on the other team, sees a look of humiliation on Jace’s face.  Harlan tells Crew that what he said wasn’t cool.  Crew then yells at Harlan to get off his back.  One of Crew’s closer friends then says Harlan that he should mind his own business.  At the end of the game, Harlan is giving high fives to all the players, but Crew doesn’t lift his hand and tells Harlan to stop getting in his face. 

Even trying to stand up for someone in a calm and discreet way can cause problems with people.  Harlan was made to look like he was on people’s back, and since Crew had more social sway with the group as a whole, Crew’s view of Harlan seemed to prevail with most of the players.  However, when we try to help someone who is clearly being mistreated, we shouldn’t conclude that what we did was ultimately wrong because of how other people reacted.  Also, we don’t want to conclude it wasn’t worth helping that person either.  Helping people who really need help isn’t always easy, but it is worth it.  You know you wouldn’t want everyone to stay silent after you were embarrassed in front of a group of people, leaving you feeling both humiliated and like you didn’t have any real support from the people around you.