I will first apologize for the length of this post. I have been strugling for a while now about what I should do with my friend who may be spreading lies. If the lies are true they may cause many hardships that include the possibility of splitting up a small church. This is the reason for the lenghth and detailed post.
I am 24 years old and have been attending the same small church since I was 10 years old with my family. The church has about 100 members, obviosly everyone knows each other very well. I immediately became really good friends with the Pastor's son who is the same age as me, and we have been really good friends ever since I first started attending the church. The Pastor's son is a very Godly man, but he is also a sinner like all of us, and his faults are exagerating the truth, or sometimes flat out lying. I have witnessed him lying several times. The lies are usually told to boost his self esteem or to justify something he did. I have never confronted him about these lies, because I never had the guts too, and most of them were harmless and really only hurt him.
My friend is engaged and is getting married in about a month. His fiancee is 21 years old, she also grew up in the church and attended almost every Sunday faithfully with her family. My friend was 20 years old and his fiancee was 17 years old when they first started dating. After 6 months of dating, when she was about 17 and half, my friend bought her an engagement ring (setting). They did not get engaged but word quickly spread that they were thinking about getting married. Her parents sort of freaked out and their guard went up. Her parents were concerned about the quickness in their decision in wanting to spend the rest of their loves together. From that point on her parents relationship became very rocky with my friend.
My friend is a very sensitive person and I believe he was offended by the lack of support from her parents. Within a short amount of time my friend went from speaking highly of his girl friends parents to eventually calling them abusive and sick people. His girlfriends relationship with her parents soon started to detoriate after she started dating my friend. She began to fight with her parents and eventually moved out of the house into an apartment at the age of 20. Meanwhile my friend continued to live with his parents.
To keep this short my friend and his girl friend started to slowly remove themselves from her parents lives. His parents basicly took her in as a duaghter, and in recent months she sleeps over at his house 2-4 nights a week in his room, while he sleeps on the couch. To make things more akward her parents live a block away. If her parents are driving anywhere they have to drive past my friends house, so they know when their daughter is their or not.
She has not spoken to her parents in over nine months, she did not see them for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother's day, or Father's Day. Meanwhile, her parents have been paying for her car insurance, cell phone, health insurance, gave her money for college, and last summer gave her 5,000 dollars for the wedding and bought her a wedding dress. In June 2009 her parents wrote her an email and said that they would no longer pay for the things they have been providing, because she has not been in contact with them. After she was cut off from her parents, his parents brought her under their wing. They gave her a car, car insurance is provided, and they possible pay for her cell phone.
I feel that his parents over stepped their boundaries but that is none of my business. However, I have come to beleive that his parents do all these things for his girl friend because he makes up lies about her parents. His parents feel sorry for her because they hear fromt their son how she is mistreated. His parents also now have a grudge against her parents, because her parents no longer go to the church. Her parents also left a letter to the congregation about why they feel they can no longer go to the church. The letter basicly said that they were dissapointed in how the church leadership was handling the situation. The letter also stated they felt the church was no longer living by Biblical teachings. In sum, her parents were dissapointed that their daughter was staying and spending so much time overnight at her boy friends house. They believed this was inappropriate and they were concenred that the pastor of their church would allow this to happen at his house. They were also dissapointed that my friends family did not encourage her to spend time with her family, they were only a block away and she could easily spend the night with them.
To wrap things up my friend is getting married in a month and he is not inviting his future in-laws. Word has spread quickly through our small Christian community and now my friend and his fiancee have been receiving pressure from many different people that they should invite her parents. Now all the sudden my friend is telling people that his fiancee's parents were physically abusive towards their daughter. I have had many conversations with my friend trying to understand why his fiancee did not get a long with her parents. Over the past years he has not once said she was physically abused he only used the term emotionally abused. Two months ago I specifically asked him if her parents had physically abused her, he said they never had it was only emotional abuse. The emotional abuse was constantly giving her endless chores, and her parents were never satisfied with her, which made her feel unloved and not appreciated. In the last week he will now say her parents physically abused his fiancee.
Right now my gut is telling me that my friend is lying about the physical abuse, because the emotional abuse was not a good enough reason to not invite his fiancee's parents. The church congregation is so small that this conflict between the pastors family and this other family is creating a lot of turmoil in the church. No one really knows who to believe. I am also deeply saddened that her family has been crushed by what has been going on and had to leave the church. I am also very shocked that my Pastor would allow these things to happen. He is the one who will be officiating the wedding, and has said he will support what ever his son and future daughter choose when it comes down to inviting her parents to the wedding. Because the pastor's family has been so supportive of them and bringing her in as a daughter it makes me think they know more about the situation then I do.
I have done nothing but prayed while all this has been going on. I have sat back and prayed that the truth would come out. If her parents did abuse her as a child they need to apologize to their daughter and ask for forgiveness, and let time heal their relationship. If the abuse accusations are not true, my friend and his fiancee need to come forward and set things straight with her parents and ask for forgiveness. I and many people have been praying these prayers, but the relationship with her parents have gotten worse and the abuse accusations have intensified. All the while the wedding is now only one month a way.
My gut tells me that the physical abuse accusations are lies to prove that her parents should not be invited to the wedding. Confronting my friend will not do any good. Frankly, at this point it is hard for me to continue to be his friend, and I will have a hard time going to their wedding if they do not invite her parents.
What should I do? The choices I see are sit back do nothing, because it is not my place to say anything or should I talk to somebody, maybe his parents? I hesitate on the secound option because I do not want to stir up more problems.