Betrayal, I believe, is one of the most painful experiences a person can face. Grieving a betrayal can wreak havoc on the heart and unleash a world of pernicious lies in the mind. Without a solid foundation of Biblical truth it can leave a person feeling as if there’s no ground under their feet at all; yet even with that foundation, betrayal threatens to distract a believer from the very source of one’s hope.
Betrayal comes to us in many ways. Whether it’s at the hands of a friend, a spouse, a parent, our children, or a religious cult, its sting is deep and lasting. Sometimes the revelation of betrayal comes quickly and pierces the heart swiftly—it’s undeniable. Other times, seeing betrayal is a slow process of experiencing situations which teeter on the edge between “explainable-yet-suspicious” and unequivocally wrong. It’s in these confusing situations where one finds the opportunity to ignore reality and accept a facade.
For me, the latter type of betrayal has been the more painful of the two. It requires integrity and vulnerable participation to see what is real. Ultimately, choosing to walk away from the “comforting” facade which worked to sooth me into complacency and perpetual victimhood almost felt like choosing to inflict pain upon myself. That deception which promised to protect me from the very pain it was perpetuating on my life was a temptation to live in unreality. Until I saw it, I was taking part in my own betrayal; I was choosing to believe a lie and prolong the effects of that sin on my life and on the lives of those in my care.
Why are we prone to be comforted by lies and shifting facades? Why do painful truths often cause us to recoil into the darkness where we feel safe from their exposure which threatens loss? Why do we find ourselves redefining motives and sin and reality to ease the sting of betrayal? Why are we at times prone to defend the indefensible? Perhaps it allows us to feel in control of our pain. I don’t pretend to understand this resistance to seeing reality other than to say it appears to be the fruit of evil to seek to hide from the truth—even truth that will set us free (though perhaps through fire)!
Expose the works of darkness.
Ephesians 5:11 tells us to “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” This verse does not leave room for indifference to darkness. It does not simply tell us to take no part in the works of darkness, to just step aside and avoid getting hurt. No, this verse gives us a directive to expose the works of darkness. But what happens when this exposure means unwrapping the facade around our own lives? What if it means moving out of the position of protecting someone else’s comforting facade so that they can deal with reality too? What if the reality of loving the truth, and loving others, means refusing to validate their facade with passive participation, even at the risk of seeing them hurt as they stare truth in the face?
From the beginning of our lives our natural defenses have taught us to re-define reality for self preservation or even for what we believe is the preservation of others. Our motives may seem noble, but our commitment is to avoid pain and loss, often at the expense of truth. An example of this redefinition of reality can be seen in children who believe the abuse they’ve endured at the hands of their parents is their own fault because to know that their parents do not love them would be far more devastating than to believe they deserve what they endure.
Sometimes seeing what’s real and then allowing oneself to know and confess what is true takes unspeakable courage! In the deepest part of us we understand that exposed betrayal, or other such darkness or dysfunction, often results in absolute alterations to the relationship. To lose some degree of (or completely sever) what has meant the most to us—even if it has been a façade—is one of the most frightening prospects one can face.
So how do we look truth in the face when its central message will destroy all we’ve known? I believe the courage to face the truth is found in the fact that the truth is actually a person—the man Christ Jesus. It is in Him that we see the truth, that we know the way, that we find life abundant. It is in Him that we are given all we need for this life, and it is in His Word that we find the wisdom and the next steps for anything we face on this side of glory.
The Truth will set you free.
The Lord Jesus Himself told us that when we leave (an active verb, not only a passive loss) house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for His sake and for the gospel, we will receive a hundredfold now of all we lost—with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life (Mark 10:29-30). Sometimes we must actively chose to leave relationships, employment, or worldly possessions for the sake of Jesus and the gospel. Sometimes it is impossible to maintain unhealthy relationships while walking in obedience to the Lord and His gospel. The Lord said that He came to bring a sword and that His message of salvation would separate some of our primary relationships. Scripture tells us that we will endure loss, and yet the promise is that He will abundantly provide for us even then.
In Luke 12:25-31 Jesus asked who of His disciples could add even a single hour to their lives by worrying. He then promised that the Father would grant His followers all we need for life and said that it is our work to seek first His kingdom. So, even when everything around us which we have counted as gain—as the very foundation that sustains us—becomes our loss, we can rejoice with Paul and call it rubbish because of the gain of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. When truth appears to threaten to undo us, we must look more closely and see that it is not truth that will undo us; it is the truth that will free us from the bondage that has deceived us into believing it offers us all we think we need.
For those who are just leaving Adventism, who are just seeing its deception and who are just feeling the weight of the shame that some of us feel as we realize we have allowed ourselves to be so deeply fooled, the first question might not be, “Whom can I trust,” but it might be, “What can be trusted?” After being deceived through the misuse of Scripture, even the Bible itself can become a point of triggered fears and anxieties. To you I say, commit yourself to prayer that God will show you the trustworthiness of the Bible and that He will reveal Himself to you in the pages of Scripture, then read only the Bible. I would encourage you to begin in the gospel of John. If you are still unsure about the problems with Adventism, be sure you read Galatians and Hebrews!
Jesus told his disciples, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8:31-32). Those who belong to Him abide in His Word, and it is there that we find the truth—the truth about Him and about everything He has revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. His word tells the truth—always! When everything else around us seems distorted, be it through our own trauma and pain or through the deceptions of those who seek to put us in bondage, we can know that God’s word will never lead us astray, and in its pages we can find guidance for this life.
It is in the pages of Scripture that I have been freed from the bondage of sin and death as I came to understand the gospel and place my faith in Christ alone. It’s there that I have found the source of freedom from the lies of false religion, from the gross mischaracterization of God Himself, from the bondage of people-pleasing at the expense of living with integrity before God, from the deceptive messages from childhood abuse, from the burden of appeasing the godless demands of those committed to the world, from the weight of false shame and guilt, from the despairing messages of depression, from the fearful anxieties of complex post-traumatic stress, from the vanity of self-loathing and the fear of what others think about me, from the world’s false definitions of love and loyalty, and from the overwhelming life-sucking hopelessness of betrayal. This doesn’t mean that these areas are not at times ongoing points of struggle, but I know where to go with them when they arise!
Our Suffering Shepherd
I am more grateful than I can say to know that whatever I face, I know the word of God will be my unshakeable foundation and that, through abiding in it, the lies and the darkness that will encircle me and seek to steal my hope in trials will be shattered! The Lord Himself will guard my heart and my mind as I set it upon Him and thank Him in all things—even as I walk through the valley of betrayal.
We can know that the Lord Jesus felt the sting of betrayal, the darkness of grief, and the angst of lost relationships as He brought truth to this dark world. Even so, He made no excuses for sin. Jesus walked through every dark moment He endured with His eyes fixed on the cross—the last word regarding the seriousness of sin. We can know, as we suffer through the pain of betrayal, that we have only been given a small taste of the sufferings of Christ, our Great Shepherd, and we can look at the face of our pain and thank God for what He chose to endure to bring us to Himself and to offer us life abundant!
Walking away from betrayal has often meant walking away from facades which often don’t fall away without a fight. I believe that doing the hard work of choosing to live in reality no matter the cost is only possible when we stop looking back at what we may lose and choose instead to look forward to the One we most long to honor with our life. With our eyes fixed on Him, He gives us everything we needed to keep moving away from the darkness of deception and into the light of truth.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (Jn. 1:4,5).
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (Jn. 3:19-21).
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