…that there’s one relationship in life that’s beyond betrayal. A relationship that is beyond that kind of hurt. And there isn’t. –Caleb Carr
There is a feeling of betrayal sitting deep in my gut. Which is strange because, in the strictest of terms, I was not the one betrayed. But when a spiritual leader is the one who is in the spot of betrayer, there is some sort of trickle down to the rest of us who believed so deeply in him. It is hard not to see everything you have been taught over the long course of the betrayal as tainted.
Basically, crazy stuff is going on at my home church — no, not crazy stuff. Human stuff. The stuff we all struggle with, but might not have exposed to public forums because we don’t hold positions that carry that weight.
I think, perhaps, this is hitting me so deeply because it exposes just how shallow my roots are. This information does not lead me to believe in God any less, but it shows me how disconnected I have been. How I let roots that had been holding me steady wither away over the past year. It reiterates how my “home church” hasn’t felt like home in over a year.
And yet, that idea of my church being “home” was the only thing really tethering me to a relationship with God. I pray – sometimes. I worship – on Sunday mornings. I read my Bible – when there’s nothing else around. So the recent revelations feel less like headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen and more like earthquakes, shaking my already unsteady foundation.
In his address to our church, our pastor said that if we find ourselves turning to Jesus in this, that is “good and right.”
And really, I’ve got nowhere else to go. Every human relationship will experience betrayal eventually.
If you’re not the betrayed, you’re the betrayer. I have betrayed others many, many times. It is the only reason that I can look at this situation without judgment, knowing that it could have just as easily been me.
And perhaps because I have been the betrayer so often, it hurts on more levels than one to be betrayed.
