irgy-turgy
Betrayal
"Honor is the opposite of betrayal. Trust and respect are the foundation of all human endeavor, including politics, business, marriage, and friendship. Can people count on your word? Is your heart directed toward honoring God in your relationships? Relationship cannot be endured--certainly cannot be enjoyed--unless the parties involved are honorable in intent and word. Failure will inevitably occur in all relationships, but trust is not built on the absence of failure as much as on the willingness of EACH party to to own and rectify EACH harmful break in the relationship. Honor assumes the need for honesty and restitution. In the context of honor, failure opens the door to deepening trust as wrongs are righted and wounds are healed.
The antithesis of honor is hypocrisy. It turns any relationship from one of mutual support and consideration into an adversarial struggle for preeminence. The moment core trust is lost in a relationship, efforts to understand and nourish the other person are forgotten in a battle to control and minimize damage to oneself.
Let me illustrate this phenomenon by calling to mind a common experience. How do you feel when you walk into a showroom to make a major purchase? The salesman approaches with a amile and an outstretched hand. Is your heart warmed? Do you find yourself relaxing in his presence, knowing your best interest is being considered? Or do you sense that his keen interest in learning your name, his his comment about your darling children, and his open ear regarding your reason for shopping in his store belie his primary interest: to sell his product at the highest possible price?
We are accustomed to casting a jaundiced eye on the merchant, the politician, the religious leader, the next-door neighbor--in fact, almost everyone but ourselves. Cynical humor becomes the badge of sophistication for those who know that man's heart is always evil. To trust is to be destroyed; to expect honor is to be deceived. In such an atmosphere, relationship is doomed.
In contrast to cynical sophistication, some people develop a naive, childish blindness that rejects the evidence of deceit and selfishness and wantonly assumes that all till work out well, without direct action or intervention. In that atmosphere, rich relationship is exchanged for superficial saccharine pleasantries. In either case, relationship is violated.
Violation of relationship opens a Pandora's box that of suspicion and shame that exists in every person. The suspicion that we feel toward a world that has at times cavalierly ignored our longings and at other times abused our soul is like a tinder box of dry wood. Betrayal is the spark that ignites the explosive heap of mistrust in our soul. When paranoia flames, relationship is severed, hope is shattered, and belief in the other person is put on a prove-it-to-me basis with no opportunity for restitution. The human soul is left charred and empty, blown about by the vicious winds of loneliness and doubt.
Something deep inside us reacts to deception and betrayal. Betrayal not only inflames doubt and severs our relationship with our neighbor, but also inevitably deepens hatred for ourselves. The person who is betrayed often laments: How could I have been so stupid? How could I have trusted someone who was so deceitful? The shame of being taken advantage of increases the fury of self-incrimination. The one who was betrayed assumes that she could have prevented the betrayal if she was less needy or naive. The attack she makes against her own soul is often more vicious than the original betrayal. The goal of her attack, as in all self-contempt, is to kill her hungry soul. She fears that if she stays open to her desire for relationship, she may foolishly open herself up to repeated betrayal. Nobody can be trusted, especially herself. After all, her own desires (to be honored, valued, wanted, etc.) are what got her into trouble in the first place! Better to kill them off than live at risk for further betrayal and humiliation. Better to expect little from anyone and avoid the desire for more. Deadness is somehow more tolerable than fighting with personal doubt or loneliness. No wonder the victim ignores the wound or opts for cheap forgiveness to wash away the traitorous act.
What I have just described is the result of any betrayal, be it the deception of being sold an inferior product, or by being told a lie by a close friend. Betrayal can be defined as any disregard or harm done to the dignity of another as a result of one's committment to find life apart from God. Betrayal, thus defined, is a constant wound inflicted in all relationships. It is such a normal part of life that our attention is hardly drawn to the casual, innocuous betrayals of everyday interactions, that is, unless serious betrayal has occurred that predisposes a person twoard vigilant scrutiny and jaundiced preception. Such is the case for those who have been sexually abused.
Ok, I like this for a few reasons. First, it explains exactly how I feel and where I'm coming from. Second, it explains, at the end, why I react to little betrayals of everyday life so furiously that people freak out by it. Third, it in no way minimizes the effect of these everyday betrayals. It says what I firmly believe: Little betrayals happen every day. They need to be worked on and worked out. Successful relationships do not come from the lack of failure, but rather from the process of working through the failures as they happen, which builds trust in the other person because you realize the person is willing to work on things. Herein lies my problem. Most people don't believe in working through the everyday betrayals. They think since these things will always happen, people need to get used to them and learn to move on. While there's an element of truth in that, the fact is that no relationhip will be successful if it's built on ignoring the little betrayals and hurts instead of talking about them, and no relationship with me will be successful if people tell me to "get over" things that happen when I'm hurt by someone who refuses to talk over things and work them out. While I do need to move on and not weep and mourn and wail forever about these things, I will not be able to trust this person again if they have a pattern of hurting me and not working through things and trying to change and be sensitive to me. Just like they wouldn't want to be around me if I constantly hurt them and wasn't willing to listen if they brought it up and be willing to work on not saying or doing the hurtful things in the future. The peoblem is, people who say they're trustworthy usually WANT to be trustworthy; they're totally sincere in saying that. But after about the fourth or fifth time you bring up a little issue with them, they start to get frustrated and tell you that you're focusing on the negative, not willing to forgive and move on, not valuing the relationship enough to move past things, when in reality YOU are the one valuing the relationship more, because you're not wanting little things to get in the way of the relationship, and you know that little things lead to big things, so you're trying to build trust in the relationship by adressing the little things before they become big things, and not letting your fear of being hurt in the past to keep you from talking to the person and trying to work things out.
People don't see it that way, though. They don't like being confronted with something they did wrong, because none of us likes to admit screwing up, and when we have to admit we screwed up, we'd rather point out ways the other person has failed that own up to it. We'd rather have relationships with people who don't adress our failures, because then we wouldn't have to focus on our failures. And when someone comes to us a bunch of times with things we've done wrong, we start beating ourselves up about being wrong, and this attack on ourselves translates into an attack on the other person, because if they hadn't come to us with these failures, we could have ignored them.
Which means I'm doomed. Because more people agree that it's wrong to address these little failures than agree that it's important to address them.