Two anonymous questions:
– I went through a tough process of struggling with God to forgive someone who betrayed me. However after we reconciled he openly admitted to his insidious intentions and that he doesn’t care if I’m hurt. How do I deal with this double back stabbing and betrayal?
– I feel completely betrayed by a close friend of mine. I need to process and talk it over with my mentors and pastors. However, I don’t want to commit the same sin she did by slandering. She openly admitted to deliberately hurting me. Part of me wants to expose who she is, but I know justice belongs to Jesus. How do I start to heal?
I’m really sorry you have to deal with this and I know exactly how it feels. There have been people that say “I forgive you” to my face only to discover they were lying right through their teeth. I was also in a nightmare situation where a former friend acted completely remorseful everywhere else, but in private would give me a wink and imply, “I’m winning.”
Please first allow me the grace to point you to some previous posts:
– Betrayal, Forgiveness, Victory
The thing is, forgiveness is a messy mucky difficult journey that almost never goes the way we want on either side. It’s possible that the person who hurt you will never realize what they’ve done — and no amount of persuasion will get them to repent, even if you expose them.
People are self-protective, defensive, complicated, unwilling creatures. The moment a person feels he or she has done something wrong, suddenly there are a million justifications for why it was necessary. Everyone has a cover story for their own wrongdoing, which is almost always a lame excuse that wouldn’t hold up two seconds in a courtroom. But somehow it makes sense inside a person’s tiny self-justifying brain.
You know this because you’ve done it too.
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain, Skeptical Christian 