“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”
-Matthew 23:27, NIV
Few things are more hypocritical than committing adultery while maintaining one is a “good Christian.”
Yet this happens all the time. Cheaters do not connect the dots between disobeying God’s Ten Commandments and the problem that poses for life as so called “followers” of God.
They are like the Pharisees Jesus addressed here in Matthew 23:27. Cheaters spend all their efforts on looking good while their moral skeletons remain in their “tombs.”
This is why I thought the podcast by Julie Roys and resource from Dr. Dahl are so spot on for cheaters. Cheaters engage in “image repair” as a default. It is part of the wicked whitewashing game they play.
Some of the tactics that stood out to me comes from the tile entitled “Evade Responsibility:”
The words “Good Intentions” speak to a cheater who talks about his “good intentions” as opposed to his harmful behavior.They were just trying to “help” this other person.Another version of this is a cheater who talks about how she never intended to hurt her husband as if that makes cheating okay.
The word “Provocation” calls to mind cheaters who speak as if the faithful spouse “drove them” to cheat. It was his lack of emotional attention. It was her nagging. Whatever it is, the lie is there to aid the cheater in avoiding taking responsibility for his or her own sin.
I am sure as you dig through the document that you will find more examples of how cheaters engage in image repair work. Remember, they are all about their image…
…even if that image is a whitewashed tomb full of skeletons!
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*A version of this post ran previously. They are still good resources to visit–i.e. materials on “image repair.”
