For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
-Romans 3:23, NLT
Not everyone is worthy of hearing your story, faithful spouse!
A Christian who looks down upon a faithful spouse with pity thinking the faithful spouse somehow caused his or her divorce is precisely the sort of person unworthy of hearing the faithful spouse’s story. This is a person approaching the demise of an infidelity ravaged marriage with a sense of moral superiority. In other words, they are full of smug, self-assured pride.
Such is an unsafe person.
I know I made the mistake of opening my life to too many unworthy people early in its eventual path to destruction. In particular, I shared about my personal flaws with some individuals who were not friends of the marriage or truly godly people as evidenced by how they responded to my very vulnerable sharing. It was sloppy on my part and unwise.
The problem of being vulnerable with a smug, religiously prideful person is that he or she will take your vulnerability as an opportunity to demonstrate how “superior” he or she is to you.
Talking about your flaws to such individuals allows them to reinforce in their minds “The Shared Responsibility Lie”–i.e. you had “it” coming. They read the “all” in Romans 3:23 in practice to actually mean everyone except themselves has real sin issues. Being married in their minds means those individuals must be morally superior to the divorced.
Walk away from such prideful people.
Spiritual maturity is the admission price to hear such vulnerable stories and a demonstrated lack of humility is indicative that this individual cannot pay the “price.”
